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Eh. Whatever. I'm going to go have fun and play my Wii, 'cause I'm so softcore like that.

Alright alright, leave the "hardcore gamer" thing out of this :biggrin:

The video game industry is not driven by hardcore gamers.

Excellent point. But then I never said it was, and still believe that the high sales of the Wii are because:

A. It's cheap.
B. It is NOT JUST for "hardcore gamers"
C. It is great for kids

That right there is going to make it sell. I am not saying those are the ONLY reasons that it sells, just saying hands down it it going to outsell the other 2 because of those.

I will be the first to admit that there are probably only 6 games on the Wii that I would be interested in playing. Of those 6, I would MUCH rather play any of those on the 360/PC/PS3, etc. Never will I question anybody for wanting to own a Wii, and completely understand why someone would. Personally I view it as a boat anchor, but that's my own opinion.

I totally agree with Dryden on the Blu-ray/HDTV comments, which is odd :biggrin:
 
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Off topic, but some relevance as this has become a discussion of media formats and product synergy strategies vis a vis Sony versus Nintendo.

EB ad attached.

Nail. Coffin.
 

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Maybe you would also point out that many launch PS3s included a copy of Talladega Nights and a voucher (or two) for additional Blu-Ray titles.
I have a PS3 that included Talladega Nights and the coupons included were far from free, maybe 5-10 dollars off.

You are probably right in saying the Joe Blow doesn't give a shit about HD movies. But 1,000,000 Joe Blows have heard about HDTV, how could you NOT have heard about it. What happens when Joe Blow finds out he has a HD movie player right there.

All you have to do to look at the sales figure for this summer is to look at the sales of units of each player sold. How can 175,000 HD DVD players, along with a handful of HD DVD add ons for the 360, match up with over 1,000,000 blu ray players.

http://news.com.com/HDTVs+turning+Americans+into+couch+potatoes/2100-1041_3-6136092.html
By 2010, roughly 80 million HDTV sets will have been sold in America.
If you compare the early sales of PS2, to the sales of PS3 in the same time period, it is actually doing better.

I have no problem with the wii, or the 360, fine consoles.


99% of TV owners couldn't distinguish component from composite; 480p from 720p from 1080i -
Wow, thats a pretty ignorant statement.... I guess why even sell HD TV's if people can't even tell the difference!

EDIT: I'd also like to include that this whole discussion has been based off of 4 months of a consoles life. I mean, after one year the gamecube took XBOX's spot at number 2 in 2003.
 
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buckeyeman91;757279; said:
I have a PS3 that included Talladega Nights and the coupons included were far from free, maybe 5-10 dollars off.

You are probably right in saying the Joe Blow doesn't give a shit about HD movies. But 1,000,000 Joe Blows have heard about HDTV, how could you NOT have heard about it. What happens when Joe Blow finds out he has a HD movie player right there.

All you have to do to look at the sales figure for this summer is to look at the sales of units of each player sold. How can 175,000 HD DVD players, along with a handful of HD DVD add ons for the 360, match up with over 1,000,000 blu ray players.

http://news.com.com/HDTVs+turning+Americans+into+couch+potatoes/2100-1041_3-6136092.html

I am really struggling to figure out what it is you're trying to prove. The link you've provided is a reference that sports fans who watch ESPN prefer HD. No shit? Stop the presses! I'm not talking about them, I'm talking about the 200 million other people who don't care if Grey's Anatomy or Desperate Housewives is broadcast in HD.

If that c|net prediction proves accurate, that means by 2010 fewer than half of American homes will have a single HDTV set. That's not exactly blazing new trails with that rate of adoption, considering HD sets of some variety will have been available for over a full decade at that point.

You mention 1M Blu-Ray players have been sold. Of course, because 1M PS3's have been sold (actually 1.86M). It's new tech, and that drive and demand will taper off.


buckeyeman91;757279; said:
If you compare the early sales of PS2, to the sales of PS3 in the same time period, it is actually doing better.
Apples and oranges. The PS2 launched in October '00, the PS3 launched in November '06. PS2 sales stalled one month into release because it launched well before the Thanksgiving/Christmas rush. On the whole, the sale numbers between the two consoles are the same.

The difference when comparing the two is that when the PS2 launched, people did not go out and buy 3M PSXs instead, nor did the choose the N64 (too old at that time) or the XBox (it didn't exist). The PS3 has competition and is losing traction.

buckeyeman91;757279; said:
Wow, thats a pretty ignorant statement.... I guess why even sell HD TV's if people can't even tell the difference!
Don't know where you're going with that, because most people will notice that an HDTV looks better than an SDTV given it'll have newer technology driving the display and probably some SDTV signal upconversion. My contention is that 99% of people will not perceive the differences in variations of a signal on the same set, so higher levels of HDTV resolution offer diminishing returns to the masses, therefore limiting the appeal of the players and the media.

You can believe it ignorant, just like I believe it's ignorant when people think that everyone else is an A/V-phile like themselves. I own 2 HDTVs, but the fact that I can see the difference on my Saving Private Ryan DVD when viewed over component vs composite cables doesn't mean everyone else can, and most of these differences are so subtle in nature that you'd need a TV in the range of 50 to 60" to see the difference, so you must consider that possibly half of all existing HDTVs sold were even that dimension, and a further half of those were sold when 1080i was as hi-def as hi-def could get.

I have component cables on the DVD player, an HTPC, and the Wii on our 46" Toshiba in our family room. I can clearly tell the difference in fine text and color. Nobody else has ever noticed the difference. I even asked my wife point blank if she thought it looked better the day I swapped the cables on the Wii, as if justifying my purchase of a $30 set of cables, and she said, "No."
 
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so higher levels of HDTV resolution offer diminishing returns to the masses, therefore limiting the appeal of the players and the media.
I apologize for misunderstanding your wording, when you said couldn't distinguish 480p from 720p I was confused, because the difference is obvious. But, yes, most people will have a hard time noticing the difference between 720 and 1080 on a screen under 40"

EDIT: I also apologize for my previous statement as you could read it as a personal insult, and it wasn't meant to be that way. I appreciate a conversation where it doesn't have to diminish itself to petty name calling and insults.
 
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Hey, it's all good. I love talking tech. :biggrin:

FWIW, the PS3 is a fine piece of hardware, I'm sure. To restate, I just don't think what it does today justifies the $600 price tag. When the Blu-Ray discs themselves come down to $20, the games drop at least below $50, the system price is lowered to around $300, and Cell's borked local memory which is all but useless in its current state is fixed in production, then I'll pick one up.

My argument is that Sony let the marketing guys take over the company, which has proven to be nothing short of a disaster for the past two years. All the momentum the PS3 had, died the day it was unveiled at E3 in 2006. Rather than being the must-have gadget of 2007, it's going to wind up being the must-have gadget of 2008 or 2009 instead. My speculation is solely whether or not that window is so long that Nintendo enjoys a 1986-style renaissance and blocks Sony from getting back into the market, at least with as much presence as the PSX and PS2 ever enjoyed.

It's fun to debate, regardless who ultimately is proven correct.
 
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I care if shows are in HD, i rarely watch anything not in HD. I can not stand the way the picture looks in regular TV.

When is the year that all stations (ABC, NBC, CBS) are to be broadcast in HD? I believe it to be pretty soon. I could be wrong.

Also I can tell a pretty big difference in HDMI from component. I would think most people can.

Do any of you use optical for sound?
 
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THEWOOD;757769; said:
I care if shows are in HD, i rarely watch anything not in HD. I can not stand the way the picture looks in regular TV.

When is the year that all stations (ABC, NBC, CBS) are to be broadcast in HD? I believe it to be pretty soon. I could be wrong.

Also I can tell a pretty big difference in HDMI from component. I would think most people can.

Do any of you use optical for sound?
HD / Digital Timeline Being discussed here ...

As Brewtus puts it - all digital by 2/17/09 ...no more analog, and digital means ATSC, which should go hand in hand with HD. DirecTV will be running with 150 HD channels by 09/07, mostly the premiums, Nat Geo, SciFi etc, and a lot of the good new content, plus many sports events are HD right now.

Of course, this was all meant to happen by May 2006 - look how well that plan played out.
 
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THEWOOD;757769; said:
I care if shows are in HD, i rarely watch anything not in HD. I can not stand the way the picture looks in regular TV.

When is the year that all stations (ABC, NBC, CBS) are to be broadcast in HD? I believe it to be pretty soon. I could be wrong.

Also I can tell a pretty big difference in HDMI from component. I would think most people can.

Do any of you use optical for sound?

I want to say it is 2009, I know my parent just bought a small tv for the bar area that my dad built in the basement and it had a sticker on it saying that it was not hd ready and you would have to buy a special adapter by a certain date. January of 2009 is sticking in my head for some reason.
 
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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ITE=TXSAE&SECTION=TECHNOLOGY&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Sony giving away freebies to PS3 buyers

By YURI KAGEYAMA
AP Business Writer

TOKYO (AP) -- Sony is giving away freebies to woo buyers to the new PlayStation 3 video game machine whose hefty price appears to be scaring away shoppers.

The latest giveaway from the Japanese electronics and entertainment company is being promised for the Australia launch for the PlayStation 3 set for March 23 - a Blu-ray Disc version of the Sony Pictures James Bond movie "Casino Royale," for the first 20,000 Australian PS3 buyers.

Continued...
 
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Interesting. Sony removes the Emotion Engine/Graphics Synthesizer chip from the PAL version of the PS3, which further cripples backwards compatibility (but they'll fix it with emulation, they promise) and really slaps the EU and AU consumers in the face when they're paying the equivilent of anywhere from $770 - $1200 USD depending on the market for a PS3 at pre-order.

I imagine Sony will similarly mod the NTSC PS3s sold in the US; it only makes sense to cut production costs anywhere possible since they lose more money per console in the US than in any other country where the PS3 is/will be available.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20070226073502.html

...

?The Emotion Engine [and Graphics Synthesizer chip] has been removed and that function has been replaced with software,? said Nick Sharples, a spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe in London. That has a ?slightly detrimental effect? on compatibility, he added in an interview with Digit Online web-site.

The original PlayStation 2 game console used so-called Emotion Engine (a 128-bit RISC processor working at 299MHz) with integrated RDRAM controller as central processing unit (CPU) as well as Graphics Synthesizer graphics processing unit. Later on the EE and GS were incorporated into a single chip, which is currently used in slim version of the PS2 and for backwards compatibility in the PS3 sold in Japan and the U.S. According to analysts, the EE+GS chip costs $27, whereas 32MB RDRAM is unlikely to cost more than $5. But despite of about $30 added cost amid higher prices of the PlayStation 3 for PAL regions, Sony?s shareholders reportedly insisted on removing the piece of silicon from the console, which is sold for at least $241 less than its manufacturing costs in the U.S.

...

I think this spells out why the EU sales/marketing lead abruptly quit about two weeks ago amid a cloud of suspicion -- he didn't want to be around when the shit hit the fan as the pre-order customers demand their money back and the retailers get stuck with the units that have less functionality than the US version and cost (in some instances) twice as much. The last sentence is the most troubling, confirmation that the shareholders are running the company, not the engineers. :(
 
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Rumble is coming back.. i honestly could care less one way or another

link

Sony and Immersion Play Nice
Lawsuit ended, rumble coming, fans happy.
by Micah Seff

showUSloc=(checkLocale('uk')||checkLocale('au'));document.writeln(showUSloc ? 'US, ' : '');March 1, 2007 - Who would have thought that this day would come? Sony Computer Entertainment and Immersion announced today that both companies have agreed to put an end to their ongoing legal dispute and enter into a business agreement to incorporate Immersion's patented force feedback technology into future "PlayStation format products." Whether this means that the technology will be incorporated in future versions of the PlayStation 3's Sixaxis controller is still unclear, although what other "PlayStation format products" could they be talking about?
 
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