Well, at least it’s not like the least powered system is still in the lead this genera… Oh, yeah…
I actually just think it’s a silly exercise whatever the delta happens to be in a given month. It’s no more a valid predictor now than it was when the difference was 6K units. Why? Because like everyone has been in a hurry to point out, there’s nothing static about the market and each console’s respective position.
Sure. But what I like is pointing out that even when sony can manage to double MS’s sales, which is a feat in and of itself, they still have no real chance of winning, and at best, can simply ‘catch up’.
Weird, huh? Millions of dollars in R&D for the Cell, and the winner of the generation is looking to be a Gamecube with a mutant lightgun controller.
Explain how Nintendo needs momentum from Sony?
I think he meant to write Microsoft…
I’m a big Metal Gear fan, but even MGS4 wasn’t enough to push me over the edge to buy a PS3. With the announcement that the next Final Fantasy will be on 360, I now have no reason at all to ever pick one up. (Although I’m sure I eventually will, but not before a price drop below $300)
I don’t see what the big deal with Blueray is. I can watch HD movies on satellite and aside from a slightly clearer picture, I really don’t see a big difference. Maybe Blueray is better, but I can’t imagine it being enough to make me want to go out and spend the money on a PS3. Sony lost this round and the PlayStation era is over, but it will be interesting to see what they do for the nxt generation of consoles.
glyc
This is, of course, true.
Now imagine all three console makers trying to outdo each other to make sure that they have the least powerful machine in the next-generation…
Sony does not have the most powerful system, unless you like marketing numbers. The Xbox 360 is substantially more powerful.
But that doesn’t change the validity of your point.
Imagine if they had spent all that R&D money on something gameplay-related, rather than trying to developer their own ill-suited CPU.
Yeah. Sony’s hubris when it comes to the cell processor is really what sunk them this generation. If they’d simply grabbed an off-the-shelf processor from IBM like, oh, everyone else on earth, slapped a bunch of them in the box and then focused on their software, they absolutely could’ve beaten microsoft this gen. They probably could’ve released near the same time as well.
I think if Sony just tooked the PS2, made it more powerful. Say a ps2.5, added a hard drive to support the current concept of the ps3 network, we would be looking at a drasticly different marketplace.
Well, that’s kind of what they did, ultimately. Problem is you can’t just make a processor more powerful, you have to get a different processor. They wanted a new one with similar methods as the PS2, and it was simply a horrendously bad idea. That, and banking on it being so stupid fast that they wouldn’t need a videocard. Heh.
You mean there was no way the couldn’t of made a faster version of the ps2’s processor and threw more ram at it like nintendo did with the Wii?
Thing is, Nintendo just used chips made from existing IBM architecture, whereas Sony, in both cases, produced a processor from scratch.
IMO, trust people who are good at what they do.
Ah, ok, I didn’t realize that.
Well, I sort of did. I knew what the Wii had I just didn’t realize the playstation setup was so fucked up.
I’d say going from 480i/480p to 1080i/1080p is more like going from Mono to Stereo. Or from black and white to color. After a while, you can watch stuff in standard definition, but you don’t enjoy it nearly as much and you start to notice all the annoyances you used to live with (in ignorance of a vastly better alternative).
Really, people who think 1080p is “pretty much the same” as regular DVD (even upscaled) need to have their eyes checked, or make sure their TVs are actually set to 1080p …
But back in the 60s TV manufacturers had the worst time getting people to buy their newfangled color TVs too. So the slow transition to high definition, which is even harder to put into words than “it’s in COLOR, dude!” is understandable.
What needs to happen is for TVs to automatically detect what quality signal is coming in and automatically switch to it. This way you won’t find people with 1080p signal coming in from a BR player or tuner and the TV is still set to 480i. Unfortunately it’ll take years to propagate even if such a technology is adopted.
Yeah but see, the thing is, people aren’t jumping from 480p to 1080p. They are jumping from 480p to HD upscaled DVD, which, depending on your player, can look pretty damn good. There’s not a huge difference between dvds on my PS3 and bluray. It’s there, I can see it, I can describe it, I can point it out, but I don’t miss it when it’s not there, and I think that’s the key part.
Alright you’ve got a point there, Charles. If everyone’s got an upscaling DVD player these days and isn’t necessarily watching things on that great of a TV to begin with, then yeah it’s probably difficult to show a massive difference in visuals.
Actually, how many people even have TVs that support 1080p, rather than topping out at 1080i? Last time I checked (early last year, while buying my own 1080p DLP), there weren’t that many models that even supported the resolution.
I think it depends on what your watching. The quality of the source material can make a big difference. There can be a noticeable gap in quality between an average 25 year old movie slapped on a Blu-Ray disk and something like the Planet Earth series which in 1080p is just amazing.