Playstation 3 price rumors?

[Eric]

Anyone else heard anything on this system?

I've heard it costs $800-$900 to just 1, wonder how much it'll retail for...

[Lox]

I heard $400-$500 a few months back.

I'd buy a 360 sooner than a PS3 if it was $800-$900.

Of course, I'm getting a Revolution regardless.

[Flip]

If Sony makes it out of reach, over $400, then i may go the Revo route, too.

[Don]

$800-$900 is what rumors say it will cost to make. Even if it costs that much it almost certainly won't be sold at this price for the sake of being competitive, though it makes you wonder about the profitability of the system if they'd have to take say a $400 loss per system.

[Julius Seeker]

What Ken Kutaragi said:

We're looking at a life cycle of 10 years with the PlayStation 3. We're currently shifting from standard TVs to HD TVs, but in the next couple of years, most flat-panel TVs will be full HD. We're releasing the PS3 with full HD features from the start so that consumers won't have to buy another version of the console in the future. For the same reason, we're using Blu-ray as the PS3's disc format.

I'm aware that with all these technologies, the PS3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households. I think everyone can still buy it if they wanted to, but we're aiming for consumers throughout the world. So we're going to have to do our best (in containing the price).

I'm not going to reveal its price today. I'm going to only say that it'll be expensive.

[M'k'n'zy]

It will take a while before I get a PS3. Unless of course, Suikoden VI gets released before the price drops...then its going to be VERY hard for me to resist.

[Nev]

Sadly, I am more than willing to be a whore for the PS3. If I have a spare $1000 and that's what it costs, I'll do it.

I'd be surprised to see them price it under $500, however. A console launch is a *huge* risk no matter how you slice it - it's nearly always a loss leader for the software, and if they don't move enough systems, they won't be able to cover the launch through software sales, because the installed base of consoles won't be enough. For example, I still believe Microsoft has lost money on the original XBox.

[Julius Seeker]

$350 is my limit on videogame systems at launch. I am doubting right now that I will be getting a PS3 at all unless I can find it reasonably priced on Ebay or second hand somewhere.

Even if I wasn't buying the Revolution, I wouldn't exactly be starved for new games, especially with Xenosaga Episode 3, Zelda Twilight Princess, and Final Fantasy 12 coming out this year.

[Zeus]

I say it's going to be the price of the Xbox premium system. They really can't go lower unless they're willing to take a HUGE hit. The $300 magical price might be ignored for the first ever console launch

[Imakeholesinu]

CNBC says that PS3 may be delayed up to a year.

[Flip]

That would be death and i think they know that. The 360 is the new PS2 coming out all early and PS3 and the Revo have to only be a year behind at the latest, like the last console releases. I think the XBOX would have been royally raped if it was more than a year after the PS2 and a year after the GC.

I'm kind of the point where i could play my PSP and PS2 for a long long time before i felt the need to play anything newer. There are so many good PS2 games out there that i havent touched... maybe a new console system will not be in my future... OMG, i'm old!!

[Nev]

A year's delay would hurt them, but I think it would hardly be death, especially if their hardware rolls over its competitors (which it will, if the dev kits are a good indicator).

I adopt consoles mostly due to franchises and/or big-name titles - for instance, Lost Odyssey is my driving force to pick up the XBox 360 that I'll pick up later in the year. If there's a game on a console I want to play, I'll buy that console, then start picking up "iffy" games for it afterwards.

The PS3 has Metal Gear Solid 4. To be honest, that game *itself* might be worth a thousand dollars for me to play. Having just beaten 3 (and you guys were right, the plot is OMG awesome quality), I won't miss it for love or money - and I know the PS3 isn't going to hurt for good games all around.

That being said, I know I'm in the minority as far as my willingness to blow a grand on a console and launch goes. So I'm going to guess $400 on the console at launch, though really I'd have no idea.

[Torgo]

Usually I wait for the first price drop before I buy a console. That's about the time when the bigger titles are released. After the launch developers have some experience programming for the console, so they know how to better utilize its resources.

However, a price drop from $800 probably won't be much.

[Julius Seeker]

I don't think a year delay will hurt Sony's sales a great deal, maybe only 5%, I largely doubt more than 20%. It all depends on the games, if companies still keep releasing a lot of good PS2 games for the next year and a half then the PS2 will sell well for the next year and a half. There is still Final Fantasy 12 coming out at the end of 2006 internationally.

[Zeus]

CNBC says that PS3 may be delayed up to a year.

I guaran-damn-tee it will be out in November or December of this year at the latest. They might even push for a September release. There's no way they're coming out much after the Rev or the 360. They proved with the PS2 that they don't need any good software for a year to attract the sheep as long as it's backwards compatible.

[Julius Seeker]

A year's delay would hurt them, but I think it would hardly be death, especially if their hardware rolls over its competitors (which it will, if the dev kits are a good indicator).

I wouldn't be sure that the PS3 will perform as well as the Xbox 360. It seems like the PS3 is investing much more into being a media center than any other system currently available.

Based on the specification comparisons, PS3 falls short of the Xbox 360. It may have been a very bad idea for Sony to invest so much money into such questionable components (specifically Cell Processor and Bluray).

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/617/617951p1.html

[Kupek]

That comparison is a Microsoft press release. I wouldn't pay any attention to it unless you have a decent background in high-performance computing.

I've never bought a console that cost more than $120. I'd even have a hard time justifying that much these days because of how little I play games. Anything above $200 is out of the question.

[Nev]

Interesting reference. I stand corrected.

It looks fairly decent to me, Kup, and I am a game programmer now...I understand how most games really are a mixture of floating-point, integer, and vector (or matrix) ops, and how a system with high performance on all three would outperform a system optimized for floating-point.

From what I understand, actually, floating-point tends to enter in mostly at a purely graphical level, which might dictate that PS3 games won't have a problem being beautiful, but they might have a problem trying to do complex AI or game logic.

Then again, I do have to note that the journalists at GameSpot don't really have enough knowledge to do that sort of analysis, and I trust Microsoft about as far as I can throw Steve Ballmer's fat butt across a football field...

[Julius Seeker]

Either way, graphically, I doubt that there will be a noticible difference between the two consoles. There isn't a gigantic difference between the 360 and original Xbox and the 360 is vastly superior on paper. In fact, Conker looks as good or better than any 360 title I have seen yet.

[Nev]

Either way, I doubt that there will be a noticible difference between the two consoles. There isn't a gigantic difference between the 360 and original Xbox and the 360 is vastly superior on paper. In fact, Conker looks as good or better than any 360 title I have seen yet.

It's new hardware unfamiliarity on the developers' parts. Give it a year and you'll see 360 titles that graphically (and perhaps gameplay-wise) blow normal XBox titles into little binary bits.

[Zeus]

That comparison is a Microsoft press release. I wouldn't pay any attention to it unless you have a decent background in high-performance computing.

I've never bought a console that cost more than $120. I'd even have a hard time justifying that much these days because of how little I play games. Anything above $200 is out of the question.

You'll be waiting a long while for a PS3 or Xbox 360 then. They're gonna be losing money for at least 3 years so they're not gonna want to drop them unless one of them falters big time.

[Zeus]

Either way, I doubt that there will be a noticible difference between the two consoles. There isn't a gigantic difference between the 360 and original Xbox and the 360 is vastly superior on paper. In fact, Conker looks as good or better than any 360 title I have seen yet.

It's new hardware unfamiliarity on the developers' parts. Give it a year and you'll see 360 titles that graphically (and perhaps gameplay-wise) blow normal XBox titles into little binary bits.

Technically for sure, but you'll need an HD TV with component cables to tell the real difference.

Upcoming generation is about volume, not prettiness.

[Kupek]

Note that when I said that was a Microsoft press release, I meant it literally. IGN just copy and pasted a press release. There's a lot of stuff in there that's conjecture and misleading.

For example, the fact that the XBox 360 processor has a dot product instruction and the Cell processor requires multiple instructions to do a dot product is just CISC vs. RISC. Needing more instructions doesn't necessarily make the total procedure slower.

Another example is the claim that only 10-30% of the instruction mix in a game is floating point. How did they arrive at that number? How many games did they look at? What variety of games? Even if we assume that the instruction mix number is accurate, how much total <i>execution time</i> is spent doing floating pointer operations vs. integer?

The press release is loaded with problems like that, which should be no surprise since it's an advertisement for the press, not an honest evaluation.

[Nev]

Note that when I said that was a Microsoft press release, I meant it literally. IGN just copy and pasted a press release. There's a lot of stuff in there that's conjecture and misleading.

For example, the fact that the XBox 360 processor has a dot product instruction and the Cell processor requires multiple instructions to do a dot product is just CISC vs. RISC. Needing more instructions doesn't necessarily make the total procedure slower.

Another example is the claim that only 10-30% of the instruction mix in a game is floating point. How did they arrive at that number? How many games did they look at? What variety of games? Even if we assume that the instruction mix number is accurate, how much total <i>execution time</i> is spent doing floating pointer operations vs. integer?

The press release is loaded with problems like that, which should be no surprise since it's an advertisement for the press, not an honest evaluation.

Well, agreed. The instruction mix will tend heavily on the game. Something like Katamari Damacy will have tremendous collision-detection requirements (which are often integer ops), whereas things like Final Fantasy that don't have excessive gameplay logic will probably use lots of floating-point ops to produce stunning animation and effects.

So, thinking about it, you're probably right.

[Nev]

Either way, I doubt that there will be a noticible difference between the two consoles. There isn't a gigantic difference between the 360 and original Xbox and the 360 is vastly superior on paper. In fact, Conker looks as good or better than any 360 title I have seen yet.

It's new hardware unfamiliarity on the developers' parts. Give it a year and you'll see 360 titles that graphically (and perhaps gameplay-wise) blow normal XBox titles into little binary bits.

Technically for sure, but you'll need an HD TV with component cables to tell the real difference.

Upcoming generation is about volume, not prettiness.

Bullshit! I've seen screenshots of Lost Odyssey. I am totally willing to be a graphics whore for stuff like that.

[kali o.]

Technically for sure, but you'll need an HD TV with component cables to tell the real difference.

Upcoming generation is about volume, not prettiness.

As someone who bought a 51" HDTV specifically for his 360, lemme tell you - the "real difference" graphically is HUGE this gen.

Me = in gaming heaven.

You = too cheap to buy one until it is on sale for under $200 dollars and comes with free cable (all good

Those Sony-only fanboys are in for the biggest treat (if they have HDTV, less so if not) with the PS3...I tried playing some PS2 games and - simply put - they look like utter shit.

Seriously, I can't gush enough. Playing Condemned on 50+ inches, with surround sound digital setup up's the immersion, coolness and fun factor so high that last gen games just are not enjoyable anymore.

Oops, rambling offtopic. I disagree with your assessment of "volume" this gen. I think the main improvements we are in for are:

- Graphics (detail)
- Audio
- Backend stuff (AI/Physics/online)

I suspect dev costs will pave the way for shorter but more detailed/packed games this gen. Of course, I'm simply assuming by volume you meant size/length...you could have meant something else (in which case you chose an inappropriate word).

[Lox]

I think by volume he meant in terms of the amount of "stuff" going on simultaneously on screen. For instance, the improvement would come from having a 500 man army coming at you without any slowdown or a loss of quality as opposed to a 100 man army on a previous generation system.

This was just an example, btw. I have no clue what the details would be.

[Zeus]

You = too cheap to buy one until it is on sale for under $200 dollars and comes with free cable (all good

I've already got free cable....plus free Cdn and US satellite

So Microshaft is going to have to win me over with games like the original Xbox did. I'm sure they'll come and by then I'll likely have an HD TV as well, so maybe I'll change my tune.

But I've played an Xbox 360 on a HD TV at my bud's EB and it's damned pretty (it was Kameo; I know, not the best example, but it is noticable), but it just doesn't give me a hard-on anymore. I also tried PGR3 (the only game I currently want for the system) on an HDTV and as nice as it was, it wasn't like the first one, which was that HUGE jump over GT2 (and GT3). The last game that was truly jaw-dropping graphically was RE remake for the 'Cube more because it was so photo-like. Even RE4, as pretty as it was, didn't excite me since I'd already seen it in the remake.

I need more than that (plus games I actually want to play) in order to drop $600 on a 360. Hell, I've been playin' Guitar Hero, Shadow of the Colossus, and my DS almost exclusively over the last 3 months and none of those games are incredibly strong graphically (Shadow is artistically, not technically, great).

Maybe I'm just old and desensitized to graphics-only stuff now. It's all about the gameplay for me, regardless of old-school, new-school, Sony, Nintendo, or Microshaft. And I'm more drawn to the funky games nowadays (Guitar Hero, Shadow, DS stuff, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat). As much as I thought GT3 was an amazing game for it's time, I just didn't care about the sequels since it was just more of the same (same as the 7 trillion clones out there).

[Julius Seeker]

The reason why people often wait for systems is largely due to the fact that they always drop in price, and as they drop in price, the availability of games becomes greater. For example, you can pay a thousand dollars at launch and get a PS3 with Gran Turismo 4 and Crash Bandicoot. You'd have the system sitting around for a while, and nothing but generic titles to play. The price will drop before anything interesting comes out for it; and with systems that could cost $800+ at launch, the price drop could be in hundreds before the good games start to come out.

The alternative

Waiting a couple of years, spend even less money and get: Final Fantasy 13, Soul Calibur 4, Xenosomething, Chrono Something, Dragon Quest 9, Metal Gear Solid 4, Resident Evil 5, and Katamari something. There are still millions of people who have yet to buy their current generation consoles yet. PS2 sold 275K units in North America during the month of January.