Sony Drops the PS3 price to $499

[FretFire]

My NES still does console gaming for me. IMO Heavy graphics are better left to computers.

Consoles are great as developers can really max out what the hardware can do, where as on PC they have to allow for any possible hardware released in the past few years. Yes a $3000 PC will probably have better graphics than a modern console, but not by much, and not on every game. Plus you're spending $3000 .

[Venom]

Consoles are great as developers can really max out what the hardware can do, where as on PC they have to allow for any possible hardware released in the past few years. Yes a $3000 PC will probably have better graphics than a modern console, but not by much, and not on every game. Plus you're spending $3000 .

But... but... but then you can run Word and Excel too!!!

[ratherdashing]

Add to that the fact that the porn industry is going the way of HD DVD and you've pretty much got another Bata machine on your hands....

I think people are overestimating the power of porn in this day and age. The home entertainment market is not the same as it was in the VHS/Beta days. Blockbuster is backing blu ray, and that's pretty huge. I'm not saying the format war is over, but I don't think it's safe to say that porn will be the deciding factor.

[Skarekrough]

Add to that the fact that the porn industry is going the way of HD DVD and you've pretty much got another Bata machine on your hands....

The problem is that the consumers in the industry are moving away from solid media.

Kinda like when the internet eclipsed magazines, with the available bandwidth the entire concept of owning a physical copy of the DVD with the exception of backup purposes in regards to porn will be almost forgotten.

The porn industry was right once for the right reasons. Unfortunately they're missing the boat in great part now.

[ratherdashing]

Consoles are great as developers can really max out what the hardware can do, where as on PC they have to allow for any possible hardware released in the past few years. Yes a $3000 PC will probably have better graphics than a modern console, but not by much, and not on every game. Plus you're spending $3000 .

Dollar-for-dollar comparisons of PC vs. console is apples and orange IMO, but I get where you're coming from.

Also, there are plenty of games that simply need a PC. Can you imagine trying to play something like SimCity 4 or Civilization 3 on a console?

Other than that, I agree with your post.

As far as better graphics etc.: I think the gaming industry has for the most part completely lost touch with reality in terms of what people want from a console. The Wii is the exception - it is super fun and exciting, and can be enjoyed by a broad spectrum of people. It's the only new generation console that doesn't support HDTV, and it is clearly inferior to the 360 and the PS3 in terms of hardware, but people love it. That's why they're selling tons of units to people who don't give a crap about screen resolution, numbers of polygons, or frames per second. They are selling to people who just want to have fun, and it's working very well.

[ratherdashing]

The problem is that the consumers in the industry are moving away from solid media.

Kinda like when the internet eclipsed magazines, with the available bandwidth the entire concept of owning a physical copy of the DVD with the exception of backup purposes in regards to porn will be almost forgotten.

The porn industry was right once for the right reasons. Unfortunately they're missing the boat in great part now.

This is absolutely correct, however, keep in mind that porn was one of the first industries to completely embrace the Internet and e-commerce. If anything, I'd say they're ahead of the game in that respect.

[Skarekrough]

This is absolutely correct, however, keep in mind that porn was one of the first industries to completely embrace the Internet and e-commerce. If anything, I'd say they're ahead of the game in that respect.

Ahead of the game in the past, sure.

But the problem is that no one has come up with a good content delivery system with the necessary parental controls for the industry to make available which will allow them to see the necessary returns.

[FretFire]

Dollar-for-dollar comparisons of PC vs. console is apples and orange IMO, but I get where you're coming from.

Also, there are plenty of games that simply need a PC. Can you imagine trying to play something like SimCity 4 or Civilization 3 on a console?

I completely agree, but when comparing PC to consoles from a graphical standpoint then the large price discrepancy does come into play. Then again if you're more worried about getting your Civ on then you probably aren't console shopping anyways, making the entire discussion moot. PCs and consoles often attract different types of gamers.

[Venom]

The problem is that the consumers in the industry are moving away from solid media.

Kinda like when the internet eclipsed magazines, with the available bandwidth the entire concept of owning a physical copy of the DVD with the exception of backup purposes in regards to porn will be almost forgotten.

The porn industry was right once for the right reasons. Unfortunately they're missing the boat in great part now.

Frankly I'd prefer to have physical media. No need to accomodate the ever expanding storage needs for movies on hard drives.

I bought seasons 1, 2 and 3 of The Office from iTunes and regret it. Yeah I get season 3 before it's even out but Now I need to have around 15 GB of data of storage for that and external drives are just a pain in the ass.

Let's not even talk about the storage needs for my porn collection.

[\m/(00)\m/]

What advantages does the Wii or the 360 have over the PS3?

Fun Factor

[Skarekrough]

Frankly I'd prefer to have physical media. No need to accomodate the ever expanding storage needs for movies on hard drives.

I bought seasons 1, 2 and 3 of The Office from iTunes and regret it. Yeah I get season 3 before it's even out but Now I need to have around 15 GB of data of storage for that and external drives are just a pain in the ass.

Let's not even talk about the storage needs for my porn collection.

.....you want an entire shelf dedicated to "Anal Invaders Volumes 1-45"?

See...whether you're weird or not the answer is "no." You don't want to have to dedicate that sort of space to porn.

Remember that bit on "The Man Show" where they offered the service that after your death they would show up at your house and de-pornifiy it and do other things? Going electronic media only is in effect doing the same thing.

While I will agree that the storage requirements are what they are there are two things to keep in mind:

-The price of hard drives is always coming down and the size of them is always increasing.

-No one has done a content delivery system well enough yet. The footprint of the media needs to be lessened or the technology for streaming media needs to get better.

It's going to happen....it's just a matter of time.

[ratherdashing]

Frankly I'd prefer to have physical media. No need to accomodate the ever expanding storage needs for movies on hard drives.

I bought seasons 1, 2 and 3 of The Office from iTunes and regret it. Yeah I get season 3 before it's even out but Now I need to have around 15 GB of data of storage for that and external drives are just a pain in the ass.

Let's not even talk about the storage needs for my porn collection.

I dunno. Hard drives are dirt cheap these days. Personally I don't have a huge amount of room in my house for physical media, which makes having too much of it a concern. I recently put all my CDs in one of those big binders and threw out all the jewel cases, which was a great idea.

[Skarekrough]

Fun Factor

The Wii is a good unit for being able to pick it up and just go and play with it.

Unfortunately I think they're likely to fail unless they can figure out their online offering.

Microsoft does a great job, but they're not burdened with the restraint that comes with a target market as uninitiated as the market they're picking up.

Nintendo needs to make dead certain the experience is squeaky-clean or they risk dealing with folks that will pull the plug because of it.

[Venom]

I dunno. Hard drives are dirt cheap these days. Personally I don't have a huge amount of room in my house for physical media, which makes having too much of it a concern. I recently put all my CDs in one of those big binders and threw out all the jewel cases, which was a great idea.

Until either your single hard drive or RAID crashes then you're F'ed unless you're lucky enough to be able to store all of it on HDD and mirror it, it's much easier and cost effective to store a large movie library on individual DVDs. Without the physical media you not only need to pay for the movie or whatever but you also need to be able to reliably back it up and then if, on the off chance of losing the original and it's backup, you stand not only to lose a single movie or album but everythign else stored on that drive.

Yes I understand unlikely but I'd much rather have phyiscal media.

[some_dude]

I tell ya what, a PC has nothing on my Xbox 360 over HDMI and my 50" plasma set. PCs can't touch the hi-def gaming available on consoles these days.

I disagree. Having played plenty of cross platform games I usually find that after playing the computer version that the console version is usually slightly disappointing in terms of graphics, providing you have a half way decent computer to run it on.

Also, computer monitors have been running 1080i resolutions for a little while now and you can easily plug your computer into a 46in LCD TV if you so choose to (plasma's no good for gaming), so the graphics display argument is pretty much moot.

[Venom]

I disagree. Having played plenty of cross platform games I usually find that after playing the computer version that the console version is usually slightly disappointing in terms of graphics, providing you have a half way decent computer to run it on.

Also, computer monitors have been running 1080i resolutions for a little while now and you can easily plug your computer into a 46in LCD TV if you so choose to (plasma's no good for gaming), so the graphics display argument is pretty much moot.

Go ahead and plug your PC into a 46" and it will look like butt.

I've never seen games look like they do on my 360 and HDTV and I'm an old school PC gamer.

Say what you will. You're wrong.

[ratherdashing]

Also, computer monitors have been running 1080i resolutions for a little while now and you can easily plug your computer into a 46in LCD TV if you so choose to (plasma's no good for gaming), so the graphics display argument is pretty much moot.

Sorry to jump to another topic, but ...

Any modern plasma should be fine for gaming. The burn-in issues of the older plasma TVs are no longer a serious consideration due to improved phosphors and anti-ghosting firmware features. Most top-tier manufacturers are now claiming that ghosting is no more of an issue that it is on a modern CRT (when was the last time you heard of a CRT suffering from ghosting?)

Of course, LCD's are completely immune to ghosting/burn-in, but they still suffer from the drawbacks of LCD: poor contrast, color richness, and viewing angle compared to plasma. IMO, the only reason to get an LCD nowadays is if you intend to use it as a computer monitor that displays a mostly-static image (such as those flight departure/arrival screens at airports), or if you are putting it in a brightly-lit room since LCD's are much better at handling glare.

[exnihilo]

Remember kiddies, at the end of the day, the PS3 is still a much more powerful machine than the 360 & Wii. Anyone here know what folding, or folding@home is. Go look up the statistics, esp. those between the PC (equivalent to the 360 processing power) and the PS3, In just a matter of weeks after coming onto the market the PS3 overtook the amount of data processed by all combined PC's running, some of them for years. I'm not arguing which system is "better" here, I don't care, I like my PC, but when people say the 360 can match the performance (and future performance) of a PS3 it just simply isn't true.

cg

[lex666]

Sorry to jump to another topic, but ...

Any modern plasma should be fine for gaming. The burn-in issues of the older plasma TVs are no longer a serious consideration due to improved phosphors and anti-ghosting firmware features. Most top-tier manufacturers are now claiming that ghosting is no more of an issue that it is on a modern CRT (when was the last time you heard of a CRT suffering from ghosting?)

Of course, LCD's are completely immune to ghosting/burn-in, but they still suffer from the drawbacks of LCD: poor contrast, color richness, and viewing angle compared to plasma. IMO, the only reason to get an LCD nowadays is if you intend to use it as a computer monitor that displays a mostly-static image (such as those flight departure/arrival screens at airports), or if you are putting it in a brightly-lit room since LCD's are much better at handling glare.

Just like plasma, the issues you described for LCD TV's have pretty much been eliminated too. IIRC, LCD has better contrast and viewing angles than Plasma... Also, I've read that plasma and LCD may soon be replaced by LED TV's...

[exnihilo]

Sorry to jump to another topic, but ...

Any modern plasma should be fine for gaming. The burn-in issues of the older plasma TVs are no longer a serious consideration due to improved phosphors and anti-ghosting firmware features. Most top-tier manufacturers are now claiming that ghosting is no more of an issue that it is on a modern CRT (when was the last time you heard of a CRT suffering from ghosting?)

Of course, LCD's are completely immune to ghosting/burn-in, but they still suffer from the drawbacks of LCD: poor contrast, color richness, and viewing angle compared to plasma. IMO, the only reason to get an LCD nowadays is if you intend to use it as a computer monitor that displays a mostly-static image (such as those flight departure/arrival screens at airports), or if you are putting it in a brightly-lit room since LCD's are much better at handling glare.

True, and what are they rated for now, 15,000 - 20,000 hours. CRT's realistically were only rated for 20,000 hours anyhow, so plasmas have come a long way in the longevity category too.

cg