Thread: ps3 commemartive straight

Yeah, but *how many* people are willing to pay that kind of money. Sony chould have put the first 10k or so up on ebay with some sort of limited edition signed-by-sony-president kind of thing, but they aren't gonna sell the millions they need. The problem is that they don't wanna put it up for a list price of $3000, only to lower it to $1000 the next week, and the little bit of profit they would make on that first few units is a drop in the bucket. Meanwhile the huge lines and huge ebay prices make for free press.

Micro$oft did the same thing last year with the 360, they went for insane prices on ebay the first few weeks then settled down to about $50 above list, then a few months later supply caught up with demand and anybody could walk into target and pick one up. It cost them a few million, but the free advertising more than made up for it.

Even at $600 it's a big gamble for sony, no console has ever launched for that kind of money (adjusted for inflation) and succeeded. But it's a big gamble with a potentially big payoff. Microsoft's playing for big bucks as well, they're offering downloadable HD movies, attempting to mimic the itunes success in the music world, and they offer an HD-DVD player as an accessory so you can buy or rent movies at your local brick-and-mortar store as well.

I dont get it, I have an xbox (not xbox 360) with a 55" big screen tv and a 700 watt 6.1 surround sound system and it is just fine, granted I only play it twice a month, but I just dont see the allure around all the new stuff, the improvement just doesnt seem that great what the demo's I have seen. Not to mention its a waste of money.

not to mention them pissing off european customers royally

I've got the old xbox and the new 360, and a 56" DLP. The new 360 looks absolutely incredible, but it plays just like the old one. There are a few games that really need the extra resolution, but the whole photorealism thing just kind of fades into the background after awhile. That said, Oblivion is an incredible experience on the 360, the extra graphical power really helps immerse you into the world of Cyrodil, and the extra CPU power improves the AI immensely - the rest of the world keeps going even when you're not there to watch. Once I was crossing through this field of tall grass, and nearly got knocked down by some sheep that were running balls-to-the-walls through the grass. No sooner had I recovered from my surprise when I discovered what they were running from (a very large, very hungry bear). And I've run across bodies of travelers that were killed by bandits, and saw one guy get drunk and fall off a bridge. This sort of thing wasn't really possible on the old xbox, the world of Morrowind was extremely static.

hey guys, i was just being sarcastic when I wrote this thread. Ive actually just wrote it due to the things ive seen on tv lately and figured if you put a logo on it , they would come. Somebody actually got shot the other day coming out of best buy with one, and a crowd in california ran over the police at a local wal mart to get one.

Most of that were speculators looking to turn $600 into $3000 in a few hours. All of the gaming websites have been interviewing these guys, and maybe 1 in 20 were actually planning to play the thing, the others were getting it for ebay.

It was pretty calm last night when the stores opened to deliver the Nintendo Wii pre-orders. The only problem was this one drug dealer decided to wave his pistol around and scare people, but that was because he was stoned and feeling festive (he had already gotten his Wii and a couple of games).

That's an amusing definition of "Festive." I, too, plan on forgoing the PS3 for the Wii when I get home. The current library of HD-DVD is more than 3x that of Blu-Ray, and that is what will determine the outcome, in my opinion. Also, you can get HD-DVD players for $350. Even with all that, I don't think people will really want to adopt either one. For the videophiles out there 1080p is great; but for everyone else, well, a lot of them can't tell the difference / don't care:

http://slashdot.org/articles/05/12/09/0647218.shtml

Having seen HD myself, I can tell the difference, but only if I try. I certainly don't care enough to shell out the money for the TV and player.

I think Sony's going to eat it hard on this one -- I may be wrong. It's easy to underestimate them. They need to sell an -average- of 10 games per console to make up that loss, but for Sony that may not be a problem if adoption is anything like the PS2...guess we'll see.

I've got HD satellite and a big screen TV, and have gotten HD stuff from xbox live as well. The upscaling DVD players work awfully well, there's not a huge difference in my eyes between good upscaled DVD and genuine hi-def video.

IMO, the big reason for HD is sports. Movies do well with upscaling progressive scan dvd players, and TV shows are sufficiently low quality that you don't gain much from the extra resolution anyway.

But it's hard to watch sports on standard def once you've seen them in high-def. You can clearly see the baseball flying through the air in real-time, and you can see the grass on the field. Football's the same way, you can clearly see every little detail in real time. Watching football on a big screen in hi def can give you vertigo it's so real.

Originally Posted by TomlinAS

I think Sony's going to eat it hard on this one -- I may be wrong. It's easy to underestimate them. They need to sell an -average- of 10 games per console to make up that loss, but for Sony that may not be a problem if adoption is anything like the PS2...guess we'll see.

The problem is that a high adoption rate on the PS3 simply means they lose more money.

And 100 million buyers for a $300 is one thing, but 100 million for a $500-$600 console is quite another. You notice they lowered the price in japan to something like $350 to make sure nintendo didn't take japan.

...and a crowd in california ran over the police at a local wal mart to get one.

Ahh... and with so much pride, I have to say that was the Wal Mart in Fresno. Everyone had already been lined up to the side of the doors at an 11PM release of the game. There were a couple of officers there to help. Then a Wal Mart employee came out and loudly addressed the crowd that even extended into the parking lot to say that there were only 34 games available.

Fast forward... stampede on. Then additional officers were called to restore some order while making some arrests.

Sheesh!... It's things like this that make me want to move 50 miles from the nearest town.