As a video game geek with his own column, it is my duty – nay, my privilege to provide my fellow students with information. With this current round of the console wars in full swing, the biggest question on gamer’s minds is, “Which system is right for me?” This question is never an easy one to answer, especially since buying a console always entails buying a few games and perhaps an extra controller as well.
With three consoles out on the market right now, picking the console to best suit your gaming needs is not easy – but with a little advice from Grizzly Gaming, hopefully you’ll be able to narrow down your choices.
For years, Sony has been on top of the console market. They have consistently out sold their competitors and always seemed to have the most popular games being released on their system. But as with everything in life, time brings change. Now, instead of being the innovators in the industry, Sony and the Playstation 3 have been garnering media attention for all the wrong reasons. With a lackluster collection of PS3 launch titles, fewer than expected PS3 units shipped at launch, and a gasp-inducing price tag of $500-$600, the PS3 almost seems doomed from the start.
What makes a system a “must own”? Is it the price tag? Is it the hardware a console has under the hood? Or could it be the innovations made with the console controller, like Nintendo did with the “Wii-mote”? The biggest piece of the console war puzzle boils down to what system can produce the best line-up of games. Unfortunately for Sony, their line up of launch titles is anything but awe-inspiring. Practically every launch title for the PS3 is offered on other, cheaper consoles. Aside from the first person shooter “Resistance: Fall of Man”, the launch titles the PS3 offers hardly make the system seem worthy of 600 hundred of your hard earned dollars. But the problem with Sony’s collection of games only begins with the launch titles. Killer titles like “Grand Theft Auto 4” and “Assassin’s Creed” were originally believed to be Sony exclusives. Unfortunately for Sony, it was announced that “GTA 4” would release on the Xbox 360 the same day as the PS3 version and according to Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine, “Assassins Creed” was never meant to be a PS3 exclusive. Apparently, Sony asked the developer of “Assassins Creed”, Ubisoft, to keep the 360 version a secret. But the most devastating, and almost unbelievable, rumor I have heard concerning the PS3 game library also came from EGM. It seems that Konami, the company responsible for the stellar “Metal Gear Solid” series, has been told to start porting their latest game “MGS 4: Guns of the Patriots” to the Xbox 360. If this is true, it means Sony will have lost two of their biggest exclusive franchises, “GTA” and “MGS”, which gives gamers even less incentive to shell out big bucks for a PS3.
From the beginning, Sony made it known that there would not be many PS3s available on the launch date. Sony stated that they would ship around 400,000 PS3 units at launch and that they hoped to ship nearly 2 million units before the end of 2006. As it turns out, Sony seems to be making promises they may not be able to keep. According to the website GameDaily Biz and analyst PJ McNealy of American Technology Research, Sony may have only shipped as few as 125,000 PS3s to all of
It also seems that Sony is losing money on manufacturing the PS3. According to the research firm iSuppli, it costs Sony approximately $840 to manufacture the 60GB PS3 console. Granted, it isn’t unusual for a company to expect lose money on a recently released console instead hoping that eventually the console will become a big hit and manufacturing prices gradually drop. In Sony’s case, however, this could prove to be an insurmountable sum of money lost. But why should a loss of only $240 per console be any kind of worry to the international giant that is Sony, you ask? The answer to this question lies in media format which Sony chose to use in the PS3.
Blu-Ray is a word that may be foreign to some, but Sony hopes to make this term as common as VHS or DVD. While Blu-Ray technology is still in its infancy, Sony hopes that by integrating it in the PS3 that Blu-Ray will eventually become the standard. This is most definitely a gutsy move on Sony’s part. Blu-Ray could either be an enormous success of epic proportions, or Blu-Ray could ultimately go the way of Beta-Max and be a disaster. Based on nothing more than my personal opinion and a life time of gaming, I’m not giving Blu-Ray much of a chance for survival. Blu-Ray discs are more costly to manufacture than HD-DVDs and while Blu-Ray does boast an impressive 50GB of storage space per disc, no game has ever come close to needing that kind of data storage space. Plus, because Blu-Ray is a new format, they require their own special player. Currently, Blu-Ray players begin retailing at around $1000. The argument can be made in Sony’s defense that selling a device with the ability to play Blu-Ray discs is a veritable steal, one must remember Blu-Ray is new and not many worth while movies have been released on Blu-Ray yet - unless you consider Adam Sandler’s latest film “Click” (the first movie released on Blu-Ray) to be worth a $600-$1000 investment.
But one of the most unforeseen arguments made against the PS3 is an event which hasn’t even happened yet – the release of a Playstation 4. I can imagine your confusion but allow me to elaborate. Apparently, some analysts are predicting that the PS3 will be Sony’s last foray into the blood stained battle field of the console wars. This idea was brought about when Sony Computer Entertainment America president Kaz Hirai took over the position of SCE president from Ken Kutagari shortly after the PS3 was released. Many believe that Hirai will begin to move away from hardware production and begin to focus Sony solely toward producing software. Now, this is all entirely speculation with no physical evidence that Sony is going the way of Sega and becoming a third party game publisher but these claims are at least based in reality and aren’t merely internet rumors. I bring this up to point out that if Sony does begin to move away from hardware production, support for the PS3 may begin to dwindle and you are essentially left with a $600 paperweight.
The PS3 could conceivably rise above the competition and take its place atop the gaming world like its little brother the PS2 – though I’m not predicting it to. The price tag is far too high for even hardcore gamers like myself to consider, the game line-up (even exclusives) isn’t anything special, and the Blu-Ray capabilities just don’t give the PS3 enough of a “wow” factor to merit a purchase. Now, if you’ve got your heart set on a PS3 (or you happen to be a Playstation fanboy-and if you don’t know what that is chances are you aren’t one), its likely this article won’t dissuade you from buying one. But if you belong to the majority of gamers who play their current gen systems all the while fantasizing about a shiny, new next gen console – the only thing I have to say to you is do yourself a favor and spend that $600 on an Xbox 360 or a Nintendo Wii.
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