Playstation News

Some big news from Sony this week. Yesterday, they announced a big price cut for the PS3 as well as a new, slimmed down model. The new slim model does not have much in the way of new features, and the only thing it’s losing are some aesthetic stuff (i.e. matte black plastic finish instead of the reflective plastic on older models, actual buttons in place of the pressure sensitive things the older models use, etc…) and the ability to install other OSes (i.e. no more installing linux on your PS3). The one big miss is that Sony still has not reinstated backwards compatibility with the PS2, and in an interview with Sony’s head of hardware, John Koller, things don’t look promising on that front:

Do we need to stop yapping about backwards compatibility?

“It’s not coming back, so let me put that on the table,” Koller says with an air of finality. But it’s all people ever talk about!

“It’s not as big as a purchase intent driver as you may be hearing,” he claimed. “We’ve got such a substantial lineup of titles on the PS3; most people are buying the PS3 for PS3 games. They’ve buying it for PS3 games and Blu-ray movies.”

“That won’t be returning,” he repeats.

Darn. He may be correct that people don’t intend to purchase the PS3 for its ability to play PS2 games, but it certainly doesn’t hurt and it would seemingly increase goodwill. Ok, fine, I just want to be able to play PS2 games from my PS3. Is that so wrong? From what I’ve seen, a previous model PS3 had simple software emulation for PS2 games, which seems very reasonable (one of the older models actually included PS2 hardware in the PS3 to achieve backwards compatibility, something that was wisely dropped to help lower the amazingly high price of the PS3), even if it didn’t work for all games. If nothing else, being able to offer some PS2 classics for download on PSN would be pretty cool. Alas, it’s apparently not to be.

Still, $299 is a pretty good deal, especially if you can swing the same Playstation Credit Card rebate that I did (right now it’s only a $100 credit, but it is periodically raised to $150 for limited times). In essense, you could buy a PS3 for less than a Wii.

A while ago, I complained about the distinctly boring gamercard that PSN made available. All it basically had was your PSN online ID name… something that could just as easily be typed out (i.e. mine is “mciocco”). Well, sometime in the past week, they upgraded the PSN portable ID to include some more info, so here’s mine:


Get your Portable ID!

Much better! It would still be nice to have more info on the thing (i.e. show what games I’m playing, what trophies I won recently, etc…), but at least it lets me brag a bit about how much of a trophy whore I am (update: I think it will show you a lot more information if you click through the gamertag above)…

Anyway, it seems that the PS3 firmware is also due to be upgraded, but there doesn’t seem to be much of interest in the update (i.e. no PS2 backwards compatibility). All in all, it seems like it will be a good few months for Sony. I’m betting that Microsoft will respond, but Sony has a pretty interesting lineup of exclusives coming in the next half year or so (including a genuine system-seller in God of War III) and their general library is just as good as MS. Nintendo will, of course, obliterate Sony and MS, because that is just their way. Nintendo isn’t playing the same game. Three years after launch, Sony’s system costs half of what it once did and Nintendo’s costs… the same. And Nintendo was making a profit on the hardware on day 1, while Sony has lost massive amounts of money (the PS3 slim seems to be profitable for them though). I suppose time will tell, but Sony is finally priced competitively with Microsoft, so that part should be interesting. Here’s to hoping that it’s a rousing success, leading to more and more great games being released for the system (at the very least, we can hope that Bobby Kotick will shut the hell up).

4 thoughts on “Playstation News”

  1. I’ll be interested to see what this does to the auction price of original PS3s. I would love to have an original 60GB; not so much because I *need* backward compatibility, but because I cannot (stupidly, maybe) fathom buying a Playstation that can’t play older games. It’s kind of like buying a Corvette after having owned a Suburban: you can’t deny the amazing increase in performance and handling, but what happened to all the utility room? What if I want to use a backseat?

    Several people at Sankaku Complex feel that the two new Playstations will destroy demand for the older models. I doubt this, as least for the original models. Those samples are few and far between; even slightly reduced demand will probably allow for a premium price point. Unless there is a severe problem with the first Slim3, only the most recent releases of the PS3 will fall in demand…which is why Sony started pulling them from shelves.

    I still want a PS3 more than the other two current gen systems. Both the 360 and the PS3 have exclusives I would like to play, but I just can’t get away from Fear of Red Ring. Then theres Sony’s attempts to buy into Microsoft’s exlusives. It finally occurred to me that as ludicrous as Sony’s “ten-year-console” claim sounds, they might pull it off if Microsoft can’t get a reliable 360 (or new console, for that matter) off the ground. Sony will be able to do what both parties did will several previous generation titles; buy a *sequel* that was just an enhanced remake of the original exclusive.

    And that was a lot more than I started out wanting to say, so I’ll stop now. Mind wandering.

    Ben

  2. The 60GB will never go out of style – it’s been consistenty popular since that model stopped being produced and I’m betting it will continue to be popular.

    As for the 10 year cycle, if you look at the PS2, which (as of last month) was selling almost as well as the PS3, it’s nearing its 10 years. Granted, not a lot of new games coming out for it, but it’s probably still the most popular console in the world right now, with a base of over 120 million people (i.e. way more that Wii, Xbox and PS3 combined).

    Also, with the success of the Wii, it seems that stuff like “better graphics” isn’t necessarily going to translate to better sales. I think it’s quite possible that the PS3 will still be alive and kicking in 2016, provided it doesn’t collapse under the weight of market pressures and it continues to get new and interesting games (or big budget titles like God of War and Final Fantasy, etc…)…

    I’ve been very happy with my PS3 and now that the price has come down, it’s much easier to recommend…

  3. Mark, you can browse the internet from the PS3 right? What can you tell me about that, from your experience? Can you stream video, like from hulu.com, full screen with decent quality, and is it a pain to use?

    Now that the price has gone down, we’re considering it more seriously. $300 is still a lot, but if the PS3 does have staying power like the PS2 (after 9 years on the market, we finally got a used PS2, ha), then at least we would get our money’s worth.

  4. You can browse the internet, but watching internet video does not work. Hulu blocks the PS3 browser for some reason. If you buy this PlayOn software ( http://www.themediamall.com/playon ), you can stream Netflix/Hulu/Youtube and more movies from your PC to your PS3… but when I tried the free trial, it was very spotty. I would often get a “The Data is corrupted” error and the DRM often failed. Gah. So that part kinda sucks. Blu-Ray is pretty cool though.

    So I really haven’t browsed the internet much from the PS3… I don’t really intend to use the PSN Movie Store ever, which is why this lack of Netflix/Hulu is really annoying.

    I’m honestly not sure how the PS3 is going to be doing in a few years. The Wii is pretty thoroughly winning the current console war, but this generation is really weird in that all three consoles are doing reasonably well… So who knows?

    If you’ve got decent credit, I recommend applying for the credit card and getting the $100-$150 credit (granted, it takes like 2 months for them to apply the credit, but still), which makes it more affordable…

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