PS3 Launch Date Confirmed

koneko

"Asia tells alot of the time how consoles will do"

Not really, Asia is a different market, things sell differently there than here or the UK/rest of Europe or the US. If you look at the PSP for example, it outsold the DS by some huge amount of here. DS did better when Nintendogs came up but as far as I'm aware it still doesn't match PSP sales. In Japan the DS is doing much much better, it's huge:
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=64832

Personally, I don't think the PS3 will do as well as Sony are expecting it to. It had better have a great line up of games for the average person to fork out that amount of money for it. The average person off the street isn't going to care about Blue Ray. Some will buy it for the name, sure, but that'll only get them so far. To a lot of people, it may look more attractive to buy a 360 and a Wii, than just a PS3. If you go into Game and see a bundle of two consoles, or one, that will surely influence some people.

We shall see. So far the PS3 isn't winning me over, but I always decide on these things closer to launch when I know what games are out for it (which is really what it's all about, not the hardware).

LookingFor

koneko wrote:

Personally, I don't think the PS3 will do as well as Sony are expecting it to. It had better have a great line up of games for the average person to fork out that amount of money for it.

Does the average person ever fork out at launch?

koneko wrote:

The average person off the street isn't going to care about Blue Ray. Some will buy it for the name, sure, but that'll only get them so far. To a lot of people, it may look more attractive to buy a 360 and a Wii, than just a PS3. If you go into Game and see a bundle of two consoles, or one, that will surely influence some people.

It doesn't look like this is going to pan out as neatly as Peter Moore might have liked. Wii may well be €249 now. If 360 prices stay the same, you'd be looking at €649 for the two together. PS3 sooner or later, if not immediately from launch, will have a €499 pack.

Also, regarding Blu-ray, people might want to stop writing it off as an irrelevance to games, and classing it 'only' as useful for HD movie playback. There's a rumour going around from a pretty credible person that at least one big name third party game that has only been announced for PS3 so far is in that situation largely because of Blu-ray.

(That game is Mercenaries 2).

Might that change? Might they eventually fit it on a DVD for 360? Perhaps, but it'll be a lot of work to get there apparently, and they're not entirely sure what'll happen, so that's why they're staying mum on versions beyond PS3. If this is happening already, I think it's a bit premature to say that Blu-ray brings no value to PS3, the games machine, versus PS3 the movie player - afterall, games are only going to get more ambitious, and more sophisticated. I don't think what we've seen in the last 6 months is really even the tip of the iceberg, and reflective of typical next-gen requirements at all.

hairball

a lot of the debate seems to be centering around the value of the blu ray player in the ps3.
i agree that sony would have been better off going the ms route on this one and allowing players the choice to have blu ray or not, because it is, as is the case with hd-dvd, an unproven formula popularity wise.
But if there are several games companies out there who are giving blu ray the thumbs up ( i'm presuming here they looked at hd-dvd and said no thank you, i wouldn't claim to understand why though) then maybe we have to take this format and indeed hd dvd a bit more seriously in the coming gens of games.
Or maybe not. Is crysis getting released on blu ray or hd dvd..i haven't heard that this is the case.
of course it could be all a load of bull being peddled in order to force us into a format we don't really want.
I guess we wont really no what difference these players are gonna make to gaming for a year or maybe more.
Guess it all depends on how much supposed 'future proofing' people want.

LookingFor

hairball wrote:

i agree that sony would have been better off going the ms route on this one and allowing players the choice to have blu ray or not, because it is, as is the case with hd-dvd, an unproven formula popularity wise.
But if there are several games companies out there who are giving blu ray the thumbs up ( i'm presuming here they looked at hd-dvd and said no thank you, i wouldn't claim to understand why though) then maybe we have to take this format and indeed hd dvd a bit more seriously in the coming gens of games.

A game developer can't use HD-DVDs, on the consoles anyway. There's a HD-DVD add-on coming for 360, but all 360 games have to be on DVD because it's optional. If MS included a HD-DVD drive in all 360s, it wouldn't be an issue.

hairball wrote:

Or maybe not. Is crysis getting released on blu ray or hd dvd..i haven't heard that this is the case.

I don't know about Crysis, but it's a very different kind of game from Mercenaries. With Mercenaries, it's a completely open world. If I hop into a plane or helicopter and quickly fly to the other side of that world, then all the data for the entire game world has to be on one disc, and you need to be able to stream it off the disc fast enough. And if that exceeds a DVD's capacity..

Ciaran500

Got any source for that Mercenaries statement?

LookingFor

Ciaran500 wrote:

Got any source for that Mercenaries statement?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=100544&page=2

Look for comments by element. He works at Monolith, the guys who made FEAR. It's just what he heard at E3, take it for what you will.

monument

hairball wrote:

of course it could be all a load of bull being peddled in order to force us into a format we don't really want.

Then don't buy. Simple as that. Does Sony have a gun to your head?

hairball

monument wrote:

Then don't buy. Simple as that. Does Sony have a gun to your head?

was merely asking a question, read the rest of my post

monument

So, you're not saying "of course it could be all a load of bull being peddled in order to force us into a format we don't really want"?

hairball

well perhaps a better phrasing would be 'is it more bull being peedled that wee don't really need'...just a question man

koneko

With regards to following the Asian market, this is interesting too:

Japanese gamers want Wii(News)
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=65201

"A reader survey by Famitsu magazine has revealed that nearly 70 per cent of respondents are most looking forward to the arrival of the Nintendo Wii - while more than 85 per cent believe the PS3 has been priced too high."

hairball

yeh you beat me to it koneko..was about to post that link..interesting alright iwonder how much it will translate to real life sales tho.

Ciaran500

PS3 launch list?

Warhawk
Genji 2
Resistance: Fall of Man
Lair Order
NBA 07
Fight Night Round 3 (anyone know what OLC means?)
Need for Speed: Carbon
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007
Madden 2007
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway
Marvel Ultimate Alliance


Can't see anything there worth spending €600+ TBH

LookingFor

Retailer lists can be notoriously unreliable. Lair likely isn't a launch title anymore, neither is Motorstorm, and there are a number of games slated for launch that are not there e.g. Fatal Inertia, Singstar etc. And there'll be more announced officially between now and Nov, obviously.

And I don't think you will ever find anything worth PS3's asking price, Ciaran500 (which hopefully will start at €500, here! Please SCEE!). But seriously, most launches are like that. Launches were you have something like Halo or Mario64 on day one are the exception. That said, we don't really know how most of PS3's early games will turn out yet. I think whatever about day one, however, the first 6 months could be very special - Assassin's Creed, Heavenly Sword, Virtua Fighter 5, Motorstorm, Unreal Tournament 2007, Tekken 6, Ridge Racer 7 .. and that's just the higher profile stuff.

Ciaran500

LookingFor wrote:

And I don't think you will ever find anything worth PS3's asking price, Ciaran500

But I can't even see why anyone would buy one untill there is somthing "special" like Assasins Creed, Heavenly Sword or any of the big titles (MGS, DMC etc), although I thought the same at 360 launch.

LookingFor

Ciaran500 wrote:

But I can't even see why anyone would buy one untill there is somthing "special" like Assasins Creed, Heavenly Sword or any of the big titles (MGS, DMC etc), although I thought the same at 360 launch.

I might agree, but it's a fact that the early crowd buy systems often as much in anticipation of what's coming down the pipe as what's available right now. I've seen it remarked that Japan bought PS2 on launch day for Final Fantasy X. That's not to say there's nothing worth picking up at such launches - there usually is - but it's not unusual for bigger guns to follow later.

I mean, with the crop of potentially brilliant games likely due for Spring 07, what's the difference between buying a PS3 in November, and buying one then? Not much, you'll still pay the same price. But you'll have had a few more months with it and the first games, some of which even could be great themselves.

steviec

Yea there's nothing out for Xbox 360 yet on the level of Assassin's Creed or MGS or Final Fantasy yet either. Didn't stop me buying one and I don't regret the purchase one bit.

I'm loving table tennis, who in their right mind this time last year would have thought people would be happily playing table tennis on their 360s right now? I've enjoyed Table Tennis, Need For Speed(I may have liked the current gen version equally well, I don't know), Oblivion, Call of Duty, GRAW and countless XBLA titles, none of which would I have thought was worth a new console, but it all adds up! Add in the media centre stuff, the ease of wireless controllers, I find it very hard going back to my PS2 and only do so for the highest quality games now, and my gamecube has been sold off because it's simply obsolete.

So I expect the same of the PS3 really, I don't know if I'll be getting one immediately but I won't be waiting too long and I expect to comfortably get my money's worth in the long run.

projectmayhem

Ciaran500 wrote:

PS3 launch list?

Warhawk
Genji 2
Resistance: Fall of Man
Lair Order
NBA 07
Fight Night Round 3 (anyone know what OLC means?)
Need for Speed: Carbon
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007
Madden 2007
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway
Marvel Ultimate Alliance


Can't see anything there worth spending €600+ TBH

half life 2??

anyway, that list is wrong already (as was already pointed out), but you shouldn't base a €600 investment on the first wave of titles. 360 didn't have a particularly glorious entry into the market but i still bought one, and i'm a fairly satisfied customer. same as DVD players back in the day... you didn't spend that kind of money on the films that got released at first, you bought it for future releases that'll interest you