PS3: An Unofficial UnEndorsement
So last week, an editor at a very popular videogame magazine came right out and said she intends to pass on getting a Playstation 3 when it debuts this November, and instead, opt for the year-old Xbox 360. This in itself is not so strange, except that Dana Jongewaard is, as it happens, managing editor at the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine. (And yes, that’s the actual title of the Sony-blessed Ziff Davis publication.)
Writing on her blog, Jongewaard spells out her reasons for declining to buy a PS3 when it goes on sale this Fall, and the wince-inducing $600 pricetag for the full-featured version is just the beginning. A dearth of high-profile, PS3-exclusive games accompanying the launch is just as crucial for her– as it likely will be more most gamers.
“Grand Theft Auto 4 and Assassins will be available for the 360 at the same time. And most of the big guns–Final Fantasy XIII, Metal Gear Solid 4– won’t be hitting for quite some time after the launch,” she notes.
And while the PS3 comes with Sony’s highly-touted Blu-ray drive, that’s no selling point for Jongewaard either, because getting the full value from the next-gen optical disc would also require buying a high-definition TV.
It’s a sharp and gutsy opinion to air, coming as it does from a leading editor in the gaming press, which normally just regurgitates publicity hype from the leading publishers and console makers.
That it comes from someone on the very staff of a Sony-endorsed magazine is yet another warning sign of PS3’s waning strength in the console wars, one that the company would be well-advised to heed. Ignore the fanboy editors kissing PS3 butt at your cocktail parties, Sony execs– listen to Dana Jongewaard.
(Via Kotaku.)
That’s freaking ridiculous, how can a person without a Hi-Def TV be qualified to talk about the future of video game systems? She’s an idiot: the PS3 is an incredible value because of the power of the Cell processor (something I’m intimately familiar with) and the included Blu-Ray drive.
I think the future lies with the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. I for one plan to get a Wii as I want a fun experience, at a low cost.
Om, your lack of intuition continues to disappoint me! The PS3 is well priced and Blu-ray will drive the sale of HD screens which are climbing Q over Q anyway! Get with it!
Dana seems to have missed the mark in a HUGE way with respect to the PS3. She has embarked in a, “career limiting move” out of utter ignorance. As already commented on the cell processor has the potential to crown the PS3 king on its own. The BluRay format is here to stay. When the PS2 shipped many bocked at having to purchase the integrated DVD player…those same folks didn’t seem to mind much once developers started taking advantage of the DVD capacities to make bigger (better) games. And c’mon Dana…you can’t knock PS3s superior 1080p output picture when you aren’t even running your xbox360 at its true potential. This gives you no ground to stand on with respect to discussing graphics quality on any current system as you are not seeing it as the developers intended. Finally…does the historical fact that the launch of the PS1 and PS2 were huge successes? I for one believe Sony will come good on yet another successful launch exceeding all expectations.
If you don’t have a HD set then you are not going to get everything out of the XBOX 360 either. I plan on buying the PS3 and Wii and have a 360 already but while the $600-700 price tag is a lot so isn’t the $400 dollar price tag of the XBOX 360.
I think that once you add the wirless adaptor to the Xbox 360 @ $99.00 and add the HD-DVD add on you are up to the cost of the PS3 as well.
So in an Apples to Apples comparision they both end up costing about the same.
@Rundle: Like you, I always buy my systems based on the over-hyped specs and tend to ignore the games that are offered. I mean you buy the thing to show off your knowledge of ahead-of-its-time technology rather than play games, right? I’m sure the Atari Jaguar and Sega DreamCast teams would agree with us.
@harvitpal: Check the byline homie. Om didn’t write this. And for the record, Wagner is just reporting on what someone else’s take is, which is newsworthy only because that person could be considered a pretty strong Sony partisan. There’s no lack of intuition there.
With that said, I also think it’s a little ridiculous that someone who won’t take the dive into HD is pontificating on next-gen systems. The battle between the big-boys (MS & Sony) is largely driven by this new dynamic. But while they play the “my-GPU-is-bigger-than-yours” game, the Wii is doing some truly innovative things with gameplay and is the real system to watch in this generation.
I have a feeling the commenters on this string don’t make up the average video game buying public. $600 is a lot for a high school or college kid or average family to plunk down. Blue Ray may well be great and cheap at $600 but a lot of people simply won’t spend that much money on electronics in a year.
The editor there is utterly clueless. As I pointed out on my site, she’s pounding the $600 pulpet over and over again and neglecting the fact that the $500 PS3 is in every way adequate (and equal or superior in video quality to the 360) for all but the most discerning videophiles and will be until at least 2010 or 2011. Unlike the Xbox360 where if you get the cheaper version you cannot play every game fully, the PS3 $500 version will play every PS3 game fully and with no degradation, all the way up to its full resolution of 1080p. All of the expansions on the $600 version are specialty and are not available on any Xbox360 currently on the market.
(Before I get any replies about HDCP, The degradation of video caused by that will not affect bluray movies until 2010-2011, and will never affect video games on the PS3. By 2011 they should have $200 Bluray players and the HDMI PS3 itself should be down to $250.)
teh comments are showing the way. Getting a blu-ray for 500 bucks makes the PS3 worth the price. Also whereas I am a fan of the wii, Having the motion sensor in the ps3 is pretty exciting.
the 360 is nothing spectacular . Its just an evolutionary product and a cheap (now discountinued ) power mac g5. sure msft did a good job with it. But the ps3 specs = xbox 720
@ Ahsan you are right … 600 bucks is a lot of money but the 360 costs 400 bucks ? not exactly very affordable either !
I’m sorry, but when did the PS3 fanboy’s decide to astroturf Om’s site? Lets look at the facts here and reflect people:
Editor of OPM says she is going to buy a Xbox 360…in November, for her personal use.
Said Editor says she doesn’t have an HDTV at her home
She said she still wants to get a PS3, but monetarily cant do it at release time likely.
400 buck XBOX 360 verses 600 buck PS3, or even 500 buck PS3 console. And she is hoping there is a price break in the 360 to coincide with the PS3 release, bringing the 360 down to about 349.99 for the premium system assuming its a small price cut.
My own thoughts on the PS3:
Why am I being forced to buy a Blu-Ray player to play games? So I can help Sony try to entrench yet another propietary format that fills Sony’s coffers? Sorry but I learned my lesson with Beta in the 80’s and laughed my ass off when I saw Memory Stick and Minidisc. Of those three formats only Memory Stick has managed to stay around still and I still hate it. (Sure Beta exists in high end Betamax broadcast gear but that market is a different beast entirely). Sony says I need Blu-Ray disc so the game developers can make a game with big enough textures to make it look Shiny(tm) Enough(tm) to make me want to buy Grand Turismo 5 or Tekken 7, etc.
If I cared about High-Def movies I would want a standalone player meant for a videophile, not a game console that also happens to be able to play HD content off a disc. Microsoft saw the market confusion with the formats and stuck with DVD which is well known and cheap to make and use. I’ve yet to hear a developer bemoan about how limiting a dual layer DVD-9 disc is for their games content. More importantly, if I decide at some point that I do want a cheap HD-DVD player output I can add it, but I’m not being forced to buy it because of Microsoft’s ideological reasons/commitment to the format. That is Sony’s biggest problem, anything they make they try to tie to only Sony created formats and tech if at all possible at the exclusion of other better available technology.
Now back to the argument at hand about the Editor’s statements:
So if we are taking the price argument into thought here then its possible its 350 verses 500. Say 500 is all she can spend reasonably? That gets her a low end PS3 and no games. What’s the point of that? 350 leaves you with room for 2-3 games and an extra controller with the 360.
I’ve got a premium xbox 360, and no HDTV at home. Yet I am still well qualified to talk about how the XBOX 360 graphics look in games. If I want to see what they look like in HD I go over to my friends house with the 70-inch 1080i rear projection set. Frankly the difference isnt all that much. Mostly its an expanded viewing angle that is rendered and easier to read text and some fine detail in certain aspects of a games mechanics. Gameplay changes hardly at all between SD and HDTV however.
More importantly, OPM has their own consoles and HDTV’s that their editors use when reviewing games people! Think a little bit before letting your fanboyism show here. I expect this kind of diatribe in the comments over on 1up.com or Engadget.
Oh and Kazriko, if you think the PS3 Blu-Ray output is going to be videophile quality just because it has component output or HDMI on the 600 dollar version then you really are going to be in for a rude awakening. The PS2 was a passably okay DVD player, but it doesnt hold a candle to standalone boxes for 200 that could do go HD upscaling and other tricks the Sony PS2 would never be able to pull off because fundamentally it was a game system that also happened to be able to play DVDs.
When I started my first job, got my first flat and started to buy things for myself, I decided that I was going to stick to one brand in my flat. I remember researching products brands for ages before I made up my mind. My decision was to go with Sony products because my research proved that it was the best at that time. Now today, 11 years on, I own a Sony TV, Video, DVD, Camcorder, etc… My flat is basically Sony’d! I previously owned the PSOne and now the PS2… and I WILL get the PS3 for one simple reason: The XBox360 has not done enough to sway my loyalty away from Playstation! Yes, there are many concerns around the PS3, which I’m very aware of, but from my experience Sony will get it right! Their products have given me great service for many years and there’s no reason for me to change (i.e. There’s no “better” games console out there). And I suppose this is the same for all current PS2 owners… i.e. Why change over to another console, when we know that Sony will deliver a great product!? But I’ll also be honestly and say that, if the PS3 is a proven flop, I’ll be one of the first to change my games console… but until I see the XBox360 or Wii clearly having a “better” offering, I’ll stick to what’s been serving me excellently for many years (i.e. Sony – i.e. Playstation)
Good on you Dana Jongewaard for being honest, and screw all you “Fan boys” for slamming her for doing so. So sick of all these fanboy comments, probably made by little 11 years olds who will spend Daddy`s 600 bucks, instead of having to work themselves for their PISS 3, ohhh I meant PS3.
Well that was a very adult comment Daniel. It was typical of the 11 year-old’s you seem to hate so much!! Good posts by Daniel Spisak and Spike. They are opposite sides of the scale, but very level-headed and debatable. The kind I like to read. No doubt this debate will go on heatedly by both sets of supporters for quite a while still. I’ll just sit back and see who comes out on top in 12-18 months time
Wow.. as if this all matters? How can people get so wound up about game console specs, prices, etc. They are just game consoles.. sheesh. Fun to be sure and a good occasional distraction to kill a little time but hardly going to be affecting our lives in any long term meaningful ways.
Get out and do something real for a change.
Hiya guys. PS3’s avalible right now at my online store for purchase. Check out http://www.cheepzone.com They ship in 2 days! Prices will go up soon as demand gets high… Buy quick. -Chris