Seriously, I think Sony just flat-out doesn’t get it. The PS3 is due out in November and is set to cost $499 for the base configuration with a 20GB hard drive and $599 for the premium configuration with a 60GB hard drive. Problem is, that’s not the only discrepancy between the two configs. The $499 configuration also lacks wifi, a card reader for memorystick/SD/compactflash and HDMI output. Now, I can do without the memory card reader for the most part and the wifi isn’t that important since it’s going to have gigabit ethernet. However, I don’t understand why/how Sony would dump the HDMI port. Sony’s supposedly using the PS3 to push the Blu-Ray spec as the successor to the current DVD format. The problem is, the average person isn’t going to blow $600 just to be able to watch movies. Even the $500 price tag is ridiculously high for anyone but the most bleeding-edge early adopters but the $500 system won’t play a good portion of Blu-Ray discs that require HDMI & HDCP in order to play in all their HD glory. Basically, many Blu-Ray discs are going to have copy protection that requires the presence of the HDMI port, which the cheaper of the two systems will lack. So that means Blu-Ray discs that will still play but not in their highest quality format available. Alas, having a $500-600 PS3 and Blu-Ray players clocking in at over a grand is going to make it tough for Blu-Ray to make any headway in the next-gen DVD wars. By comparison, Microsoft is going to be supporting the competing standard, HD-DVD and has already announced an HD-DVD player will be coming for the Xbox 360. I would venture a guess that the HD-DVD player addon will be about $100 on top of the Xbox 360 price, whatever it is at the time (most are predicting it won’t be $400 by then). All in all, I don’t see Sony winning the console wars this go-around like they did with the PS2. Hell, by the time the PS3 launches, provided it’s on time, the Xbox 360 will have sold over 10 million consoles.
Technorati Tags: gaming, consoles, sony, rants, opinions, ps3
0 Responses to “sony doesn’t get it”
Leave a Reply