ikimasu wrote:Ok. Bobtheduck- To be clear, I called it spin because instead of discussing the topic at hand you diverted it to facts and numbers that really have nothing to do with this. To be honest,. reading your initial reply was like reading something that Sony's (or any company regarding their own console, for that matter) PR would say. Which is not something that anyone should be proud of.
No... I addressed the topic at hand, losing DMC4, and addressed the OTHER topic at hand, it being a massive blow to Sony. I defended what I like and answered BOTH topics. I admit, I do tend to sound like a PR person for what I like... Anime, games, DDR... Whatever, that's because I think through these things and I believe I can be optimistic here. What would it have taken to be anything but spin for you? Hmm... "Oh, crap, Sony's gonna go under! They'll never catch up now! Oh, woah is me, I need to go pick up a 360 now, Microsoft has won" Hmm?? I'm still a fan of the PS3, and not simply due to "company loyalty" but because I honestly like the platform.
Capcom is a company. They need to make money to survive. If doing what's best for your company in order to stay out of the red is scummy, then every company on the face of the earth is scummy.
Hmm... I disagree with you here. I think this went out of the realm of "what every company does." Besides, if they believe they've got a huge seller here, the top sellers create their OWN audience. MGS2 and FFX did for PS2, Halo did for Xbox, Gears did for 360... Of course, maybe they didn't have confidence in their own abilities? Hmm... I'd go on, but I don't want another _____ response. **Ok, I had to change this becaue I put the name of a certain well known, infamous website, and it was censored with asterisks... It made it look like I said something else, something that would have made a lot more people upset... I didn't. It was just the non-vulgar name of a vulgar website**
I hope you realise that this is the exact logic that is running through the minds of "Sony-haters" right now. Only for them it's about 12 times.
Sony never promised to be less than 600 dollars... In fact, the only thing I can think of in this regard is the BC in Europe... Taking out the Emotion Engine was pretty scummy. I've been upset about this since it happened. Other than that, I don't see Sony "betraying" anyone in this whole mess.
Dreamcast v PS2/ 360 vs. PS3 comparison:
I could see this comparison back in the early 360 days, but not so much anymore. When the Dreamcast launched, internet play was entirely new to console gamers and had little to no bearing on what console they chose. Also, the Dreamcast didn't have a Gears of War, Crackdown, or Lost Planet. Dreamcast had some amazingly great games, but none of them sold like these. Also, DVD had already won the format war months before the PS2 came out. The DVD/Blu-ray comparison is rather invalid.
Back in 2000, market penetration of DVD was still pretty low, overall. Not a lot of people had DVD players. The PS2 was for many people a cheap DVD player that, oh yeah, played games. It was the combination of 2 things that a lot of people wanted. I know that's what it was for me. My PS2 was my first DVD player. I talk to a LOT of people who say the same thing. So, actually, it is a valid comparison. Of course, the format battle has an effect on this, as does lack of HDTV penetration worldwide, but as I've pointed out, there are benefits to the HD formats other than movies in HD. There are interactivity benefits as well as space benefits. So, I think it's a perfectly valid comparison. PS2 was one of the big forces that got DVD into people's houses.
I would by no means say, however, that 360 is doing as bad as the Dreamcast did. I will only say that it is very similar for PS3 to the early days of PS2, and this sort of thing happened in both of PS3's predecessors. There are different factors this time, like Gears and especially like the Wii, though I maintain that Wii created its own audience and that won't affect the next gen systems once prices drop. Yeah, I know Sony denies a price drop as severe as with PS2, but... Let's be honest, Sony isn't as stupid as people think... They need to make money, too... They need to get market penetration, so a price drop will hit, and eventually it will be below the 200 mark.
Man, what? How can you say that? 360 has been trouncing the PS3 in sales since it launched.
I'm referring to the same time periods. In its first four months, PS3 did better than 360 did in its first four months. In other words, it's catching up. Slowly, but it is catching up. Plus, the equivalent of Gear for the PS3 is still to come... It has some big titles that haven't hit yet. The huge sales behind the 360 didn't really start until gears.
For your reference, I am not responding to you because I hate Sony, or to irritate you. I do this because I think it is important that we as gamers think as consumers, not as fanatics who will follow their console of choice to the end.
Well, I guess it was my "thinking as a consumer" that moved me to Sony in the first place. I used to be a hardcore Nintendo fan. It was Final Fantasy 8/tactics and MGS that changed my mind. That was a fight among Sega, Sony, and Nintendo. My hatred for Microsoft, I have to admit, runs much deeper than my favorite games. I USED to be PC gamer, in addition to being a console gamer. I loved games on my computer, and there was a HUGE variety of games on it because pretty much anyone could make a game on the computer, but something happened when Wolfenstein hit... First it was Wolfenstein 3d, no biggie, a new idea, a game from first person. Then it was friends who told me that First person games would be the only games, because why would you want to play a game that didn't put you directly "into" the game... I also liked TBS games like Civilization. Then the RTS games hit... Games like Age of Empires... Warcraft... Starcraft... The billion and 10 FPS games... MMOs... Any and all freedom in the PC gaming world went to zero, as you essentially had 4 choices... RTS, FPS, American RPG, or MMO...
When Xbox hit in 2002, I knew what was coming... The effects of it are already strong. They wanted to court the PC game makers into coming to consoles... To flood the consoles with the same 4 genres that choked out PC gaming... It doesn't just affect Xbox fans, either... What is the top selling game on the PS3? The first game to reach over 1 million in sales? That's right... It's an FPS game... I don't want that to go any further... I like the wider variety I find on consoles and I don't want to see that go away because people start getting into FPS games too much, so that's all devs will put out...
My new hatred for microsoft came this gen... With the Vista launch... Some of the things I've been hearing about that, and this whole "Games for windows" campaign... Making directX10 only work on Vista... It's really not right... Forcing people to "upgrade" to a slower running system so they could play games that would honestly work just as well on the previous system. See, that's another thing I like about Sony's system. There are still great games coming out for PS2, just like the PS1 at the PS2 launch... They still support and make the PS2. You aren't forced to upgrade if you don't want to be left completely in the cold. You are with the xbox. They are trying to push for the same thing with Windows... I dont' necessarily think that's wrong, at least not with the xbox (with windows, I think it's very wrong), but I do prefer Sony's position in that regard.
They are trying. They are already working to create better dev tools and have recently filed a patent to sell a PS3 with an 80GB HD in order to increase the perceived value.
The "patent" wasn't a patent, it was a request to the FCC to alter their license. The license change was for a new antenna to fix problems with bluetooth on upcoming systems. The brief mention of the harddrive isn't proof of a new configuration, just something they put there to give themselves the option. Really, since the harddrive on the PS3 is easily swapped out with harddrives that are much cheaper than you could get for the 360 (if you get the 20 gig for 500 bucks, you can swap it out for a 500 gig for an extra 200 bucks) there isn't much reason to create another set, unless their are other upgrades in it.
It is far too early in the game to proclaim doom and gloom. I'm by no means claiming victory yet, it's just that it isn't doing as bad as you say. This loss of DMC4 (which came AWFULLY close to the European launch...) isn't "the last nail" or anything like that. It's painfull, but not disastrous.