News PS3 has become a 'whipping boy'

Which is sad Tim because as much as the 360 costs it doesn't offer much of any BC even when considering it's still using a normal DVD player and the Xbox games were DVDs. Honestly, in North America I guess, this gives the PS3 a huge advantage over the 360 because of it's lacking it. I understand again that M$ didn't say anything about it and that it's ok that it didn't come with it, but it seriously should've been there for the price you have to pay and considering Sony did it with their Blu-Ray drive, it's shouldn't have been that hard to include it with the 360, so I would assume.

 

Unfortunately, recent research suggests that most console owners don't use their consoles for movie playback - only 13% of US owners said that they use their machines to watch movies. Worse still, only 30% of owners even knew their consoles could play movies. While Sony is touting the fact that PS3 is also a Blu-Ray player, current data suggests that PS3 owners buy considerably fewer movies than owners of dedicated players.

 

But backwards compatibility has absolutely nothing to do with what optical drives the consoles use, and everything to do with the processors that they use.

Non-European PS3 achieved such high rates of backwards compatibility because they contained additional hardware (essentially a cut-down PS2) to enable them to do so; European models don't contain this hardware, so the emulation is done entirely in software (as it is with Xbox360)

 

Yup there is a distinct lack of information on what the PS3 can do unless you go an look for it, Sony would do themselves some favors by doing an educational ad rather than the abstract BS they have been putting out, sure it can play games people expect that, but half wouldn't understand what upscaling is let alone bluray and going online to buy games is voodoo to people like my brother, he came to me to build him a PC for games etc. a quick demo of my gentoo install doing all the stuff he needs and he is happily using his new PS3 as a fully fledged computer and games machine, using Ubuntu this time as its quicker to install and fine for web/email/msn and downloads, no worries about whether games will work etc and he can still get music for his mp3 player.

A lot of consumers don't get Hidef and don't understand why their flash LCDTV looks pants compared to there old TV with DVD/old consoles etc. so selling a tech heavy piece of kit like this to your average Joe is going to be difficult, consumers need some education to get it, thats what Sonys PR should be doing, the new promos for Bluray (5 free films etc) and hopefully some more good games after E3 will help push it further but they need to advertise its features, they'd probably sell a few bravias in the process , it is a machine to take you through the next 5-10 years of gaming and HD entertainment and has everything they'll come to appreciate, if they ever figure it out

 

Please explain further........because if Xbox games were DVD formatted and 360 games are DVD formatted how could the 360 not play the games?

And why are you repeating something that we already know.....?

 

O yeah! Thanks sandys. Another thing to add to that list of things the PS3 can do over and beyond what the 360 Elite will allow and/or comes with in-box: You can use the PS3 as a computer (when you install a Linux OS); something you can't do on the 360 (legally I guess), so another plus, which I find to be freaking awesome when considering Ubuntu is FREE!

 

My beef with everyone's sudden interest in BC with the PS3 is the fact that switching over to a software platform enables them to cut back on production costs; and also that over 60% of available PS2 titles work with the PS3 from the get go, but people just chose to listen to blind reporting anyway. It's not 100% of course, but they are working up to that. For the most part they made sure the top sellers on the system did work. They can get to the niche titles most don't play later; and who can blame them? Atleast they aren't getting Barbie to work first over bigger selling titles like MS did. They also rolled out their software emulation platform with a very strong BC list. But most, if not all, misreported that the new emulation meant most PS2 games wouldn't work, which was untrue; but people still ran with it. People still do today despite the Firmware updates that enable more games to work. They have probably made more headway into reaching that 100% than MS did getting to 50%.

 

I seriously need to stop my PS3 praising because I know it's probably getting on people's nerves (and mine, too), but I must agree with sandys that Sony needs to try to do some explaining on what their system can do other than just assuming the consumer knows because at the price it is right now and with what the average consumer understands it will be very hard to sell the console without extrememly good games to outweigh the consumer's misunderstanding of everything else it does.

 

I own a PS3. I have a lot of great games for it. Most are ports of other titles, but then the titles like Resistance and Motorstorm really make me happy to own it. Both are great games and are a lot of fun single and multi-player wise as well.

I owned a 360. For 17 hours. In that time it stopped reading discs and also ran way too hot to be normal. I own a Wii and with those two consoles I have more then enough ways to entertain friends when they come over (Mario Party 8 anyone ). As an owner of a PS3 I laugh every time I read or hear someone who doesn't own one or has never played one bash on them. Most of the time it's pure ignorance that comes out of their mouths (no one here, you guys are all great. You guys actually know what you talking about. The dbag at gamestop makes me resent buying games there...) and all I can do is say "Do you own one?" When they say "Well, no, but..." I simply say "Well then what gives you the right to talk about a system you know nothing about?" I've never received more blank stares in my life.

I do agree. Sony does deserve a lot of what it receives in the form of criticism. They talked a big game and when it came down to it, they were below the bar. They could've been a little less cocky, I'll admit, but there's a lot to uncover with the PS3 still. Anyone remember the 360s launch? Anyone remember the Nintendo 64s launch? There's never been a "perfect" launch of a console (save maybe the Wii, that little rectangle is simply amazing) and yet people still pretend like one console did while another (or others) didn't.

I'm more then happy to be a proud PS3 owner and I will say it any day of the week. I love my system. It's great not only as a game machine (it's also been fun re-playing some of my PS2 and PS1 games since I don't wanna buy the memory card adapter) but I use it as a DVD player and Blu-Ray as well and I am more then happy with it in those respects as well.



So that's my rant. Sorry for length. Just throwing my $0.02 into the discussion

 

Whilst you have many valid points automagsrock, the problem is that here in the UK, we have been consistently insulted by Sony, and we don't like it when we get insulted.

 

Because they use entirely different processors. The DVD is just a medium for storing the game code and data. PS2 games are also stored on DVD, that doesn't mean you can put them in a Xbox and play them.

I'm trying to explain part of the reason why Sony were able to achieve such high levels of backwards compatibility. I also imagine that Sony have built the emulation code into the console's firmware, something which (for whatever reason) Microsoft decided not to do.

 

i have to agree with some of the members here, i don't think Sony is being attacked because its on top, but because of the number of crap things they've done, that have pissed off a lot of people

Personally, none of the consoles interest me, and the PS3 least of all (though i would probably say I'm most loyal to Sony of all 3) due to the high price tag
Ill stick with my PC thanks, there is nothing any of the consoles offer that the PC doesn't, whereas the PC offers much more then all the consoles combined

 

Consoles offer more variety in games than PC, there is no need to upgrade for 3+ years just to play the newest titles and it's easier to play with friends and to take the console to friends' houses. Those things are pretty much the only things that consoles offer over PC gaming. PC gaming comes at it's price, but atleast you can be a year or two over what the consoles can do and make your console friends jealous when they see that DX10 game maxed out on a massive 30" monitor, and of course, if you do your homework and strategize in what you buy you could get a rig that could last 2-3 years easy for just under $1200 (and let's not go into everything else that PC's offer over consoles in terms of usability).