PS3 to be released Nov. 17; Sony steals ideas

[fishamaphone]

http://www.latimes.com/technology/consu ... ness-games

Basic highlights: US release date, stated in title. Two units at different pricepoints, similar to 360, but at $500 and $600 respectively. Motion-sensitivity, similar to Wii.

Now, mimicking Microsoft is plain stupid, considering there "regular" unit is $100 more expensive then Microsoft's "premium" unit. I think that's just wishful thinking on Sony's part.

But the motion-sensitivity thing may be a problem for Nintendo. They haven't said how functional the device is, but if it works well enough to port all of Nintendo's best 3rd-party titles, Nintendo had better have something more than decent up their sleeves at E3.

However, those of you who are familiar with video game history will remember that Sony released a controller with analog sticks right after Nintendo revealed the N64 controller, and it worked so badly they had to take it off the market until the release of the Dualshock. Hopefully Nintendo has some more secrets that are un-imitatable by this point... they've been keeping really hushy-hushy lately outside of some Red Steel screenshots and new name promotion...

[X]

Nintendo has always been the innovative company. D-Pad, rumble pack, etc., many of these features started at Nintendo.

[fishamaphone]

...shoulder buttons, wireless controllers, four-controller play...

Hell, they invented both the 2-D and 3-D platformer as we know them today.

Battery game memory, hand-held consoles... the list goes on and on

[MQmoxie]

you guys are baiting me.... I can tell

[Mista_B]

Woah, the PS3 is making the 360 look cheap. And they took out rumble in the PS3 controllers just so they could add some gimpy last minute "tilt" function?

>.>

Dang. And I was looking forward to it too.

*shrug*

I'll do like I did with the Xbox and Gamecube - wait a few years until they systems can be bought used from under $100. Heck, just bought a PS2 the other day, there's tons of cheap games for it that I haven't played yet, keep me busy for a few years, and by then, I'll pick up a PS3 or whatever for cheap.

[MQmoxie]

Ah the beauty of having spending money. Unfortunately I think this will backfire on Sony. If the PS3 had a close price point to the 360 then the PS would have been able to easily keep their lead. this way I think the 360 is going to gain a lot of ground. *sigh* And they took out the rumble pack?!? what on earth for?!? If Sony is looking to Nintendo to steal ideas then I have serious concerns about them staying in the lead.

[Mista_B]

Totally. 360 just one the hardcore gamer crowd by default almost, heck, just with Halo 3 - that leaves the Nintendo (giggle) Wii as their only competition.

Heck.

If you're old enough, this new XBOX / Nintendo thing could be eearily akin to the old SEGA / Nintendo days.

Which would be totally crazy and aweseome at the same time.

Another neat thing is, I think XBOX dudes and Nintendo are focusing on pretty different markets - PS3 and XBOX going after the typical PC gamer, Nintendo going for their usual 'people who just wanna play' crowd; they're not really directly competing. Kinda like Mac / PC in a way.

[fishamaphone]

Ah the beauty of having spending money. Unfortunately I think this will backfire on Sony. If the PS3 had a close price point to the 360 then the PS would have been able to easily keep their lead. this way I think the 360 is going to gain a lot of ground. *sigh* And they took out the rumble pack?!? what on earth for?!? If Sony is looking to Nintendo to steal ideas then I have serious concerns about them staying in the lead.

This really isn't a change in policy.

Sony 1: OK, let's make the PlayStation. What's the controller gonna be?

Sony 2: Oh! I know! An SNES pad with two extra shoulder buttons!

Sony 1: Great!

(one year later...)

Sony 2: Holy crap, Nintendo's putting a tiny little joystick on their controller!

Sony 1: Let's put two on ours!

Sony 2: But our controller's already on the market!

Sony 1: Make a new one!

Sony 2: Crap! Their controller shakes!

Sony 1: NO! Quick! Make ours shake too!

In fact, come to think of it...

Sony 1: Let's make the PS2!

Sony 2: Great! We'll kill Sega!

Sega: Waaaaaa!

Microsoft: Pfft, we're joining in, and our machine is online *and* has a harddrive.

Sony 1: *whispers* can our machine do that?

Sony 2: *whispers* no

Sony 1: OUR MACHINE CAN DO THAT TOO!

Sony 2: What the hell are you doing?!?

Sony 1: *whispers very harshly* our. machine. can. do. that. too.

Sony 2: Gaddammit! I'm not gonna have weekends for a freaking year. *pouts and stomps away*

[MQmoxie]

That was feaking hilarious. Too bad it's close to the truth. The thing is those gambles more or less paid off for Sony. This one I think will backfire on them. I suppose in the end consoles will disappear in the next ten years or so. They're damn near just comps you can't upgrade anyway.

[fishamaphone]

They won the gamble mostly on luck.

If Sega wasn't busy playng ping-pong between Genesis attachments and the Saturn, and Nintendo had moved to optical disks, there wouldn't have been a market gap for Sony to jump through.

The PS2 won this generation against three copanies that pretty much no longer existed, were working their way towards that point, and had just entered the maket, respectively.

Sony's never done anything to actually *make* the PlayStation line good. They've coasted on everyone else's shortcomings, and hep from people like Square and Rockstar. Microsoft is defining itself. Nintendo is defining itself. Sony's still in the same cloud of "not here, not there" that they've been in since 1994.

[X]

Sony should have stayed working with Nintendo. The 8-channel Sony sound card in the SNES was brilliant.

A lot of companies, like Rareware and Capcom, were extremely successful with Nintendo. Since they've fled the Nintendo scene, I hardly ever hear anything about them anymore.

[edcool1]

Capcom still makes stuff for nintendo.

[X]

I think I may have confused it with EA buying out Capcom a while back.

[fishamaphone]

EA definitely never bought out Capcom.

Granted, their sequel-release scheme is somewhat similar, but they are still two seperate companies. Capcom worked more on the PS1 than on the N64, but they've released several exclusive games on GameCube (Resident Evil, Viewtiful Joe, etc...), in addition to working with Nintendo on all the more recent Gameboy Zeldas.

[MQmoxie]

Fish I'm gonna have to disagree with you on the 'not here not there' comment. Sony gave gamers what they wanted. Thus they won the hearts and minds battle. Business is about supplying a product that is in demand which you can't do if you only pander to a small group of people. Ask the old school RPG companies how well they're doing (the ones that are left) just selling to a couple hundred thousand people.

I finally looked up the PS3 specs for myself here and I hve to say that given the specs I'm not terribly surprised by the price point. you're getting a lot of bang for your buck, and we all know Sony is prolly losing money on it. So, all said and done, I'll be buying one.