Playstation 3 pricing announced

[Zappo]

Why not just go PIII-733, GeForce 3 Ti200, and 128 MB of RAM for a comprable?

Ok, but the xbox at launch was costing 299$. I don't think you could find any PC for that price in november 2001, not without purchasing a used machine - and the used market works differently.

Besides, the first xbox is exceptionally similar to a PC, for a console. It's quite literally the most generous comparison you could find.

Whereas the PS3 is packed with strange high-speed buses and has a CPU with eight cores that aren't even symmetrical; I find component-by-component comparisons with a PC to be meaningless.

Only the system as a whole should be compared, and it is too soon to talk about that.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

I can't see why anyone would be willing to shell out $600 for Metal Gear and Final Fantasy.

 

[drothgery]

Besides, the first xbox is exceptionally similar to a PC, for a console. It's quite literally the most generous comparison you could find.

Whereas the PS3 is packed with strange high-speed buses and has a CPU with eight cores that aren't even symmetrical; I find component-by-component comparisons with a PC to be meaningless.

The PS2 and PS3 are exceptionally different from PCs, nearly as much as the original Xbox is exceptionally similar. The GameCube had a bog-standard CPU (a nearly-identical PowerPC chip, though fabbed by Motorola instead of IBM, was sold in Macs) and a GPU that was the predecessor of today's ATi Radeons (ArtX having been bought by ATi). The DreamCast had another very standard MIPS CPU (close cousin to one that was used in a fair number of Unix workstations) and a PowerVR GPU that was sold for PCs. The original PlayStation likewise had a fairly standard architecture.

The bad thing about the current-gen consoles is that they all have awful CPUs, two designed for maximum theorical power (as opposed to real, useable power) in certain scenarios within a given price and power envelope (Xenon and Cell; Xenon's better in the general case than Cell, but a single-core Celeron or Sempron will stomp all over either in most general-purpose code, and even in fairly multithreaded code they'll get destroyed by an Athlon 64 X2, Pentium D, Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, or dual-core G5), and one that's just cheap (Wii's strongly rumored just have a higher clocked version of the GCN chip).

 

[Lhorgrim]

I can't wait. I'll be picking up my Sony console in a few weeks. Of course it'll be a PS2. I have never owned a Sony console of any type, but I love games like Ratchet and Clank, and Jak and Daxter so I figure I can drop $129.00.

I'll proably get a PS3 around the time the PS4 is released. It doesn't have anything to do with the product, it has everything to do with my cash flow.

 

[Arnwyn]

I can't see why anyone would be willing to shell out $600 for Metal Gear and Final Fantasy.

I can - and so can millions of others. It's not particularly hard to see, unless one is willingly blind.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

I can - and so can millions of others. It's not particularly hard to see, unless one is willingly blind.

To be honest, at $500-$600, plus the price of the games, I'm not sure Sony is going to sell millions. I've seen a slew of hardcore Sony fans give them the bird over this price. If they are going to do it, casual gamers won't hesitate to do it, and it's the casual gamers you've got to get.

 

[trancejeremy]

If you have a PSP, then the wifi and the memory stick ports is more important. Supposedly you will be able to buy PS1 games via the PS3's online marketplace , then transfer them to your PSP to play

 

[KenM]

I remember when consoles came with not one but TWO controlers and a game packed in with it. IIRC, the Atari 2600 cost like $150.00 when it first came out. I thought that was the bomb when I was little.

 

[IcyCool]

To be honest, at $500-$600, plus the price of the games, I'm not sure Sony is going to sell millions. I've seen a slew of hardcore Sony fans give them the bird over this price. If they are going to do it, casual gamers won't hesitate to do it, and it's the casual gamers you've got to get.

*shrug* Given the relatively small amount of time I have to game, I'd consider myself a casual gamer. And I'm planning on picking one up. I'll probably snag a 360 sometime late next year, provided there are more games than just Halo 3 that I want to play on it.

Maybe I don't fit your profile of "casual gamer" though.

 

[Arnwyn]

To be honest, at $500-$600, plus the price of the games, I'm not sure Sony is going to sell millions. I've seen a slew of hardcore Sony fans give them the bird over this price. If they are going to do it, casual gamers won't hesitate to do it, and it's the casual gamers you've got to get.

Well, according to Sony's E3 conference, they have: "two million planned for launch worldwide at launch, another two million in time for the end of 2006 and another 2 million by March 2007."

I suspect they'll sell through (and even if it's only half the amount due to overestimated production - a likely scenario - it'll still be "millions") in the worldwide market during at least the first shipment (though, much like the Xbox 360, probably not the next two shipment periods). I hardly think that so-called "casual gamers" picked up the Xbox 360 for its current selling price (especially considering how poorly the cheaper Core Pack - even dubbed the "tard pack" by consumers and reported by the game media - has been viewed by consumers) - and the number of "hardcore" gamers worldwide is somewhat stunning... especially as the gamer demographic ages and has increasingly larger amounts of disposable income over the years.

The "casual gamer" will be picked up in the inevitable price drops - they're never considered as early adopters during a technology launch.