4 posts tagged “ps3”

Two of my friends, Jake and Bryan, stood in line for PS3's. Stupid? Maybe. We report, you decide. Anyway, I talked with both of them about their experience, and they both told similar stories.

Both of them stood inline for the Xbox 360 last year, and had good things to say about it. They said it was friendly, people playing DS, playing football, joking around, talking about what games to get, and letting people freely leave line for bathroom breaks and getting food from parents and friends in the parking lot.

Fast foward one year, and they said the PS3 line was less friendly. No joking, no football, no DS (or PSP) and arguments if you leave the line and come back ("Hey! That guy was behind me! Get back there you bastard!"). My friend Bryan said a big argument broke out between two groups of people, those people selling it to eBay, and the group who were buying it to play it.

Why is this? Well, my first thought, probably due to my anti-Sony slant the past few months, was that Playstation fans are jagged, and (pardon my French) assholes, compared to Xbox fans, but, maybe there is another angle to this.

Sony has made the PS3 out to be rarer than gold. News stories of people fetching $3000+ on eBay and this being hailed the console to end all consoles have all created a frenzy about this new console. Add in the Wii and this massive Holiday '06, and its kind of a general anxiety.

For now, I'm happy with my PC and Xbox 1.  I plan to upgrade both to a faster PC and a Xbox 360, but for now, thats good. (I recently ordered the game Oblivion. Has a fan of its prequel, Morrowind, I'm really excited. Because I had $25 to burn, and I'm impatient, I got Amazon.com next-day shipping. Coming tomorrow, ordered on Sunday. Heh heh.)

I've even got more thoughts on the Wii, where I think its going, and just thoughts. Stay tuned, same Vox time, same Vox channel.

After a lengthy conversation with my friend about the OPM "closing" and me blaming Sony, he brought up an issue I never thought of. Blu-ray.

Has I speculated, OPM probably was doing horribly, and they have those demo disks. Honestly, I don't like demo disks. I've got a few from PC Gamer, OXM and some other magazines, and they aren't that great. They seem so... PS1-era. I don't know, its hard to explain my dislike of demo disks.

Anyway, we all know that Sony's online plan for the PS3 is junk. It supposed to be like Xbox Live... but better... and free. Yeah, right. Anyway, they couldn't finish it before launch, and now, Resistance is shipping with its own game-only online system, a lot like the PS2's online that everybody hated. If the PS3 had a real online system, they could offer download able demos, like XBL, which I would say is better that those damn demo disks.

I'm wayyy off topic. Back ON topic now, my friend thinks the cost of a Blu-ray is too much for a demo disk, and since all the Sony fanboys love their OPM demo disks, Uncle Ziff is worried that they won't buy it. Oh hum.

I'm not positive, but didn't something like this arise when the PS2 and Xbox came out, then the DVD was the format of choice? I mean, I think somebody told me that demo disks for the 7th Generation of Consoles wouldn't happen because DVD's were so darned expensive.

Well, Blu-rays will either fail or become the next big format, and the price will go down. So, despite my hatred of the Blu-ray format, I can't blame that on OPM's demise.

My friends also brought up another point. I have become very anti-Sony in the past few months. I mean, I ripped their throats out on the battery recall, on the PS3's overall design, on the PS3's price, on the rumored price of the PS3 games, on just about everything, including Blu-ray? I thought OPM was the weakest of the 1UP Group's print offerings (yes, even GCW, which I ignored for a rival PC gaming magazine), and when I suspect Sony shutting them down, I suddenly defend them. How did I come such an anti-Sony guy? Who knows. I think its just a reaction, since everybody thinks the PS3 will be teh rock, and I naturally think it'll be the worst of the "big three", so I'm going into defensive mode. Oh well, I think I'll be proven right on PS3, Sony and Blu-ray. I doubt the general public will ever know.

Oddly enough, I didn't like OPM, but I subscribed to their podcast feed so I can hear their thoughts on the closing, but thats the only reason. I don't own a PS2 (my suffered a terrible accident after 2 weeks) and I don't plan on getting a PS3, but I want to hear the staff's comments.

This is what THEY should do. Go the shock jock route and totally bitch out everybody who canceled OPM and name names and give reasons. Well, they probably don't want to burn bridges with Ziff, but honestly, I think that would be going out in a blaze of glory.

Then again, that would be a hell of a bad job reference when they try to go get a job at some other magazine.

Today, Ziff-Davis Media (magazine publisher, former owner of TechTV, well, ZDTV), announced they were closing the doors on OPM, the Official Playstation Magazine. I'm going to assume on why.

Despite popular belief, ZD pays Sony a regular annual fee to use the "Official Playstation" name and logos, and thats where it ends. They might get one or two stories a day or two early, but they are very.. unofficial, less so than people think. If I wanted to start an unofficial Atari 2600 magazine, I could, as long has I just said it was being made without permission of Codemasters or whoever owns Atari now.

I'm going to guess that Sony raised the price of the Official Playstation for the PS3. Why? Because, they're retarded. Sony is honestly, one of the stupidest companies right now. That whole battery crap, their design choices in the PS3, that overpriced and overpowered Cell Processor, and I could go on and on.

Now, I haven't spent my time crawling the Ziff Davis stock reports, but I would bargain that OPM was the lowest magazine on their subscription, but still, it looked good for Ziff and got the Playstation name. ZD's game magazine group in way in the hole, they've spent like over a million their budget, I believe., and Sony raising their price was too much.

If the PS3 looks bad this holiday season, look to rumors of Mitsubishi or some other big Japanese Conglomerate buying Sony. Personally, I hope they do. Sony needs the good press.

Well, let me just make a short note, ATI and AMD announced they're working on a CPU/GPU hyrid, called Fusion. Fusion, is one of my favorite words. For English class, we had to do a creative writing thing, and I wrote this 100-page SAGA where I was the CEO of a video game/internet property/media company called Fusion. I think AMD should pay me royalties.

Yeah, right. Well, I have no idea how this Fusion thing will work, they'll have to have some special chipset on the motherboard, or have their own motherboard. If they have the GPU PCI based or something, then they'll need some kind of chipset, if its integrated into the motherboard, they'll need their own motherboard which AMD isn't into. It'll be interesting to see what they'll do. I'm a bit of a NVIDA and Intel fanboy, so I hope these AMD and ATI... or AMD/ATI... or just AMD goes bankrupt, but whatever, the unbiased part of me wants to see how, technically, they pull this "Fusion" off.

This wasn't the point of my post. The point is, Sony's Playstation 3, Microsoft Vista Home Premium or Apple's iTV? Which will become THE way to watch computer based content on the television?

Faults? The Playstation 3 will only stream off of the PSP, if I'm right, and thats bad. For Vista, you need a whole computer set up to your TV, which isn't a good deal. iTV? Well, no one knows how it'll work at this point. Steve Jobs' keynote, while it was "revolutionary" because Apple announced it this far out (very un-Apple), was very cryptic.

My pick? Well, the Media Center will do the most, basically because its a whole PC connected to your TV. The one that'll do it the easiest simplest? The iTV? The one that most people will have in their homes and most likely use in this fashion? The Playstation 3.

Now, I'm a Xbox fanboy, so I dislike the PS3, but the Playstation brand is insanely popular. The name "Playstation" is what "Nintendo" was in the 90's. My grandma doesn't say "Do you want a new Nintendo game for Christmas?" like she did with my cousins, she says , "Do you want a new Playstation game for Christmas?". The odd thing is, my cousins didn't own a Nintendo (Sega Genesis all the way) and I don't own a Playstation.

The two names are buzzwords with a generic gaming console with non-gamers. Not to mention the following that the PS brand has. I remember when the PS2 came out. Friends of my dad, who weren't really big gamers, they had Madden and few other games on their PS1, but were excited for the PS2.

Despite all its flaws, the high-price, the janky controller, the blu-ray format (which WILL fail, mark my words. I'd promise a future blog on the subject, but I don't seem to be keeping up on those promises.), the PS3 will sell like hot cakes, and some people will use their PS3 in a media... convergence... thing?

Me? Why would you want to watch YouTube clips on a TV? Sure, if you buy a movie, then it'll be cool, but I don't... and if I did, I'd settle for my 21" Samsung LCD monitor. Sigh, I don't understand people.

Robert Heron over at Ziff-Davis predicted that one day, we won't have a PC, we'll have 10 computers, in various different household items, including a car. I don't like the idea. Don't get me wrong, I like having little computers in TV's, Cars, whatever, but no base computer? How will you surf the net? Through your TV? On a tablet on your nightstand or near your sofa? Meh, we'll have to see.

Nevertheless, today, we are enjoying technology today that was not even being DREAMED up 20 years ago. I'm not fond of the "free thinkers" who say we're living in the second Renaissance, but honestly, aren't we? The first Renaissance brought about new ideas in modern science, medicine, architecture, art and music. In 500 years, will my relatives talk about how this era brought in new ideas in computing? Will they look upon men like Jobs, Gates, Laporte, Ellison and Kildall in the same light has da Vinci, Shakespeare, Copernicus, Clouet and others?

Its a radical idea, but I think we're there.

Congratulations, my friends. We're Renaissance men.

1340

2006