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May 09, 2006
Sony E3 Press Conference Aftermath
PS3 was unveiled just a few hours ago at E3 conference. You can download the full 2 hours of the press conference video from Gamespot. I watched it a few hours ago before going to gym and thus had a bit of thought about it.
To summarise the press conference:
1) PSP #2 will have an added GPS functionality. One of the incoming software is Planet PSP, a travel guide designed for PSP. I think this could be a winner if done correctly in a subscription based or per country based sales.
2) Sony will open its back catalog of PS1 games for download to play in PSP. Kaz Hirai demonstrated playing the original Ridge Racer on PSP. Maybe they copied the idea from Nintendo, but I'm not sure how good this will be. Old Nintendo games (NES, SNES) maxed at 4MB per games. PS1 games are CD-ROM based games and FF VII spans over 3 CD. It's obvious that Sony is betting on broadband penetration to be a lot higher in the near future. If this works, this can be Sony's cash cow for the next 5 years.
3) PSP and PS3 will work together using WiFi. In the press conference, they showed an F1 game in PS3 where you can use the PSP as the rear mirror. Cool but pointless, it'll be better if you can use the PSP as for the in-game minimap or something more creative. I'm sure Hideo Kojima can figure something out.
4) You will be able to download music from Sony's shop directly to PSP. Trying to play catch up with iPod?
5) Still no good news for better PSP games in the near future. All the previewed games don't look that promising.
6) Now on to PS3. Well definitely the #1 question is how much it's going to cost. Wait no longer, Sony has released the price USD600. This is the most expensive console price ever. Yes you can get the USD500 version but it's limited and it doesn't have high def output.
7) Can't really see how good the graphic will be because the webcast quality from Gamespot is not that good. However from the various reports on the web it's going to look just as good if not better than XBOX 360.
8) Nintendo fanboys are crying foul when Sony revealed that their controller too will have a "motion sensor". Different technology (gyro) but same idea indeed. Well, isn't this interesting. I have had experience with gyro mouse and they suck. I hope Sony can do a lot better job than the current generation of gyro mouse out there.
9) Sony will release an online service that will rival if not better XBOX Live - or so they claim. Currently PS2 online service is horrendous, they can't do any worse than this. Whether it can rival XBOX Live only time will tell. We need to remember that this is Microsoft's second attempt for online game service while Sony only did a half-arsed attempt last time.
10) As expected, PS3 will double as Blue-Ray player. The base model has 20GB and the USD600 will have 60GB hard drive.
So there it is. The web is buzzing with Nintendo and XBOX fanboys crying foul about Sony is ripping-off Nintendo, Apple, Microsoft or whatever company they can name. But regardless what features Sony copied from other companies the big question is will they succeed? Can they win this seventh generation console battle?
Hard to say at the moment but I don't think they will outsell XBOX 360 5:1 just like PS2 vs XBOX in the last generation battle. Especially with the extraordinarily high launch price at USD600 and Nintendo wii's expected launch price to be USD199 (Nintendo's magic number) PS3 will look less and less attractive to most gamers. People who have been waiting for PS3 now may have decided that it's not going to worth it and buy XBOX 360 instead. I predict a spike of XBOX 360 sales in the coming weeks.
However, Sony still have the support of the behemoth game company Square Enix. Which I believe is a major factor that contributed to Playstation total dominance in the last decade. On top of that, all the major franchises - Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid - all are returning to PS3. This is a major contributor for gamers like me, and my brothers to some extent, that will pretty much buy which console Square Enix are releasing their games to.
Will I buy PS3? Yes. Will I buy it on release? Absolutely not. I will be in UK by that time and once again I'm pretty sure that UK will cop the higher-than-the-rest-of-the-world price.
Posted by vhadiant at May 9, 2006 10:45 PM
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