- It is not all happy days and sunshine over at the PS3 camp. More like smoke and mirrors in my opinion.
- First the price. Pretty high, but you can save $100 if you only go for the 20GB hard drive. Oh, but Sony failed to mention in their speech that you will also lose out on HDMI output, MemoryStick, SD card & CompactFlash slots and 802.11 b/g wireless. Not so great for that $100 saving...
- Also, the first things Kaz said at the briefing was Sony didn't do gimmicks (poking at the Wii and the "Wiimote",) and didn't rush (obviously referring to Microsoft's one year headstart with 360.) Then they go and add motion detection to the controller. This one has been swimming around in my head and could be a good thing for Nintendo, (publishers can now create games for Wii and PS3 more easily, meaning Wii gets more games via PS3 ports,) and a bad thing for Microsoft, (they are left with the only non motion detecting controller right now, but that is an easy fix,) with Sony doing pretty well either way, (players may not like the idea of waving, but they can be introduced to it, or publishers can ignore it.)
- But something not mentioned about the "DualShake" controller is that the rumble feature has been removed. This is blamed on the vibration which "interferes with information detected by the sensor." Funny... I thought it was because of the lawsuit that said Sony had to pay up for each rumble controller produced now and you needed a new "gimmick" to fill the hole... Oh, and the Wiimote still rumbles.
- Another gimmick: using the PSP as a second screen, (in this case a rear view mirror in a rcing game.) Something else Nintendo have already tried with the GBA/Gamecube connection.
- The small online demo does look promising though and could be huge for Sony. It looks like they have taken some of the most sucessful online ventures (iTunes Music Store, MySpace, Xbox Live!) and put them all together for PS3 and PSP. If they can get downloadable content priced correctly, (they keep putting $0.00 next to everything in the demos so far,) then this will probably be the most exciting part of the PlayStation for me.
- The games look cool too, but they are very same-y. Everyone out there seems to be making games that are either "Lord of the Rings" style epic battles with hundreds of enemies, or are "God of War" rip offs with flashy moves and easy to use combos. "Eight Days" looked like a lot of fun, (almost like an action movie,) if it really plays as shown. "The Resistance: Fall of Man" looked like "Call of Duty" with aliens.