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| High Cost of Gaming - We are All to Blame | 5/24/2006 |
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As we normally do, We have been following the announcements revolving around the up and coming Playstation 3 (Nintendo as normal is tight lipped about Revolution). The worst of the recent announcements is the reported delay of the PS3 launch. We don't particularly view this as bad news. We believe this will better prepare it's launch as far as the hardware and games are concerned. Better a successful delayed launch then a bug ridden rushed effort that plagued their initial launch, (and recently Microsoft's Xbox 360 launch).
Sony is reportedly finalizing the system specs and controller specs, but the announcement of a 60 GIG hard drive coming standard was definitely interesting. That storage space has to be for something more then ripping music (the most common use for the Xbox HDD). We believe emulation will play a role in backwards compatibility (thus lowering the need to add extra hardware components at an increased cost). We are sure the HDD will use space for this, caching needs, and of course multimedia files. The biggest use will obviously be for Sony's online strategy to rival Xbox Live. The standard HDD will of course encourage developers to take advantage of the feature so of course there will be online components and downloadable content. There service is also reported to be free, but the added announcement that developers can use there own servers will obviously mean fees in certain game titles (something we see now anyways).
What does all the stuff we wrote above have to do with the title? Obviously with all the goodies Sony is planning on packing with the added 60 GIG HDD, this puppy is going to cost a pretty penny. There have been outrageous reports ranging as high as $900, but mostly the $500 price seems to be the common magic number.
We don't see a $500 price point, but somewhere in the 4 hundreds sounds right. Why do we think this? Well we suppose we could blame the gamers themselves.
Xbox 360 came out with the 2 SKU system, but we all know those who purchased the system got the full $399 package including games. So guess what? All these complaints about pricing did not amount to much as far as corporate Sony is concerned. To them they saw game purchases totaling more then $450 on average for a competitors system. That just told them that although we will complain...The "Must have it now" gamers will still pay the money. So Sony execs are probably imitating the movie Jerry Maguire and shouting "Show me the money!!" Heck even Sony Prez Kuturagi-san has been reportedly saying to start saving your pennies. What does that mean to us gamers? Say goodbye to the old $299 price point that is expected for new consoles. It's a funny number anyways. Would you believe the old Atari 2600 (a console released in the 1970's) retailed for $299? We suppose time and inflation can be to blame, but mostly it is we the gamers.
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