demiurgent | The Twits.

Why would it never get a reduction in price? Hardware gets cheaper all the time. That alone makes me doubt your entire comment, I honestly can't see how that can seem like a remotely accurate statement.

Sony got a serious humbling with its original release, and is working to fix it (besides the ridiculously awful PS3 Home) while Microsoft's strategy was to position their console so it didn't have any competition. This worked great, at the time, but is leaving it with increasingly obsolete hardware with a well-deserved reputation for flakiness.

Sony's online gaming is indeed worse, but not hugely, and most people really don't care about that. The vast majority of gamers never go online. Ever. I think I've done it maybe twice, and I'm practically their target audience.

The PS3 is technically superior, and Sony's demonstrated their ability to dominate in the long haul before (see the PS1 and the PS2, both of which were "overpriced" on release but dominating by the time they left the market.) Sony designs damn good hardware, and I don't believe we're yet at the point where sheer graphical horsepower no longer matters.

On top of that, there's the Blu-Ray factor. HD-DVD is dead and buried. There are a significant number of people buying Blu-Ray players, and a significant number of people buying game consoles, and a significant amount of overlap. That means people buying PS3s.

I don't see anything exciting coming out of the Microsoft camp - they released a new dashboard, some people like it, some people hate it, but it's not really exciting in any way. They're releasing the same old games with the same old mechanics. Sony, on the other hand, is starting to push some more interesting stuff, like Little Big Planet and Noby Noby Boy.

Speaking of games, the only major franchises that Microsoft owns are Halo, Gears of War, and Mass Effect. Three (very good) shooters, one first-person and two third-person. Almost every other highly-rated game for the XBox is also available on the PS3. And they look better.

The XBox wins on multiplayer shooters. Nintendo has the (huge) casual gaming market. The PS3 picks up everything else. I think the PS3 is, in the long term, in a much better position at this point than the XBox, and besides the teenager/early-20s male-gamer-who-wants-to-blow-his-friends-up market (which is smaller than you'd expect), going to have much more notable games.

(As long as they get off their asses and pick up Braid already.)

The PS3 is a superior piece of hardware. That doesn't mean it'll pull ahead. It will NOT get a significant price cut. Sony swears to this on a monthly basis. And there's really no universe I know of where a $400 console beats a $200 one.

Also, as awesome as LBP is, it TANKED in sales. Whoops.

Have you ever known a company to say "Oh, yeah! We're totally cutting the price next month. By a lot!"

Ever?

I mean, think about what that would instantly do to the sales. The fact that they swear they won't ever have a price cut means absolutely nothing.

Perhaps. But they still won't. They're already selling $400 consoles at a LOSS - a loss they AREN'T making up in software sales like every company is supposed to.

I know I'm coming off as argumentative, but I actually DO like the PS3. It's the best piece of hardware on the market. But the user base is small, the price is too high, and Microsoft's exclusive titles TROUNCE Sony's in sales. Blu-Ray might give it some legs, but in this generation of gaming, Sony is done. They can't make up over three years of losing.

In any event, it's all about price. Even if the PS3 gets a price cut, it still won't get into a competitive price range with the 360 Arcade's $200. Price is half the reason the Wii did so well for so long. I mean, 99.9% of Wii games are shovelware, but the price (well, and a retarded gimmick) keeps it selling like hotcakes.

The loss is the significant point here. They weren't making money on the consoles when they were more expensive, and dropping the price as a loss leader was necessary to get machines out the door. Further dropping the price would be difficult at any point that the hardware is still anywhere close to cutting edge.

More to the point, the XBox 360 is in the exact place now that the PS2 was last generation. They were the first out, they were the first to a strong userbase, they were the first with a mature and diverse game line, and they're now a given as the platform you need to develop for if you want to make your development money back. The PS3 had a number of mis-steps along the way -- the biggest question was would they end up as this generation's XBox (significantly behind the leader but solid) or would they become this generation's Dreamcast.

As for Blu-Ray? We're seeing the apex of a technology that is itself being transitioned out. That Netflix stream on my television is the future of in-home media distribution, more than anything on a PC or Mac. There will come a day when stores won't have DVDs or Blu-Ray discs, they'll have laminated cards a la game time or points cards for the specific movies or shows, and you'll swipe or input their code into your system to download it. Every major media format had a major niche market driving its early sales into a ubiquitous presence. VHS beat Betamax because VHS would license to porn, so people who wanted their porn at home bought VHS machines, which meant that they bought their mainstream stuff on VHS too. DVD eclipsed videotape as quickly and completely as it did in large part thanks to the anime and other foreign niche markets driving imports and usage. Eventually, everyone had a DVD player. While Blu-Ray's beaten HD-DVD, it hasn't found that killer niche market that must have Blu-Ray. And, with most niche video markets going to direct download or BitTorrent, they're not likely to.

Oh, and give the Wii its due. The games that use the kinetic controller well use it well. WiiPlay, Warioware and the like are really, really fun, especially when you have a party going. A gimmick it may be, but it's an innovative and effective one.

The problem is, now every game that comes out for the Wii needs to use the Wiimote as part of its repertoire. It's like a console that plays Rock Band better than all the others requires everyone to use the guitar and drums controllers to play all the other games too.

However, of all three consoles, the Wii is the only one full on nongamers pick up and play on a regular basis. The XBox 360 and the PS3 are gamer consoles. They're incredibly fun, but they're not a casual commitment even if you consider yourself a casual gamer. Grandmothers play the Wii. Non-gamer Grandmothers, I mean.

I find that anyone that owns a Wii plays it for a few days (usually just Wii Sports) until the novelty wears off, at which point it collects dust. The only good games for it are first-party, which is pretty much true of ANY Nintendo system in the past few generations. It may be the "it" thing to own, but 99% of its software is shit. Sure, maybe grandma plays Wii Sports when she wanders over, but the novelty wears off fast.

The Twits.

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