SCEE VP says PS3 will cost 499 to 599 euros

[Jackal]

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/04/05/scee- ... 599-euros/


That's pretty freaking pricey.

[Grudge]

yea, fuck that

Revolution ftw

[Foo]

I'll pay attention after it's out.

EDIT: And a new GTA or GTA-quality game hits town for it.

[MKJ]

heh foo has a point

with every console launch people bitch about the price. yet on launch day millions are sold.
OMG its 100 pops more expensive than the 360!!1one
its also a HiDef player which the 360 isnt. big woop

[tnf]

I was going to pre-order a couple to sell on ebay, but I don't think I'll do that now.

[o'dium]

Not to be the cock as usual

But A) GTA is coming to 360 as well as PS3 And the leaked shots of it dont look amazing. You remember those piss poor getaway PS3 shots? Well, it looks a bit worse than that. Really And at least the getaway is based on a real city.

Foo, the PS3 will play Blu-Ray... Something which people are looking forward to. But that depends on how good Blu-Ray will actually be. Nobody gives a shit at this stage, whats wrong with DVD's? Sure you cant get HD on a normal DVD, but do we REALLY need a new format? If we do, then go with HD-DVD, not because its "not SONY", but because the WHOLE ENTIRE industry will have to change standards, and in order for all these people to changet heir machiens to make new Blu-Ray disks, its gonna costs millions to do that. For them to change the machines to make HD-DVD's its gonna be what, a new laser? So yeah, maybe the PS3 will be a good Blu-Ray player but that all depends on one point... Will Blu-Ray take off? Look at UMD, they are flopping all over the place, its hardly something people want. The prices are already down to 10 quid because they just plain suck.

The 360 does support HD of course, but it will need a standalone player to play HD DVD movies... THIS IS A GOOD THING. For that very reason that site said... "the PS3 will be so expensive because it has a blue ray player included". But what if you dont want it? Nintendo knew people had 50 DVD players in their homes, thats why the Cube wasn't a DVD player a well.

Honestly. Blu-ray for all we know may be a flop, it may suck big ones. So why be forced to pay for something that may just be a huge flop anyways?

[+JuggerNaut+]

Not to be the cock as usual

But A) GTA is coming to 360 as well as PS3 And the leaked shots of it dont look amazing. You remember those piss poor getaway PS3 shots? Well, it looks a bit worse than that. Really And at least the getaway is based on a real city.

Foo, the PS3 will play Blu-Ray... Something which people are looking forward to. But that depends on how good Blu-Ray will actually be. Nobody gives a shit at this stage, whats wrong with DVD's? Sure you cant get HD on a normal DVD, but do we REALLY need a new format? If we do, then go with HD-DVD, not because its "not SONY", but because the WHOLE ENTIRE industry will have to change standards, and in order for all these people to changet heir machiens to make new Blu-Ray disks, its gonna costs millions to do that. For them to change the machines to make HD-DVD's its gonna be what, a new laser? So yeah, maybe the PS3 will be a good Blu-Ray player but that all depends on one point... Will Blu-Ray take off? Look at UMD, they are flopping all over the place, its hardly something people want. The prices are already down to 10 quid because they just plain suck.

The 360 does support HD of course, but it will need a standalone player to play HD DVD movies... THIS IS A GOOD THING. For that very reason that site said... "the PS3 will be so expensive because it has a blue ray player included". But what if you dont want it? Nintendo knew people had 50 DVD players in their homes, thats why the Cube wasn't a DVD player a well.

Honestly. Blu-ray for all we know may be a flop, it may suck big ones. So why be forced to pay for something that may just be a huge flop anyways?

lol

[Foo]

he's very right on the point about people already owning a DVD player tho.

UMD was also a sack of shit, everyone knew this before it launched - You'd have to be a complete fool to pay twice for a movie you already own in a higher quality format, and when the UMDs cost more... that's just a joke.

As for Blu-Ray. Regardless of whether it does well, it will suceed as the PS3 games format, simply because that use can exist independantly of everything else, just like Nintendo can get away with cartridge systems. But if they're going to market the PS3 as a next-gen all-in-one system, the features is spouts better not stink of vendor lock-in, which is exactly what blu-ray smells like right now, just like UMD did.

[dzjepp]

Not to be the cock as usual

But A) GTA is coming to 360 as well as PS3 And the leaked shots of it dont look amazing. You remember those piss poor getaway PS3 shots? Well, it looks a bit worse than that. Really And at least the getaway is based on a real city.

That was proven to be fake: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/07/02 ... 28573.html

[+JuggerNaut+]

he's very right on the point about people already owning a DVD player tho.

that has nothing to do with the Blu-Ray playback capabilities of the PS3. I plan on getting both Blu-Ray AND HD-DVD, but only when a combo player is out - and is cheap. for now, the PS3 will fit my needs nicely.

also, odium, it sounds like you're pretty new to the world of HD considering your past threads, so you don't yet appreciate it.

[MKJ]

blueray seems to be the way though, since the biggest moviesutdio's already stated they will be using it.
oh and the pr0n industry too.
the whole arguement that we should use HDDVD because then we dont need new lasers is bogus, since both formats need new players

[o'dium]

blueray seems to be the way though, since the biggest moviesutdio's already stated they will be using it.
oh and the pr0n industry too.
the whole arguement that we should use HDDVD because then we dont need new lasers is bogus, since both formats need new players

But the biggest movie studios and pr0n are using HD-DVD too

Like i said, it all depends on the money. Do you REALLY think the world will spend billions upgrading their machines to make Blu-Ray, a format which 99% or people cant afford and wont have for a long time? And hardly any money at all, converting to HD-DVD, a cheaper format that does the same thing at the same quality, faster?

The whole problem is that both blu-ray and HD DVD are just not a leap forward. You have your video to DVD leap that was huge, but this leap wont be that much better. Sure its higher detail, but the PS3 wont nativly support 1080i remember, it will upscale from 720. Even so, remember that you can fit a HD movie + features onto a HD DVD for pennies, comapred to how much a Blu Ray will cost you and the development team?

Its just not worth it. Not because its "sony" but because its a waste of our money in the long run. I'm happy paying £15 for a DVD ATM. Not "great" but hell, its cheaper than Sony's other "best ever" foramt, the UMD, which launched at £20-£30, with no features Do you REALLY want to pay £20-£30 and £400-£500 for a Blu Ray disk and drive, or would you rather play £15-£20 and £150-£200 for a HD DVD disk and drive...? When they will look EXACTLY the same?

[o'dium]

the whole arguement that we should use HDDVD because then we dont need new lasers is bogus, since both formats need new players

No, i never said "we" dont need them. If you look at the development side of things, for the company that pumps these things out, its actually gonna cost them a hell of a lot more to convert their machines ot blu-ray compared to HD-DVD. For HD-DVD it IS actually as simple as swapping the laser in their machines, a few grand job at most. Blu-Ray requires a complete new machine to read and write the disks, and so its gonna cost much more. If you dont think we will see a price increase at retail from that your crazy

[Geebs]

Sony don't have a very good recent record for getting people to go for their overpriced proprietary formats - step up ATRAC, Minidisc/NetMD, UMD.

I think the major problem for the next-gen consoles at the moment is that they're just not very next-gen. I mean, the 360's most anticipated game was Oblivion, and ALL of the reviews say, "looks better on a PC". With PCs receiving physics cards in the near future, the 360 and PS3 are starting to look outdated already.

[o'dium]

The problem is that is costs way to much to make a tripple A next gen looking title.

Look at all the next gen games that look "wow" and think how many of those are UE3? Pretty much all of them. Epic have been releasing tools to help dev teams with their engine left right and center, good on them.

Its just a fucking hassle to make a good looking game... Doesn't matter if its PS3 or 360, its a pain in the arse. A game is only as good as the art team behind it. Look at the last gen of consoles. The best looking game out of all three machines was built on the medium spec Game cube, and was Resident Evil 4. The xbox had more power than the cube but no games came close. Doom 3 was close but it was so turned down and blurey thanks to the PPL that is was just pointless in a way and ugly.

I've been doing a lot of work recently, and TBH i keep seeing the same thing. It doesn't really matter if i make a ultra high res texture or a low res one, if the art design is crap, the texture will be crap. Take a look at that new PS3 game (sorry i forget the name, its got loads of big ships or troops lol, not killzone). It has some nice features going on, but damn, the art design is SHITE so it all falls apart.

Knowing the system is one thing, but knowing how to draw a nice world is another.

Then theres the shear mind bending process of actually making the arty assets. I'm working on my first full, free multiplayer game called OverDose. Its a per pixel lit, feature heavy engine. In other words i cant just stick a grey texture on a wall and call it concrete, i have to go over there, model the cracks, texture it with diffuse, texture the hight and then add some specularity. Thats not the hour job it used to be for me, it can take hours, days to get just a single texture looking right... A TEXTURE. The whole game needs to be done in the same way... Its just so fucking slow...

So yeah, pretty much all the games so far are just "meh" looking for the 360. Hell, 90% of the PS3 games look the same too. Everything looks like "it could of been done on the old xbox". But pretty soon, i'm sure all these teams will start to gain experience in how to build nice looking things faster, and they will come out. Remember, it was only 5 years ago we were working with 128x128 texture maps with zero shaders

[Geebs]

My point was more that, if you can play the same game at higher res and higher framerates on a PC, and the cost of the PC is only, say, twice that of the PS3 - why not get a PC? One of the side-effects of next-gen development is, as you said, causing the production of the art assets to be so expensive that you need a multiplatform release just to shift enough units to break even. OK, so Sony can use its standard protectionist strategy, but if the only exclusive game worth having is yetanothermetalgear......

[Grudge]

The console gaming market is huge compared to pc gaming though. That's why all the major publishers are focusing on multiplatform.

Your average chav don't have any use for a gaming pc, all they need is a 5 year old can for their msn and email, and then a console for their GTA and football games - that's still cheaper than a new gaming rig. Then the choice of console is down to whatever your mates have, and since everyone and their fucking dog already have a PS2, of course they will get a PS3 when it comes out.

[Jackal]

The problem is that is costs way to much to make a tripple A next gen looking title.

Look at all the next gen games that look "wow" and think how many of those are UE3? Pretty much all of them. Epic have been releasing tools to help dev teams with their engine left right and center, good on them.

You know, just because you've only seen things running on the UE3 engine doesn't mean that that's the only engine being used.
And your point about games being more of a hassle to make isn't really going to matter in the long run. All that's going to happen is we're going to see outsource companies getting a lot more work. This is a transition period which means people are going to start whining. Nobody likes change. Regardless, that change is going to happen and everything is going to be fine. Most devs aren't going to have to worry about every single art asset. That's exactly the sort of thing that's going to be done out of house.

[Foo]

The console gaming market is huge compared to pc gaming though. That's why all the major publishers are focusing on multiplatform.

Mebbe... but the console sales figures are always tweaked to look so much better than they really are. After all, console figures always include the hardware and PC figures of course don't:

PC game sales are listed as being to the tune of $950+ million. Console sales figures are often quoted as being $10.5 billion in sales. But wait, that is not console software sales. That is the total sales volume for the physical consoles themselves, hand-held consoles, peripherals, and software. The home console system and peripheral sales account for $2.5 billion of that total (that's including a launch year numbers for the XBOX 360). The hand-held market accounted for $1.6 billion. Home console software sales accounted for $4.7 billion (a drop of 12% from last year) while portable system software rose 42% to $1.4 billion. Total unit sales of portables and consoles combined were down 6.3% from last year.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060115-5983.html

Additionally:

NPD says that PC game sales slid 14% in 2005, down to $954m from 2004's $1.1b revenue number.

And they also point out that of course this number doesn't capture MMO subscription revenues, sales of downloadable games, and so on. (Which it doesn't; NPD's numbers historically capture only brick-and-mortar retail sale). And that they will be "revising" how they calculate PC game sales in future to capture these numbers.

http://www.costik.com/weblog/2006_01_01 ... 4896764843

since everyone and their fucking dog already have a PS2, of course they will get a PS3 when it comes out.

A technological non sequiter I think... I don't think people will buy the PS3 simply because it's a PS3 - Mainly because people think twice when facing that large an investment. When the consoles are priced around the £100-£150 price point then sure, that may come into play, but I can't think of anyone who bought a PS2 just because everyone liked the PS1, aside from VERY early adopters.

Second edit: Shit, lets not forget WOW... with an average of 1/2 million subscribers online at any one time, with subscriptions running to about $12 per month so $144 per year times half a million people.

What's more, that's just the biggest MMO subscription out there. Add up Sony's stockpile of subscriptions and various other MMOs that charge, and you're looking at PC game sales figures which look a lot healthier than the console pushers would have you believe.

LOL

[Geebs]

Heh, if the console market is so great, how come the xbox 1 market represents a net loss for microsoft?

[MKJ]

cause they crammed in too much and sold it for too little
not to mention all marketing costs and acquiring of exclusive titles (and their developers)

[Grudge]

Yeah, but even according to those figures, the console software market is almost 5 times as big as the PC (4.7 billion compared to 950 million), excluding MMO's.

The PC have an advantage in the MMO market, basically because that's where the genre started, but that is definitely going to even itself out the coming couple of years when new MMOs become available on consoles. Sony is guaranteed to make a gigantic push in that area.

[Grudge]

Heh, if the console market is so great, how come the xbox 1 market represents a net loss for microsoft?

I was talking about the publishers. Or are you talking about microsofts publishing business? Links?

[MKJ]

UPDATE

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=15937

"Statements made on French radio have been "mistranslated or misunderstood""

[+JuggerNaut+]

"a mistranslation or misunderstanding of the discussion, which was actually focused on the relative value of PS3 as a Bluray Disc player,"

rof