My 2 cents on the PS3, PSP and Sony

Over the last 3 weeks or so I have been on a search for an Xbox 360 or a Nintendo DS Lite.

In doing so I have had the opportunity to see the shelves stocked "full" with plenty of PS3 and PSP systems.

At the Best Buy in Long Island (not sure which, but near Bohemia) the portable system case was full of PSP units. So many in fact that they had actually "spilled" over into the part of the shelf that should have had the DS Lite systems.

I also saw scenes similar to these pictures.



I envision the employees making small forts out of the all the PSP and PS3 boxes that they have.

On one of my many calls to Toy R Us while searching for my Xbox 360, I asked (as usual at that point) "Do you have any Xbox Premiums or DS Lites?". The answer was a little different this time around.

"No, but we have plenty of PS3s, do you want one of those?" asked the clerk.

"Nope. That is quite alright." I told him.

I mean, I have always considered myself a gamer. But as Jeremy and I discussed recently, neither of us are what we would consider "hard core". I mean up until recently I have actually shunned console gaming. But I definitely have caught the fact that Sony has been screwing the pooch when it comes to servicing the gaming community lately.

I mean in terms of the PS3 there are a few things that really strike me as fsck ups.

#1. The damn thing is too expensive. Yes, I dropped a nice chunk of change on my 360. However, that is still cheaper than the PS3.

#2. They missed their delivery dates, too many times. I mean the 360 might have shipped a little early. I remember reading some articles about patches that the 360 needed. Maybe, as a PC gamer I have been trained to understand that the disc I buy at the store doesn't mean the fscker is gonna work out of the box. I don't think there has really been one game I bought in the last couple of years that didn't have a patch released by the time I was actually able to buy it at the store.

And now that consoles have internal hard drives and are really more like PCs than their grandfathers (nintendo, atari 2600, etc). The patch phenomenon is something that console gamers are just going to have to live with. I mean my 360 downloaded the latest "update" when I turned it on.

However, I know some of the delays with the PS3 was that they decided to use a bleeding edge technology, the Cell processor. I mean yeah, way cool. But come the fsck on guys. It is untested, it is expensive and it is overkill. Which leads back to point #1. I am sure they could have gotten all the horsepower they needed for the PS3 out of a AMD 64-FX2 or similar processor that has already been put through it's paces. And it would have shaved a few hundred bucks off the price I am sure.

#3. They are Sony. This last point, I think might be my own personal opinion more so than a consensus. From the things I have read Sony has become to arrogant when it comes to gaming or technology in general.

The whole Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD. I had a Sony Mavica. I loved it, but I paid way too much for it. At the time I didn't know much about cameras but I knew Sony was quality. And it was quality. However, that is when something hit me. The Sony Memstick was a proprietary memory format and was (still is) more expensive than the SD and other forms of flash memory on the market.

I remember when the Sony mini-disc was the thing that you had to have. It was going to replace CDs. I knew a few folks that had it. But I never bought one, because my CD players was just about as good (with improvements in skip protection.) and when I got my MP3 player that really made the mini-disc player pointless.

The lesson here I guess is Sony likes to come up with new technology but force it as a proprietary move. This hasn't panned out for them well.

Let's review the list:
1. Betamax vs VHS
2. Mini-Disc vs CD / MP3 Players
3. Mem-stick vs SD-Cards
4. UMD vs DVDs?
5. Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD
6. PS3 vs Xbox 360
7. PSP vs DS Lite

Items 5 - 7 can consider to be still open fights. But I am pretty sure the UMD format has had the second to last nail in the coffin struck. If I can find the article again about which movie maker said that they will no longer be pressing discs in the UMD format I will post it here again.

I think Sony had a smash hit with the Playstation and PS2. But I think their arrogance made them stumble and fsck up.

But who knows, if the right game title comes out and is only available on the PS3. All those PS3 forts might have to come down.

But I know that this past x-mas all I wanted was a 360 and a DS-Lite, not a PSP.

Back to the grind.

Laterz