I think if that happens, then the PS3 and in some form console gaming, will become a rich luxury like Caviar and fine wine, and the result will still be low sales cause how many gamers can afford luxuries like caviar? People will still "complain" that the PS3 and console gaming is too expensive.

Of course we all have our opinions and wants and needs, but the fact is that alot of people cannot AFFORD to spend 600 bucks on a over glorified Blue Ray/game console, when the Blue Ray isnt even NEEDED to play good games. Most people already own DVD players in some form and are happy with it. If they want Blue Ray, it should be an option and not forced on them like the PS3 is doing.

And I dun recall the PS2 being 600 dollars and had a HD DVD thing tagged on. It was a console that happens to play DVDs, which was a format everyone was using or starting to use. All consoles are expensive in the get go, but the PS3 is forcing on us a format that not everyone wants or cares about, and its jacking up the prices way too much for the average college student or families.

Its almost a fact that everyone wants something they can afford. If you bought something expensive and it was worth it for you, great, more power to you. But I'm sure even you will love it even more if it was more affordable or cheaper. For alot of gamers, the PS3 is not worth it at this point, especially since the games are more important.

Yeah. I do love how other people go and make decisions for other people just because they like to believe they are part of some overwhelming majority. HDTV prices are plummiting and people are jumping ship. It really won't be that long before the "majority" accept it and just go along with it. Especially with the media being so ready to embrace (and force) it on everyone and their moms.

Edit: No, it's pretty much exactly the same. PS2 was pushing DVD when plenty of people still didn't feel it was "necessary". It happens everytime, people are afraid to accept something new but they pretty much have to anyway if it catches on with the media companies out there.

Ah, but usually the majority accept it when the format becomes more affordable. DVD naturally had the phase where it was expensive and new, but now its alot of cheaper to produce, hence the popularity and acceptance.(And the ease of skipping to your fav part of a movie, unlike the old VHS tapes) Blue Ray is still too early in its stage, in terms of production costs. If Sony was smarter they should have waited for the tech to become easier to produce and cheaper to manufacture before slamming it into the PS3.

Now alot of gamers who want the PS3 can't afford one cause its too expensive. As a blue ray machine is perhaps a great deal, but what about those who don't care and don't wanna wait for years for it to become affordable?

And another important factor, the DVD was a revolution in terms of how we watch movies and videos. We can skip to a certain chapter. Better image and sound quality. Multiple tracks and easter eggs and extra features can be implemented. It opened up a new realm for viewers and movie makers. What does Blue Ray have that's different aside from even more space for better image and sound? Nothing really. As much as I wanna see things HD, I can afford the wait for the tech to become affordable.

However, I don't wanna wait 5 years to play MGS 4 or FF13 or whatever exclusive game they still have left.

http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/b...2/Picture2.png

You know, it's true that the launch of PS2 was shit as well, but yes, the only competition it had was Dreamcast, and we pretty much know how that turned out (ironically, PS3 is almost the Dreamcast of this generation). But see, that's exactly the thing: yes, it did not have any competition back then. Now the situation is completely different, but Sony still wants use their old modus operandi, and that is why they are failing. Also, even when PS2 didn't have any games for the first half a year or so, it had DVD playback, which was a strong selling point at that time. On the other hand, Blu-Ray is completely the opposite. HD sales are a miserably small part of the industry total, and it only makes the console needlessly expensive.

Again, I will still buy a PS3, and I don't mind paying the current price for it. However, I know that millions of other people think it's too expensive, and if Sony continues like this, they will be the last place this generation. That means less games for PS3, or at least less games that aren't watered-down 360 ports. And that's what I do mind.

They have plenty left even if the majority are still in the beginning stages. There's more to a console than huge name blockbuster hits. Some of the best games come from the smaller companies anyway.

As for the rest, of course I agree, but the fact is that the media is shoving it down people's throats. It's going to come rather people want it to or not. Tech prices lower constantly, I really do feel by the end of next year people won't even remember this shit about it being too expensive. It's happened before with many other things.

If what you say becomes true, then awesome. But I don't think Blue Ray is depreciating that fast enough, but we'll see. I just wish Sony either waited or made Blue R as a future add on instead of forcing people to pay for something they don't want. Its forcing people like us to wait for a long while even though there still are games we wanna play. (Mentioned above.)

And Sony tossing the "100 dollars off " ball back and forth isn't helping your theory either, as much as I love to see it depreciate to a much MUCH cheaper lvl that we will forget this crap.

???

I said you had to compare the price level, of course the PS2 didn't cost 600 dollars, but I think it was something around 400, which was quite a lot back then. And I didn't really say that the PS2 was able to play HD media (?)

My actual post content that I wanted to pass along is that PS3 loses Beautiful Katamari to 360. I'm so depressed.

I never got why people feel the need to bitch about something they want for something they don't want nor have. If you want your PS3 exclusives, you will buy a PS3. No matter how opposed you are to the technologies or the price, eventually, you will buy a PS3. Is it really that hard to not open your mouth?

Well at the store that I work when people ask me what system they should buy or what system has the most games. I just tell them, buy the system that has the First-party games you're interested in or long time series that will stay true. Thoes are the only things that anyone can count on. Third-party stuff especially this gen are all 90% cross platform so that's not really a factor like it was.

So basically it comes down to;

MS: HALO, Fable, Forza, Gears of War, X-box LIVE
Nintendo: Metroid, Mario, Party games
Sony: MGS, Final Fantasy, Jack, Ratchet, Tactical RPGs, Gran Turismo and consistant original first-party titles. original

As for Katamari, after the last two games I've had my fill. I have a 360 and a PS3 therefore what system it came to wouldn't have mattered, I'd still felt the same.

Lastly I agree with Musharaf's point. The PS2 was a 200% price hike from earlier consoles therefore being more expensive then the market was used to where the PS3 was only a 150% increase from last gen.

Also while DVD when the PS2 came out was not HD DVD, the market penetration was low especially in China, Japan, and parts of Europe, therefore took time for the realization of the technology to come to terms with the public, however the PS2 massively helped home penetration.

While the penetration of Blu-Ray will NOT be as fast as DVD, seeing how almost nowhere now sells SD TVs, the market for HD technology can only grow. Therefore it's only a matter of time.

@Kairi
Sony is in the industry for $$ not to be popular like any other company. (However they're still not as big of ass like some larger companies) However market examiners are already questioning how long it'll be before all 360 games will be multi-disc due to DVD space limitations. Most people say by the end of this year that most 360 games from then on will be multi-disc. Heck, LAIR coming soon is 22Gigs of information which is about 3 DVDs of information. So while it may be hard to see now, Sony's move with the Blu-Ray was very forward thinking which is what they due well.

Son'y following a strategy they've used twice now, one two previous consoles.

Introduce a machine whose primary playback capabilities rely on a new type of digital storage format. Price it conveniently lower than the average device that uses said format, and sell away!

The PS1 was, at the time, pretty damn cool for a CD player. For people that didn't have a big stereo system at the house, hey they could buy a PS1 and play it through their TV! Viva la revolution!

The PS2 followed the same policy. DVDs had just hit the market, and they were outrageously expensive. Upwards of $400 and the DVD selection was sparse. I think every DVD owner had at least one copy of The Matrix. But then the PS2 came along, priced $100 cheaper, and it played games! Not only that, it played PS1 games too!

And now the PS3 is doing the same thing, except Sony jumped the gun on a new format. They helped to introduce Blu-Ray (this is a key point) as a selling point for the PS3, instead of waiting for Blu-Ray to gain an audience and use the PS3 as an alternative player and a gaming console.

Whereas before you might've gone into someone's house and said "Oh look, you have a $400 DVD player. Sweet. I've got a $300 PS2 and not only does it play DVDs, but I can play new games and my old PS1 games. OH SNAP MOTHER FUC-", now you say "Well I've got a PS3 and it's a Blu-Ray player as well as....OH SNAP MOTH-".

So yeah they changed their market entry strategy just a little bit. I don't think there's really a need to hock it down Sony's throat though. Almost every technology analyst has predicted that Sony will get off to a slow start, but will catch up and lead the trio into the next generation of consoles.

At the same time, a 150% price increase is still a 150% price increase. Over at cheap ass gamer they talk all the time about the price hurdle, where getting PS3s to the consumers isn't a matter of what they can offer to them so much as being able to compensate for the sticker shock. (That means lowering the sticker price.)

Consider me cautiously optimistic at this point.

I think that people cry too much. They'll pay $2,500 for a new PC to play 10 games but not $600 for something that's more powerful then that PC, well run ALL games efficiently, and the person will probably play 50+ games in it's life span.

People need to get in check-in with reality and stop demanding things that are already too good, nevermind being better.

Hell I know that this won't change any time soon, doesn't make my opinion wrong though. Hell multiple companies and market examiners have said the same thing.

@Jag
You're totally right. And that's why in my last post I believed that BR&PS3 will take longer to take off then DVD&PS2 did for that exact reason ^^

Uh what, PS2 shipped at $300. PS1 shipped at - wait for it - $300. So if my math is correct, the PS2 shipped at an increase of exactly 0% from its predecessor.

Haha yeah, people should stop having any demands towards companies and just be grateful for what they get, because that's exactly how the market works... HERE IN SOVIET RUSSIA

http://www.gamestop.com/common/images/lbox/802589b.jpg

Bought this today. It's actually pretty good quality. Its got the same scratch-prone finish as the PS3, so your hairscratched black console will match your hairscratched black charger. It also has some silver on it but its hard to explain where. It looks nice though, and mine already has a nice little hairscratch on it just like my PS3.

There are colored charge indicators and they provide stickers so that you don't mess up your SIXAXIS' front or something, but the stickers have Nyko logos so I didn't bother.

The box's stated charge time is 1.5 hours, but my controllers are never really that dry so I can't really vouch for it or not. It also uses a normal outlet, and that's a good thing. Always.

@russ
Well the PS here was $300 (you were right) and the PS2 was $600 (retail wide markup) so it WAS 200% here. I have the receipts from FutureShop and WalMart to prove it. And don't say "oh well that's not what it was supposed to be" or something because frankly I don't care. I just care what I paid.

@Aardark
What I said earlier was like a, "In a perfect world" type of thing. However even in that post I acknoledged that it will probably never happen.

@Ultima
I was thinking of getting that before but is it an AC adapter or USB? Hopefully USB because I don't have any more AC plugs due to my 2 TVs, Surround Sound and 20 systems.

Trouble is despite the Blue Ray's massive storage space, its a fragile format, to quote my boyfriend:

While multi disks isn't exactly a high point, its not that big of a deal at the same time. We had multi disks games in the past, and I rather have stable game disks as oppose to one Blue Ray that could snap any second. Past multi disks games had the same price, the only difference is a very minor inconvience of switching them. And please don't tell me it takes too much effort to switch some goddamn disks.

So I stand by this: Sony should have waited for Blue Ray to get affordable and more stable.

Haha, he said "catagory."

Anyway, my Bluray discs seem to be fine. Furthermore if you're too dumb to keep your discs in good condition and you're going to bitch and moan about it, you probably should not have a $600 machine or any discs at all.

Seriously, they're your goods and you're paying for them so take care of it. The fragility of a disc isn't that apparent until you use it as a coaster or start bending it. If you place it into the PS3, PS2, PSX, Xbox, 360, Gamecube, Wii, WHATEVER, and take it out and put it back into the PROVIDED case, then your disc will never break and it will never get scratched. When people are absentminded fools is when your shit starts to get scratched.

Discs have different thicknesses, get over it. Wii discs are pretty thin too and they're DVDs. Can your boyfriend's store not take Wii discs either?

You're fighting a losing battle, can't you just give up? You and your boyfriend can go and have angry I-hate-Bluray-and-HDTV sex over the shards of a broken Sony Bravia and just leave Gamingforce forever. (AKA drop your track.)

Just get one of those 1 outlet to 3 outlet things and you're good. Or unplug one of your 20 consoles. Surely you don't use ALL of them at once.

Its a good buy though. I went downstairs and two of my controllers were full, the one I was playing Resistance with when I got home was in a weird mid-color change but by now it's surely 100%.

The one qualm I have is the controller goes into the slot, but you have to kind of fiddle around to get the charger's connector into the controller. I mean, maybe I'm putting it in at the wrong angle but you always know when its in because it clicks and the light turns orange if its not full.

And that helps the argument on the PRICE of the Blue Ray, how?

If I did decide to get Blue ray, of course I'll take good care of it. The point was we're paying alot for a extremly fragile format when all it offers is more disk space. Multi disks are cheaper to produce and buy, and will much less likely scratch.

Is it too much to ask for things to be affordable and more stable?

The real problem Sony is likely to face is that the sales of digital direct media from resources like AppleTV and TiVo are looking likely to eclipse the market need of a higher density optical disk format. High definition downloads of movies are much cheaper and faster for the consumer. BluRay and HDDVD discs are still an expensive format (and that's why the movies cost $20-30 instead of the typical $10-20 for regular DVD titles).

So, unless Sony can release a PS3 at somewhere around half the current price (with or without a BluRay player), the consumer demand for PS3's with BluRay is never going to be great enough to justify the added cost to what everyone still views as ultimately a video gaming system.

You can ride the coattails of "console exclusive" titles, but unless the PS3's sales pick up, you're likely to see most of the 3rd party titles go multiplatform... and I don't know if Ratchet and Clank is a good enough reason to buy a PS3.

Technology is technology. Blu-ray games are $60 a pop. Its only $10 more for more space and newer technology. However fragile it is, the average consumer does not know that. Go complain about how Xbox 360 games are $10 more for regular DVDs, because thats the extortion you're looking for. It's purely just for money's sake. At least Blu-ray actually does cost more to produce.

A PS3 without Blu-ray isn't a PS3, since PS3 games kind of require it. There's no real way to make PS3s cheaper right now as 1) Sony is already producing them at a loss and 2) Newer technology is more expensive. As the parts get older, it will become cheaper to produce because the methods of production will be better-known and improved upon.

Yeah, I kinda figured, but wasn't entirely sure. Basically, Sony shot themselves in the foot. Again (betamax, minidisc).

I wouldn't say that. Blu-ray IS catching on, as it has a pretty large corporate following. For example, once Apple ships Blu-ray drives in its computers it will do well, and Blockbuster only carrying Blu-ray is doing a lot for it right now.

Betamax was a complete failure, but while Minidisc wasn't too large in America, it was and still is VERY popular in Japan. My friend has an MD player and when I went there, my host family had an MD player in their car. A lot of Sony's products just aren't feasible to the US market, but do well in its native market.

Digitally distributed HD content is neither cheaper nor faster, since a 5+ GB file will take a very long time to download on any typical internet connection, and prices for HD content seem very similar to store-bought movies.

Also, removing the Blu-ray drive from the PS3 would only save around $100 at this point, and would be an impossible feat since all PS3 games are on Blu-ray discs. Even if they could, I don't see the point in removing it since the Blu-ray playback is the main advantage the PS3 has for its price. If people won't spend $600 for a Blu-ray PS3, they sure wouldn't pay $500 for a Blu-ray-less one. Not to mention it seems that the previous $500 (20GB) PS3 wasn't even a popular option.

I will say this about the Blu-Ray discs and their capacity for damage.

I've seen a lot of nasty discs get traded in to my store, but the PS3 games that've come in have been as good and clean as new. The technology used to read discs is far more stable now than it was in the early days of the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube.

I think BR discs' lack of capacity for damage is offset by the increase in efficient hardware used to read those discs -- namely, the PS3 itself and BR players alike.