Sony Fucked Up

Those three words have summed up my thoughts on the PS3. Hell, I can even say the same for the PSP. From the look of it, Sony has no clear goal for their PlayStation brand. Sure they're the leader of the pack in the current generation systems, but what about the future? What does Sony have in store for us?

Higher prices for one. Cool looking games, sure. But are cool graphics worth paying a $600 base for? (Not to mention the $60+ for each game.)

The PSP offers PS2 quality graphics in handheld form. But at the cost of a base $250 and $50 per game. Not very affordable for a market in which the norm price for a game is $30.

So why, if I may ask, is Sony trying to force new types of media on us? Way back when they tried to get us interested in BetaMax or MiniDisc. Sure they may have had higher quality, but when a BetaMax tape costs $50? No thanks. Sony is doing the same thing now. UMD and Blu-Ray. Of course, UMD is already dead. No one wants to pay $30 for a movie that you can only view on a tiny 3-inch LCD screen (with no extras on the disc either). Blu-Ray isn't looking cheap either. In my opinion, the rumored $60 for a movie is asking a lot.

This brings me to my next point. Why buy such an expensive system that plays expensive media when our home systems are not even capable of displaying images of that quality? I don't know about you, but I sure as hell cannot afford a 1080p TV. Is Sony trying to force customers to upgrade before they really want to?

With that said, is the PS3 worth the asking price? Based on what we all saw at E3, I'd have to say no. What is the PS3 offering other than the same stuff that we've already seen? MGS4 looks pretty, sure, but odds are that Konami will port the game to the Xbox 360 in order to make any profit. I'm expecting more and more development houses to focus on the Xbox 360 now that customers know the asking price of the PS3.

I don't know about you, but the Xbox 360 is a lot more appealing now. It's certainly more affordable and offers similar games if not the exact same game for comparable quality. I'll most likely be joining the likes of these gamers and buy the Wii and Xbox 360 combo.

Yes, I'll miss out on several game from favorite developers. I'll miss the ICO team's PS3 game and possibly Final Fantasy XIII and MGS4. And if 3rd party games such as FF XIII and MGS4 stay on PS3, I'll just have to wait until the PS3 becomes more affordable in 5 years.

Oh and Sony, way to go fucking up the Cell processor and increasing the PS3's price for the sake of keeping backwards compatibility.

Who'd have thought that I'd be buying an Xbox 360? OMG, the sky must be faling! And for that matter, where's my Wii? Gaming will be fine without Sony.