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PS3 has become a 'whipping boy'
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 2nd July 2007
Ted Price of Insominiac Games feels that the PS3 will undergo a massive boom in sales come Christmas.
And some people are a little upset about that.
Ted Price, of Insomniac Games, believes that the PS3 has become "the whipping boy for the press" according to GameDaily.biz, mainly because he thinks "it's human nature to want to take down the guy on top."
Insomniac Games was in the news earlier this year for annoying the Church of England with Resistance: Fall of Man, which featured an alien/human gunfight in Manchester Cathedral.
"I think everyone just wants to fill it full of arrows because Sony's had some pretty amazing success over the years," Price says. "And it's easy to overlook that it's been, I think, the fastest-selling PlayStation console. I think it's human nature to want to take down the guy on top, and Sony has definitely gotten its share of...mud."
Price is of the opinion that the console will undergo a massive boom in sales when Christmas hits, though we're sceptical that it'll happen without a substantial drop in price.
Got PS3, or are you more of a Wii or 360 gamer? Let us know your opinions in our community forums.
Related articles on bit-tech.net
Comments (52)
Question has the PS3 really been the fastest selling PS console? is that because the other just sold really slowly?
Both of which they have themselves to blame for.
Then it snowballed with the PS3 delays, the cost... adding DRM to DVDs so they wouldn't play on some DVD players... the lack-luster showing of games.. the crappy first round of Blu-Ray releases... and a general arrogance that the PS3 is the greatest and best thing the human race has had the privilege to witness.
But their phone and TV divisions are doing ok... and everyone likes those ads with the exploding paint and bouncy balls.
So to "defend the honour of" or "hate" a faceless corporation is completely pointless.
you forgot the killing off of Lik-Sang. :'(
Either way Its rather clear that they have lost this round. But should be seen is that its such a huge loss on both to the consumer and the company. Just look at the cooperate backlash they have been getting by both developers and market analysis.
Also loosing alot of A* titles to the other brands must be trully a kick in the balls.
TBH i wouldn't be surprised that Sony would dissapear for the next gen and suddenly come back with something amazing the following gen.
PS3 may have become a whipping boy, but as others have noted, it's entirely justified. Sony's attitude during the pre-release phase of PS3, the comparatively high price of the console, and Sony's insistence that the console is selling well (despite evidence to the contrary) all lead to the slant of the reporting of Sony & the PS3. They've got no one else to blame other than themselves.
And its not the small Dev's its brands like EA.
Well of course you did, they both sold out in the first week as their consoles we so popular.
and Xbox 360 + Wii > PS3
LOL!!!! Not to mention you can't take Sony's numbers for real considering the number of people that only bought a system in hopes to sell it on ebay. I work retail and we had a third of the PS3s we sold come back unopened. It took 5 weeks to get rid of those. The other store in our area got a second shipment in after the holidays and the 64 units managed to stretch almost 3 months.
Thats not tuning back the games thats the devs not putting the effort in to optimize the game for different hardware, PS3 a different machine to X360 and needs to be developed for rather than have code ported from Xbox360 to it, if lazy ports from X360 play like arse on a high end PC why would it play any better on a PS3, consoles can't match a highend PC for power but you wouldn't know it with some of the shite that comes out from X360 land to PC, the PS3 is having the same problem.
Sony has been a bit of a whipping boy, some of the press is justified but a lot of it is just to generate page hits on web sites, Sony bashing has become a pastime bit like bashing MS on the OS side and people like to read it.
As for the PC > console, I totally agree. I myself am I total PC gamer and I would take a PC over a console anyday. You may pay more for hardware, but you will be playing the newest games at excellent FPS for 1-2 years and you can upgrade whenever needed. The PC is the essence of "360" considering people use it for anything and everything.
I would love to agree with the PC > Console agrument but as Microsoft seems to be throwing the biggest spanner in the works for PC games at the moment (Vista) so I have to disagree, you have games which are coming from the 360 onto PC and playing like arse because it cost so much to do seperate develoment paths for different hardware and so something has to suffer, this is typically the PC as devs fear rampant piracy and think they get more coin off of Console, do you think MS gives two hoots about PC gaming if they can push you to their console its all gravy for them, MS is pushing people to Vista to make money with token gestures like games for windows etc. passing off the illusion that they care about gaming on the PC, selling you a vision of the PC and Console in perfect harmony but the company itself see its future in digital distribution and centralized software servers, the future is everyone paying a subscription to use the OS and software on an MS closed box (the nexbox probably) the Xbox is the foot in the door, people are bashing Sony but not looking at the MS long game.
As for PC hardware costs and value a 8800GTX isn't going to last 2 years the card is already struggling in recent DX10 benches ( lost planet. CoH, CoJ ) to do more than 60fps at HD resolutions, in 12 months you'll be wanting something better, you could buy a PS3/Xbox for the price of one of those cards and it will last more than 2 years and the games will always work, no waiting 9 months for drivers, patches, no disappointment when you put your £2k windows box on to play R6V and get 20fps or something equally wank, theres something to be said for the current generation of consoles, enough grunt to look good and play well from the off and as developers become more familiar with the hardware will only get better, will your PC software get better without major hardware spend, it hasn't in the 25 years or so that I've been PC gaming, its unlikely to start now, tis very sad.
I am fortunate enough to have all consoles and a decent PC and apart from cranking up a few race sims I have found it hard to justify my PC cost, I use a cheap lappy for web stuff as it doesn't consume 300w idle or make noise like my games PC and have been getting my fill of gaming via the Consoles and its suprising my games PC hasn't been on much since Jan (when I picked up the 360)
Oooh, I'm rambling and ranting now, probably making no sense and right off topic :o
Sadly most people on this forum seem to have a fairly one sided opinion from what I've seen in the past.
btw this is from a 360 console owner like I say aint even played the PS3 ;)
Didn't the PS2 sell 125,000 consoles in two hours through only the internet? "I think" doesn't really qualify something as a fact.
The reason the PS3 has been getting flak is because its a piece of crap, not because its just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and fallen into the crosshairs of major organizations all around the world. Sony needs to seriously get out of the web-papers before they permanently loose whats left of their respectability and status.
what is sony complaining about...
There are two types of "DX10" games.
The first is a DX9 engine with some DX10 features slapped on top, this tends to cause a fairly large performance hit as you are just giving more to do without taking advantage of any performance improvements.
The second is an engine built around DX10 from the ground up, these apparently offer massive performance improvements and/or allow for better features to be turned on without suffering the same hit as you would with the DX9+ engine.
All of the "DX10" games out so far fall into the former category so aren't really good games to judge anything by (other than slapping DX10 features onto a DX9 engine isn't the hottest idea in the world) There is also the fact as reported repeatedly here by Bit-Tech's own Tim, that DX10 drivers still have a ways to go untill they are up to the same standard as the DX9 ones have managed in the what 4-5 years they've been around ?
Oh on the topic of losing exclusives and such, I was happy to read yesterday that haze is also coming to PC :) I'm looking forward to that one.
With due respect mate, there's no 600 PC that can play games at more than 1 FPS. Unless your idea of "games" is Tetris and Bejeweled. That you may have found a nice offer from a desperate friend doesn't mean that a high-end PC is better gaming value than a PS3 (or X360 for that matter).
Regarding the PS3 I agree completely with the Insomniac guys. Bashing the PS3 is the new family sport. The amount of crap it's getting is simply mind-blowing. It's no more expensive than PS2 or PS at launch time. It's a much more open console than Microsoft's (Hey MS, 120 for a 120Gb Hdd? :|). It's a helluva media center (specially with the new firmware updates). Unlike the X360 it doesn't break once a week and twice on Sundays nor does it sound like a 747. And it's shiny. And the same people that are spending 600 on an iPhone and should be drooling over one are bashing it because some rootkit Sony used once and giving MS a free pass despite having a sub-par console (from a manufacturing point of view) and despite their business practices being traditionally worse.
To hell with all those jumping the "bashSony" bandwagon. I'm getting one this afternoon :D
Had to chime in here ;)
Nobody knows yet. If I had to, I'd bet one monthly wage that it's just hype. DX10 will bring a massive performance hit, DX10 parts or not. There'll be Crysis at 1900x1080@30FPS with anything else than SLI'ed 8800GTX or worse...
We've had the software developers, hardware developers and multiple big-league game developers all saying the same thing, and the technical articles seem to make a lot of sense in backing it up, so I'd be very surprised if it was just hype.
Why would you not be suprised? they are all trying to sell you something, they are not going to tell you yes, its going to be crap until our next release of hardware as you won't buy anything, Everyone wants to tell you it will be fine, Hardware manufacturers want to assure you that your new cards will be fine for the next gen DX10 games because you won't buy anything otherwise, if you buy it and these performance gains don't come, not their problem, it supports DX10 we never said how fast, you have to upgrade.
The game devs will tell you that the game will runs fine with almost anything you throw at it because they want you to buy the game, if it doesn't work well when you've bought it tough, turn the options down or you'll be expected to upgrade.
Vista didn't just come out yesterday, the RC was out what 18 months ago and was pretty solid, so hardware manufacturers have had more than 6 months to come up with something.
Which is part of the reason Europe doesnt like the PS3, we feel we got cheated when they removed full backward compatibility and didn't reduce the price enough to compensate.
At least one of the developers that comes to mind is CCP games, developers of eve-online, who think DX10 is so big a "Paradigm shift" that it was worth hiring a lot of new graphics devs and making a whole new engine for from the ground up, they think its going to be something special and there is no extra money in it for them specifically, nor will they stop supporting the old engine (which still looks pretty good today, even though it was made 7 years ago)
Its in there interest to introduce new and improved graphics to attract and keep players, but if they didn't think it was going to be something special they'd only have bothered going with a new DX9 engine which would have a lot more potential customers.
Age of Conan is also doing DX10 from the ground up and if its just going to make the game harder to run it would be commercial suicide, since it would put a big limit on how many people can realistically play the game and thus subscribe.
Its groups like that which really have me convinced, not nvida or ati or microsoft or any of the FPS who often go on and on about graphics to the exclusion of gameplay anyhow.
Non-European PS3 achieved such high rates of backwards compatibility because they contained additional hardware (essentially a cut-down PS2) to enable them to do so; European models don't contain this hardware, so the emulation is done entirely in software (as it is with Xbox360)
Yup there is a distinct lack of information on what the PS3 can do unless you go an look for it, Sony would do themselves some favors by doing an educational ad rather than the abstract BS they have been putting out, sure it can play games people expect that, but half wouldn't understand what upscaling is let alone bluray and going online to buy games is voodoo to people like my brother, he came to me to build him a PC for games etc. a quick demo of my gentoo install doing all the stuff he needs and he is happily using his new PS3 as a fully fledged computer and games machine, using Ubuntu this time as its quicker to install and fine for web/email/msn and downloads, no worries about whether games will work etc and he can still get music for his mp3 player.
A lot of consumers don't get Hidef and don't understand why their flash LCDTV looks pants compared to there old TV with DVD/old consoles etc. so selling a tech heavy piece of kit like this to your average Joe is going to be difficult, consumers need some education to get it, thats what Sonys PR should be doing, the new promos for Bluray (5 free films etc) and hopefully some more good games after E3 will help push it further but they need to advertise its features, they'd probably sell a few bravias in the process :D , it is a machine to take you through the next 5-10 years of gaming and HD entertainment and has everything they'll come to appreciate, if they ever figure it out :D
My beef with everyone's sudden interest in BC with the PS3 is the fact that switching over to a software platform enables them to cut back on production costs; and also that over 60% of available PS2 titles work with the PS3 from the get go, but people just chose to listen to blind reporting anyway. It's not 100% of course, but they are working up to that. For the most part they made sure the top sellers on the system did work. They can get to the niche titles most don't play later; and who can blame them? Atleast they aren't getting Barbie to work first over bigger selling titles like MS did. They also rolled out their software emulation platform with a very strong BC list. But most, if not all, misreported that the new emulation meant most PS2 games wouldn't work, which was untrue; but people still ran with it. People still do today despite the Firmware updates that enable more games to work. They have probably made more headway into reaching that 100% than MS did getting to 50%.
I owned a 360. For 17 hours. In that time it stopped reading discs and also ran way too hot to be normal. I own a Wii and with those two consoles I have more then enough ways to entertain friends when they come over (Mario Party 8 anyone :) ). As an owner of a PS3 I laugh every time I read or hear someone who doesn't own one or has never played one bash on them. Most of the time it's pure ignorance that comes out of their mouths (no one here, you guys are all great. You guys actually know what you talking about. The dbag at gamestop makes me resent buying games there...) and all I can do is say "Do you own one?" When they say "Well, no, but..." I simply say "Well then what gives you the right to talk about a system you know nothing about?" I've never received more blank stares in my life.
I do agree. Sony does deserve a lot of what it receives in the form of criticism. They talked a big game and when it came down to it, they were below the bar. They could've been a little less cocky, I'll admit, but there's a lot to uncover with the PS3 still. Anyone remember the 360s launch? Anyone remember the Nintendo 64s launch? There's never been a "perfect" launch of a console (save maybe the Wii, that little rectangle is simply amazing) and yet people still pretend like one console did while another (or others) didn't.
I'm more then happy to be a proud PS3 owner and I will say it any day of the week. I love my system. It's great not only as a game machine (it's also been fun re-playing some of my PS2 and PS1 games since I don't wanna buy the memory card adapter) but I use it as a DVD player and Blu-Ray as well and I am more then happy with it in those respects as well.
So that's my rant. Sorry for length. Just throwing my $0.02 into the discussion :)
Personally, none of the consoles interest me, and the PS3 least of all (though i would probably say I'm most loyal to Sony of all 3) due to the high price tag
Ill stick with my PC thanks, there is nothing any of the consoles offer that the PC doesn't, whereas the PC offers much more then all the consoles combined