The PlayStation 3 is the slow seller in the United States but Sony still holds belief in their “10 year plan.” Many of us consider this to be the same style of plan Sony used with the PS2, sell your console through multiple generations and own the market share. The PS2‘s launch was much more graceful when compared to its 7th generation counterpart. Perhaps the PS3 has a different destiny… perhaps they want to remove all other media boxes from your living room.
Imagine a life without a cable box or Tivo and you’re probably envisioning Sony’s road map for a media distribution empire. First, remove Tivo from the situation with a DVR style box using their PlayTV technologies, wired up to the PlayStation 3 using a USB connection. The United States hasn’t seen a launch of PlayTV, more than likely because the PS3 isn’t a huge console here yet and Tivo is partnered with many cable and satellite providers already.
Senior director of the PlayStation Network, Susan Panico said Sony “looks aspirationally at HBO, the way they have Sex and the City and other shows” (gamespot) after admitting Sony wants to replace cable boxes in the home. Tivo has already done a great job removing the need for a cable box, allowing you to rent a “cable card” to insert into a Tivo and gain access to all their content for your DVR needs. DirectTV offers (or has in the past) a Tivo or Tivo-like DVR solution. Cable and DirectTV offer the ability to rent their DVR or offer a solution to purchase your own at a retail outlet What if Sony decides to partner with one or more of these providers to offer an all-in-one solution. PS3 owners wouldn’t have to purchase additional equipment and could be up and running immediately with hard disks big enough to handle HD content.
Sony could offer you a graphically appealing gaming experience, a high definition BluRay solution, media distribution for renting movies, an iTunes style online store for purchasing and playing music all wrapped up in a DVR solution. All this content for a $400 price tag is a value when all the offers are combined into one tiny black box.
Looking at today’s Tivo Series3 HD DVR you’ll notice the ability to play music directly from iTunes, browse and play Youtube shows, watch Disney offerings and even high definition NetFlix playback. The Tivo DVR’s can also talk with other DVR’s in the household making it easy to share TV records across systems. The only thing missing in the Tivo solution is a high definition gaming platform and the BluRay hardware.
We’re all sitting here poking fun at the small PS3 game library and telling people that BluRay is going to lose out to HD downloads yet we may be missing the bigger picture: an all-in-one media empire solution. The PS3 may not carry the largest game library compared to the Xbox 360 or the sales records of the Wii but if Sony finds a way to become a reliable and required media set top box they may realize their true “10 year plan.”
You missed a MAJOR part of Archon. The squares are white or black, and some cycle from light to dark. If you’re playing light, your unit becomes more powerful on light squares, and if you’re playing dark, the reverse is true. The point of the game was to capture all the power squares, most of which were cycling between light and dark.
Archon was super-addictive, especially against friends. It was there with MULE as a staple for most machines.
PS. The sorceress isn’t evil, she’s the dark, the night.
Lolz i like Chess, me and my friend daniel had games that went for like 3 lunch breaks back @ skw =p
It’s been a few weeks since I have replied to the QoTW due to moving house and then a change of ISP (finally I’m paying less than £40 a month for 8Mb/s broadband!).
Over the last two or three days I have downloaded and listened to 5 weeks worth of your podcasts and enjoyed all of them immensely, as per usual.
On to the question of the week; any, and all, of the Halo games.I have played the original three games but not ODST and the /abomination/ that is Halo Wars (Real Time Strategy should never, I repeat; NEVER be ported to consoles). I have never felt the need to replay any of the Halo games because, apart from the feeling of ‘meh’ that they make you feel after playing, they did something I hate… They released the first game on the PC with a decent port, but then the Halo 2 port to the PC was, and I’m being as kind as I can here, totally diabolical. First of all, you needed Vista… Need I say more?
Halo 3 was pretty good… But entirely predictable and again left me with a feeling of ‘meh’. I am the only true PC Gamer in a fairly large group of Xbox 360 owners… And they don’t understand my pain! I tried to show them how FPS’s /should/ be played in terms of Multiplayer (i.e. in a 32 player server with some decent admins) but they still do not see the light!
The only other games that I have played and then decided never to play again are usually games that I just hate, like the new Wolfenstein game (awful awful game) and… Well Mario Galaxy was terrible as well. Other than that I cannot think of anything else!
Cheers, and peace 🙂
In regaurds to the question of the week.
i would not want AC2 cuz i preordered the special edition of the game in September. i would want an alienware gaming laptop =]