One unfavorable side-effect of the blu-ray victory (for me) is that it will delay any PS3 price-cut for a good while. Not only will demand for PS3s hold steady or increase, but Sony will want to keep the PS3's price a little high for a while to avoid competing directly with stand-alone players that offer much less. Sony will want to encourage other manufacturers to enter the blu-ray market. That won't happen if nobody will buy a stand-alone player who can buy a PS3 for either the same price o...
Smart move. Nobody should criticize you for that. I think even the most dedicated 360 fanboy will not defend the quality of the launch model, if he has half a brain.
I own a falcon elite. Word on the street is that it has had average reliability during the 4-5 months since it's been out. Nothing special but not awfull either. However, if you can wait some more, nobody ever suffered from buying electronics later than sooner. You can buy your new 360 when this game comes out, if ...
Come on guys, read the article.
Berkowitz is leaving because... well let's just say had he successfully executed, MS would not be buying Yahoo. Pieter Knook is leaving because his department was responsible for what windows mobile is today, or more accurately, what it is not. And the third guy leaving was partly responsible for Vista development. These guys didn't exactly light the place up, and none of them is getting a gold watch from MS on their last day at work. Maybe the ...
One stopgap measure MS can take to offset the shortage of premium and elite models is to bundle the arcade units already on the shelf with an HD for the same price as a premium. It's clear that nobody wants the arcade models and it's pretty foolish to keep cranking them out. Ratcheting up production at this point is probably not a smart move because even in a good economic climate, sales traditionally slow down during the summer. What makes it worse this year is that the US economy is going t...
Oh? Which words sounded too big for you? Let me guess. It can't be "analysis." People here use that word all the time because of names like Pachter and Divinich. It's got to be "proficiency" and "rudimentary." Only smart and intelligent people use words like those, right?
I think the word you were grasping for but just couldn't find to describe me was "pretentious." That's really what you wanted to say right? Instead of saying someone is ...
The launch model 360 had serious hardware issues. That's beyond debate now. MS admitted as much to the tune of a billion dollar set-aside. Saying that you have a launch model that's still running does not reverse this fact. All it proves is that you've been lucky - thus far. Now I truly want to know if these same issues persist with the latest 360 hardware revisions ("falcon" or later). But two big obstacles make this next to impossible for an ordinary consumer to figure out.
"Unlike the original Xbox, the 360 is more suitable to a hardware redesign. The original Xbox was basically a PC crammed into a large (for a console) black plastic box with a green X plastered across the top. In order for a hardware change of the original Xbox, not just one but multiple components would have been required to go through the research and development process in order to acquire a redesign." -LOLOL
I had to copy and paste that entire paragraph because it'...
Could it also have something to do with the fact that a lot of violent titles that tend to do well on the 360 are banned in Germany? Is Gears still banned there?
There had better be more to the 360's portfolio of upcoming exclusives than just that. I still find it hard to believe that MS has no big surprises lined up this year, but they ought to start talking about them already. If Shane Kim expects to get by this year on just the titles they talk about here, then the 360 is indeed looking at a glum 2008.
I wonder why the writer assumes that Sony will immediately benefit from the die shrink. It doesn't own any cell fabs anymore. It's just another chip customer now. Any cost savings from the new manufacturing process will benefit the manufacturer (IBM), but whether IBM will decide to shave its profits just so they could cut Sony a break is another matter. The math needs to work for IBM before it will work for Sony. IBM will not cut its margin per unit unless it believes the added sales volume w...
I can't tell from just looking at the picture how the reservoir will fit inside my case. Does it go into a drive bay? I have the x1900 version with liquid cooling. Its reservoir was designed to fit into an adjacent PCI slot, which was a problem on the mobo I originally wanted to use because there was a PCIe x1 slot (with tv tuner card installed) between the PCIe x16 slot for the card and the nearest regular PCI slot.
The bad Sony press ended around the same time the PS3's price dropped to below $400.
Here's my fearless prediction: all these "360 is in trouble" stories will end when the price of a 360 platinum/pro drops below $250, as long as this happens soon. If MS waits until 2009, it will be too late.
Due to the emergence of bluray as the standard hi-def media format, and the better quality reputation of Sony's hardware, MS will have to maintain a $150 to $200 di...
Let's be consistent here. Many of the same people that are writing these articles are the very same people that accused MS of stuffing the retail channel with 360s just so they could claim they hit their stated target of 10 million consoles "sold" by January 1, 2007.
If one goes by the logic of these previous accusations (which I believe are true, by the way) then not all of the 10 milion units MS "sold" into retail in 2006 were actually bought by consumers ...
I would prefer that they just phase out the arcade and price the premium/pro at the arcade's current msrp. That way, they can finally drop the price of the add-on HDDs and allow everybody who got suckered into buying the core/arcade to upgrade on the cheap. Then they should allow devs to require a hard drive for games if they want to.
However, if the Arcade allows them to actually undercut the wii on price, I can see why MS would want to keep it around. The Arcade is is a way f...
sniff sniff...do I smell fear?
These are the most reliable numbers for Europe that you are going to get for free, until some other company decides to share its internal intelligence. EA paid professional research firms for these numbers, and they have to be good because EA relies on these numbers for making actual business decisions, not stupid fanboy pissing contests. EA has no reason to underestimate or overestimate anybody's sales, because they do so in peril of losing money. And unless you actually have access to infor...
I would tend to agree with you except with one caveat: if the PS3's software attach rate does not improve, then it won't matter how many more PS3s there are over 360s. Titles will still sell better on the 360, and as you pointed out, the developers will follow the money.
Currently the PS3 attach rate is just 57% of the 360: http://www.gamasutra.com/ph...
If this keeps up, the PS3 ...
At this point I'm not sure it will matter anymore, as far as 3rd parties are concerned. Even at its current installed unit level the 360 is already able to sustain robust and highly profitable software sales, pretty much assuring for itself the continued strong support of EA and other multi-platform developers until the end of its product cycle. There is no chance that we will again see a situation similiar to the previous generation, where the PS2 received lopsided support from developers an...
Crap flows downward son. I don't know which dinky little economy has to suffer your marginal-to-negative contribution, but it really makes no difference because it's just a matter of how much lower downstream you are. Anything that goes down our toilet will surely land on your head.
Hate on us all you want, but don't cut off your nose to spite your face. A US recession will be bad for us but it likely will be worse for you. And the gaming industry, which relies 100% on discret...
A lot a Yahoo shares are held by large institutional investors that also hold huge blocks of MS stock. They all like the idea of an MS takeover of Yahoo but don't want MS to sweeten its offer any further. So I predict at the next Yahoo board election, these institutional investors will help vote in a new board of directors that will be more favorable to MS' buyout offer. This deal will get done whether Jerry Yang likes it or not.