It just seems strange to me.  Everything I read leading up to Christmas, reguardless of your stance on the 360, was that the PS3 was going to be awesome.  Was the 360 going to be able to compete once the Playstation was released?  Would shortages of PS3's be M$ saving grace as 360's will finally be available everywhere?  Would 2nd gen 360 titles match the first batch of PS3 games?

Now everything is the other way around.  Blogs and posts, analysis by pro developers and business guru's are all touting trouble for Sony and Microsofts widening advantage.  All this in about a month.  We'll see.

As for Sony and the PS3, I'm hoping for the best, but I'll believe it when I see it.  Just like Microsoft, they're only goal is to be the dominant "set-top box" in your living room.  The source of all of your networked media entertainment, and the cut of the revenue from all those movie, music and game downloads everyone has to have.  Maybe Sony will show some smarts and realize that in the long run the 360 is hobbled.  Not in the game front, although DVD9 may or may not work out.  No I mean from the media content angle.  If the future is all about "micro-transactions", then requiring people to buy a new PC with XPmedia center to use the multimedia features of the HD living room sort of puts the overall cost of using them in the stratusphere, and makes the PS3's expected price seem like a bargin in comparison.

As for Sony's plans, let me tell you about something cool.  I was privileged to see a great presentation by some SCEA reps on the future of gaming in the next gen. It detailed all the usual stuff on increased processing power and what that will do to make unbelievable new graphics as well as bring new life to the game characters, pulling us into these worlds like never before. The big attraction was how we would be able to use one simple online interface to sample, use and save movies, music and games. It very much sounded like what LIVE on the 360 with a connected XP media center PC can do, but from one machine and one online location from the press of one button. I was amazed, and every one of my fellow Babbage's and Software ETC managers was abuzz for the rest of the night. Problem is... that was in Atlanta, 1999! For Sony I guess it worked well enough. Sales for thier small white box competition suffered as word of mouth on the amazing abilities of the "emotion engine" and the all-in-one network adaptor hard drive helped to encourage people to save their money for the next spring. I guess I'm just stupid since I'm skeptical of their promises of everything and the kitchen sink for the "cell" powered PS3. Well, with a "spring" launch I guess I'm only a few weeks away from playing that awesome Killzone 2!