Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon Liu  I agree. All the different SKU's seems retarded to me.
I love my PS3. It even plays games. That's about the only thing it does now for me. Since I have a dedicated BD player, the PS3 has now become almost exclusively a video game system for me! I know. Not many people can say that! |
Jon,
I've been doing a lot of research into the standalones as well. What model and make did you get? Im a big home theater buff so am interested...
-scaryogre
EDIT:
Commentary on Sony PS3:
After reading quite a bit and thinking about this some more....it certainly seems that Sony is kind of caught in a position they expected to be in last year. In other words, they expected the adoption of Blue-Ray a lot sooner than it actually happened. Now that it is all of a sudden reality (BRD is the HD standard) they are kind of in a marketing funk as to what the consumer wants.
Before they won the HD war it seems their marketing over-reacted to compete with the Xbox 360 and the unexpected success of the Wii by dropping support for PS2 backwards compatibility (no doubt cost-saving) and eliminating a few extra USB ports + sporting an inexpensive 40GB hard drive. The result? A PS3 that was price competitive and (during the holiday season) specifically marketed at pushing BRD consumer adoption as a movie player at the expense of few added features. And oh by the way, you can play PS3 games on it too! So the current conditions really seem to exist (to me at least) as a result of a marketing and pricing decision.
To correct this Sony must implement backwards compatibility with PS2 (hardware) even if it costs a bit more. Why? Because people are now looking at the PS3 as the future "all encompassing" solution to their ability to own and play HD movies (now that HD-DVD is out of the picture). The PS3 is up-datable via firmware, it will play BRD, display some family photos, it has an online service, and it plays next gen video games.
By offering the PS3 as an all-in-one solution (which was Sony's initial marketing goal by the way) and including PS2 backwards compatibility they are really helping consumer acceptance. Let's not forget that the PS2 software library and its' hardware was one of the best all time in sales. By having backward compatibility is really helps Sony and should increase the demand for adoption of Blue-Ray sooner rather than later for those on the fence.
Finally, consider this: By returning to their initial goal of marketing the PS3 as an all-in-one solution they not only increase their hardware sales, but with it increase PS3 software sales, legacy PS2 title longevity (meaning more sales), and most importantly it further cements them as the leader in HD with increased BRD movie sales. The more movie sales that happen means the studios focus their efforts on producing them. It's a win all the way around.
In short....if there was a PS3 currently available that had PS2 backward compatibility, all the bells and whistles, and was in the $499 price range (depending on included software) I wouldn't be writing this and would be picking it up at the store right now.
My two cents...
