Shut up and play the games, eh? $600 - that's the biggest betrayal in gaming history - anyone who defends Sony for this is a clueless simian. When the PS1 came out, Sony dominated the market by offering a powerful console for only $299, rife with inexpensive $50 or less games. The Saturn was too expensive, releasing early, and destroying its credibility with retailers. The Nintendo 64 had expensive cartridges - developers weren't willing to risk making niche games, as the expense of producing cartridges (which could fail to sell, and would then have to be swapped for their newest game, or refunded, to the stores) was too high.
The PS1 exploded, it developed a massive library of games, and a strong worldwide following. Then Sony announced the PS2 - $299, better graphics than the PS1, a built in DVD player (not really a selling point by the time most of us got one), and even better, more games. The PS2 was again took the market - fairly priced system matched with tons of games - though early on it got a rattling from the Gamecube (at least for a bit ), a one year lead, and being the Playstation, followed by a huge library, made it the best selling system ever.
Flash foward, the PS3, all Sony had to do - and this is really simple - release another $300 system with improvements to the graphics - maybe make it $350 and have a hard drive standard, build the online we've seen with PSN, and that was it. None of this "blu-ray" and "teh cell" crap - none of this "let's release a $600 console".
The PS1 and PS2 were popular because they were affordable, sold well, and then had a huge library of games. Instead of following that winning formula, Sony chose to release a $600, which hasn't sold well, and now has the smallest library of games.
Y'know why people bash the PS3? It's not because they're *afraid* of it - it's because they're frustrated at how badly Sony screwed up their golden goose. The Playstation was ours, okay? It was the everyman system, casuals liked it because it was cheap, hardcore gamers liked it because it had awesome games, niche gamers liked it because Japanese developers were doing stuff like Disgaea, Odin Sphere, et cetera...
Now? There's no more Playstation man... where are those games going to go? For the niche / anime/ japan gamer, those games are going to the Wii, where they're *much* less likely to make a translation over to the US (given the Wii audience). A lot of the US / UK small developer games are going to the 360 - Silicon Knights, playing nice with Microsoft. The hardcore games are going to the 360... a lot of the casual games development is now over on the Wii.
Still, it sucks - for two generations there was a ubiquitious platform where you could get all the JRPGs, niche games, hardcore games, and casual games you wanted, and now that doesn't really exist. Many of those games aren't even jumping over - they're simply going to be gone forever, as the Wii audience demands something different.. bah... Sony ... how could you mess up so badly?
subrosian
Great post! I loved my PS1 and PS2, but I loathe Sony for doing what they are doing with the PS3. Hopefully they will do it right with PS4.
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