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Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Second Launch Same As The First

So imagine my surprise face that the PlayStation 3 is delayed in Europe and short-sheeted over here and even in Japan after the launch of the Xbox 360 and PSP went oh so smoothly. Another reason to look forward to the Wii for this holiday season ... it's pretty much the only console to look forward to this holiday season.

So let's watch the eBay game again and read it with me people: the real PlayStation 3 launch is in 2007. Unless you're willing to toss your ring into the hat and pay 200-300% overhead for the pleasure of playing Resistance: Fall Of Man instead of visiting your folks.

Personally, I won't be looking at the PlayStation 3 until a) there's no more waiting in line for one and b) I either know the games work fine on SDTV or I've taken the HDTV plunge.

I'm guessing we'll also get no 360 revision nor a PSP revision until sometime 2007, maybe later. Why bother if there's nothing to really compete against? I do hope both happens in 2007 though. The 360 needs HDMI (remember, Sony might not give you the cable ... Microsoft isn't giving the capability) much worse than I think it wants to admit. See, I'm still using my 36" RCA SDTV that I bought about ten years ago. And it still works like a champ. In fact, I was watching Mindfreak off of iTunes on it just last night. I'm not about to dive into HDTV without knowing that it handles every possible resolution (and cable) I will want to throw at it for about another ten years.

Which means HDMI and 1080p. I mean sure, maybe the 360 + HD-DVD will be cheaper than the PlayStation 3 as a next gen solution ... but it's also looking like there's a reason for that ... and it's not Sony gouging it's customers.

Course if the format wars actually end up dividing the rental market five years from now, we'll probably all have both anyway. Damn, it's almost like that was their plan all along...

If there was a 360 v2 that generated less heat and sported HDMI, the 360 would be looking a lot more attractive to me.

The PSP needs a smaller cousin. Sans UMD drive and not so darn big and glossy. In fact, think Game Boy Advance SP with a wider screen and I'd be salivating. UMD has flopped, but if Sony wants to hold onto it ... keep both lines alive. For now. (Actually, I could also go for a form factor like these phones but with a QWERTY keyboard)




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2 comments:

Unknown said...

Look, it's just not going to happen. You cannot split the PSP audience into two groups. As bad as the UMD may be, it would be complete suicide for Sony to abandon it.

Josh said...

I dunno, update firmware so that games will run on mem cards, release games on mem cards and then the only division would be PSP users who watch UMD movies and those who don't.

And I think both members of the former camp would be OK.

The real juggling would be on the developer side I think.

Course I guess some recent drops in price just caused a UMD rush ... it's not that I'm anti-UMD ... it's just if it's not selling it's not worth bringing the platform down.


That said, I wouldn't be surprised if instead we see a PMP with PS3 compatibility.