When will it be safe to buy a PS3?

[irongiant]

1. No you're off the mark with that, let's take my personal experience as an example. I know 14 or so PSP owners and they vary in age/gaming experience. Every single one uses ISO's and that's just a small snapshot of PSP owners, you have to remember that copies were rife on the PSOne, PS2 and XBox and it's the same people that are buying a PSP. It's much bigger than you think. With homebrew there will always be a chance of it being exploited, not everyone out there developing homebrew is doing it for the right reasons. So from a business standpoint surely the safest option is to try to stop it altogether.

2. Last i heard the PS3 is £425. Come on the PS3 pricing isn't contributing to debt, it's peoples own stupidity and the willingness of credit card companies to loan ridiculous amounts of money thats the problem. If you can't afford an item whether it's a Porsche or a PS3 you don't buy it. Simple. If parents give in to whining kids that's their own fault. Why should Sony be trying to ease any debt problems anyway, they've made a product and even at this price they're still losing money on each one. It's called business and funnily enough they'd like to claw back as much money as possible to survive. Betamax was better quality than VHS, i know i bought both. It was content that killed Betamax, going into a video store the VHS section was filled with titles and only a few in the Betamax section. Minidisc is a great little format and still hugely popular in Japan, players and media weren't overly expensive at all.

3. So you're saying that they should have put back the worldwide launch to March? That's insane, look at the backlash from just europe! That would be 10 fold if Japan and the US had been put back as well. Sony are manufacturing PS3s all the time and say they will have 2m to market by the end of the year so every week more will be in stores on sale, what's the problem with that? Plus having a sellout of half a million PS3s is fantastic for revenue!

4. To ignore Europe would be to never release the PS3 here at all. It is being released in March, so we're not being ignored at all. They made a choice based on reasons we're not party to, personally i understand that choice based just on the fact that US software sales are massive, software is how they make most money, and that they'll always release first in their home country. Oh and we're not last on the list, Australia and other parts of the world will be given units later on.

Ding ding round 3.

[Darksaviour69]

they need to conquer the US market to establis Blue-ray as the next disc format. If the US public decide blue-ray the world will follow. That why most units for for the US and only a few for japan ( in fear of a back lash), and since europe is used to getting shafted ( well not so much recently with the 360 and Wii), its not a big deal.

at this time, i'm 70% sure i won't get a ps3. i never had ps2 or ps1. Believe it or not there is gamming out side of sony's empire.

If anything this console war will be interesting, everyone hailed the ps2 as the best thing since sliced bread before it was launched, and the ps3 was getting the same ride untill the last E3, Sony is losing mommentem, while the 360 is slightly gain and the Wii is accerating like crazy!

maybe sony started the hype-bowl too early, look how late nintendo started hyping the Wii and look how well its worked for them...
[/rant]

[irongiant]

Indeed, Blu Ray is a key issue for Sony.. once half a million PS3's are sold at launch then Blu Ray will leapfrog way ahead of HD DVD in terms of potential customers with all those players in homes. MS have chosen to back HD DVD purely in an attempt to derail Sony. Will be interesting to see if MS adopt Blu Ray if it becomes the format winner.

What i find strange is that Toshiba and Sony are partners on the Cell chip so why couldn't they sort out a deal on the disc format!

"at this time, i'm 70% sure i won't get a ps3. i never had ps2 or ps1. Believe it or not there is gamming out side of sony's empire."

I think you'll find everyone already knows there's plenty of gaming outside of Sony, it was dominated by SEGA and Nintendo for years. You can't deny though that the PS2 has an enormous software library and such a diverse choice of games to play it's no wonder it's the most popular machine, DVD playback was also a wise decision.

[Darksaviour69]

of course sony moderised gaming (made it grow up) in the 90s, but like atari and sega they could fall ( being $#@!y was happened with atari and sega, sony seem to be doing the same mistakes... "the next gen starts when we say it does" !!!

Supporting the DVD was key to winning the last gen, in japan it was the cheapest dvd player when released, (there was a very low console to games sopld ratio at the start of the ps2's life), and so your right, sony are trying to do the same again.

but i not convinced that the world (at least outside of the US, is ready for HD. the DVD was different, huge quality difference compared to vhs, yes HD is alot better but not as much as a jump.

Also users now need a new (very dear) HD TV before they even enjoy there blue-ray player, and HD TV sales out side of the US are not great.

I just think that HD is still a few years down the road, but who knows things change very quicky... as i said, it will be interesting

[stotheamuel]

Dejkirkby.... if buying it will put someone in debt.. then thats the CONSUMER's fault.... there are a lot of people that cant afford a WII... so i guess the wii is over priced...

about piracy... if something were causing me to lose money... then i would do something about it too.. but you do forget... sony is the most homebrew friendly of the 3 major market companies..

Not enough consoles? well then maybe people wont get to buy it and go into debt right?

dude the atari's release price was equivelant to the ps3's after inflation... also a blu ray player cost much more.... so obviously its not overpriced.... unless you dont like blu ray.. but then it is a price problem... its a quality problem

[808]

There is no way that the PS3 will be safe to buy straight away, its bound to have a few bugs Sony haven't ironed out. I'm glad that Europe has a later launch date so theres more chance of a finished product arriving over here straight away.
I think that Sony are desperate to get the PS3 out there to try and combat the "Wii60" Christmas duo, finished product or not.

[irongiant]

It is a finished product, manufacturing delays with diodes is a supply problem.

They'll probably be less PS3s going down the pan than XBox360s have been recently.

[SnesR0X]

I really agree with dejkirkby, sony doesn't care too much about the consumer, and only really cares about how much money they can milk from them. they could sell a lot more ps3s in Europe if they gave them the North American price-tag. I'm in Canada, the ps3 is going to be $659 bucks, that's about 313 pounds, a good amount less than what the U.K. pays. Plus the delays, it's very possible that they tried their best to make as many systems as possible, but after seeing what happened to the 360 launches and sony laughing at how stupid and careless they were, you start to wonder wat they were thinking

[NoQuarter]

stotheamuel is right sony is the most homebrew friendly,although that may be changing with the 360.
All said and done a 360 with HD-DVD will cost almost as much as a PS3.
Bank on the wii to win this holiday season.
The disk format war is already over,a few days ago a Dutch(I believe,I read it on the cell phone)firm said it has made disks capable of supporting both formats!!!!!!

[SnesR0X]

Ps3 will be interesting to see how it all turns out, but i'm really leaning towards wii, with the cheapness and zelda of it