Final PS3 Information

• The father of the Playstation was introduced: Ken Kutaragi. (He has the most charisma of the bunch).
• Ken finally releases the new controller after a little historic speech.
• It looks identical to the previous two Playstion controllers.
• However, he reveals one new secret.
• The controller has motion detection as a standard feature.
• Six degrees of separation allows the user to control the action by just moving the controller.
• They made a big deal of this and the fact that no external sensor is required (a knock at Nintendo).
• This sounded great during the conference but what wasn’t found out until later was that the rumble feature was removed to have the motion detection.
• If you ask me that’s more of a step backward and not an improvement.
• And if you want to knock Nintendo, they should probably do it somewhere else, because the Wii controller has rumble, motion detection and a wireless speaker in it, and I’m guessing more than 6 degrees of freedom.
• It looks like Sony got scared away from the stupid boomerang design and didn’t have time to come up with anything better and stole an old Nintendo gimmick. (Controller motion detection was used on the N64 as an add on).
• A long demo of Warhawk using the motion detection to spastically control a fighter jet came next.
• Finally Kaz comes back out on stage with the last major announcement of the show, the price.
• Sony unveiled two price points for their new system.
• One system will come with a 20 GB hard drive and sell for $499 dollars US (549 Canadian, 499 Euros).
• The other system will come with a 60 GB hard drive and sell for $599 dollars US (649 Canadian, 599 Euros).
• In Japan the 60 GB hard drive system will have an open price meaning it will be determined by retailers.
• They promised to ship 2 million units, world wide for launch.
• They also promised another 2 million units by Christmas.
• That was the end of the press conference with many people thinking that having their next gen, High Def,  Sony fix would set them back a whopping $500 dollars this Christmas.
• After the show, it turns out that, that wasn’t entirely true. Once again Sony leaves out the important incriminating details.

My Take

• Overall Sony’s press conference was really the worst of the three.
• It was long, and Kaz is just a dry speaker.
• Sony focuses on numbers a lot and I don’t know how many times I had to wait for a new presenter to come back on stage.
• In the end, all the PS3 really has to offer is some better looking games.
• Most all of the games that had playable demonstrations didn’t look any better than what is already out on the Xbox 360.
• That’s probably to be expected for launch title.
• Only the videos of what the future held really had remarkably enhanced graphics.
• So you’re eagerly awaiting to buy a PS3 for both great games and new HD 1080P Blue-Ray movies?
• If that’s the case, they you probably won’t be able to squeak by with the lowly $500 model. The differences between the two go way beyond just adding a larger hard drive.
• A number of features are missing from the lower end unit.
• First the $500 unit will not have any HDMI output.
• This virtually renders any 1080P or Blue-Ray HD advantages useless.
• It’s not even entirely known if the cheaper system will be able to output HD at all. A lot of analysts think it won’t but I’m not sure why 720P producing component cables might not be an option.
• And don’t expect to hook up the cheaper PS3 wirelessly.
• It will not come with Wi-Fi.
• And finally, also removed are the slots for memory sticks, SD, and compact flash cards.
• Perhaps the worse oversight of the systems design is the fact that if you buy this unit, you are stuck with all those features.
• None of them are upgradeable.
• You will not be able to purchase a larger hard drive if you wanted.
• And for you aesthetic people out there, the cheaper model will not feature the chrome lettering found on the $600 version.
• Also for those who have been waiting for the full featured PS3, you may want to take note of some of the features dropped from last year’s model shown at E3.
• Gone are the dual HDMI 1080P outputs. There will only be one.
• I can’t say I’m surprised by this. With 1080P TV’s barely hitting the market, anyone thinking of hooking up two of them would be insane. (I was actually planning on doing this.)
• Gone are the three Ethernet ports. Only one will be both versions.
• Also missing are two of the six USB ports originally shown.
• Also, it was rumored that very few of the $500 units will even be made for launch, knowing that most gamers will want the $600 deluxe version.
• Overall Sony gets a C for their conference.
• Yes they wowed us with some dazzling graphics from games off somewhere in the future, but other than that it was all either disappointing or something we’ve seen before.
• A press conference is supposed to be about delivering the news not hiding it.
• Not being up front with the differences of the two price points produced false excitement.
• When Microsoft released the 360 at two different price points, Sony criticized the move, and said they weren’t going to do that.
• The network features and exactly what they mean or how they work, were not discussed, but its obvious what they do have is copying what Microsoft has done with Xbox Live for years.
• The look of the network interface was a little busy and confusing too.
• Adding motion detection and getting rid of the boomerang controllers was good.
• Removing the rumble feature for said motion detection was bad!
• The move can be looked at as directly copying an idea from Nintendo.
• Not only does Nintendo’s new controller look far superior in terms of motion detection, they were actually doing it years ago in the N-64 with the “Tilt Pack”.
• Loosing Grand Theft Auto exclusivity to Microsoft will not prevent those people who don’t want to spend the dough on the PS3 wait for one.
• In general, it seemed like Microsoft had a much better lineup of console exclusives and original franchises coming.
• Sony has a couple strong favorites left in MGS and Gran Turismo, but they are easily comparable to Forza and Splinter Cell that you can get on the Xbox.
• Finally the price point is very high and the removal of features with no chance to upgrade them in the future does not make the cheaper model very attractive.
• Sony is betting that the average gamer now at 29 years of age, won’t have a problem shelling out the dough.
• With such a huge fan base of past Playstation owners will Sony continue to dominate in the next round of console wars?
• A lack of innovation and a high price point will at least probably cause them to give up ground.
• Eventually the games will look better on the PS3 than anywhere else, but will the creativity still be there?
• Will they foster an online community comparable to what Microsoft is doing with “Live Anywhere”.
• I think Sony has a lot of work cut out for them if they continue to just sit and copy other companies’ ideas. Sure they have the power, but if they don’t execute, then they’ll slowly find that they are going the way of Sega, Atari, and to some extent, Nintendo before them as they all lost market dominance.

Rating C