The guys discuss RoboCop: Rogue City, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and F-ZERO 99, among other things.
The news items include:
Let us know what you think.
With so many people wishing Sony would cut the PS3 price to something more reasonable, it’s no big surprise we see constant rumors about potential “price cuts.” This time, a March 2009 rumor “supposedly” came out of the Sony Annual Briefing in London where a butt ton of information was “rumored” to be leaked.
The anonymous source is running around with a bunch of neat rumors, such as a LittleBigPlanet release on the PSP but the one that may hit home most with gamers is price cutting. The PS3 has been around for a few years now and hasn’t budged on the price tag; they’ve had fire sales on obsolete products (smaller disk drives mainly) but no official drops.
Sony won’t comment on speculation, of course, but we’re sure they want to catch Mr. Anonymous from hiding in their meetings and giving away their information… if it is real. D+Pad published the rumor-mongers message saying the “SCEE will be getting more competitive in price from March 2009 onwards.”
Easter would be a fine time for a price cut, if the speculation is real. This upcoming holiday would have made the most sense, to consumers, but Sony apparently has no plans to reduce the price around the time their sales will be increasing anyway. As the PlayStation 3 is doing okay in PAL territories Sony is relying on them, it would seem, to kick up the numbers and show Microsoft they’re not the only second-place game in town.
The Wii continues to dominate and we’re sure a PS3 price drop won’t impact Nintendo’s sales strategy or gamers decisions on one console versus the other as a price drop wouldn’t bring it to a competitive Wii price.
What is your magic number? What price would you buy a PS3 at if you don’t own one already. For us? Drop it a bit and throw in a free LittleBigPlanet.
Does the console market need any more competitors? We’ve seen record sales in the game industry for titles like Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV along with huge expectations for Resistance 2 and some new Sony PlayStation 3 projects. Yet, the tiny little Wii product holds best sales records around the world as the heavy hitter, Microsoft and Sony, compete for the most awesome spectacle show of graphics.
Competition is a great way to drive down costs, drive up expectations and give consumers new innovative products with better quality. Imagine if Apple got into console development and produced a new highly sexy product with the hype and consumer desire of the iPhone or iPod.
“Apple has the infrastructure in place through iTunes to create a real value proposition for those that want to extend the capability of their console beyond gaming and has the cash — about $20 billion — to not only invest in the best components on the market, but in an online gaming experience that could rival Xbox Live.” (kotaku)
Apple’s showing a huge surge in recognition and sales thanks to the iPod and growing desire for Apple hardware competing against Microsoft’s Vista operating system. As more consumers turn to Apple for their music and mobile gaming needs, Apple must see windows of exploiting the gaming market further.
More importantly, nobody can pull off digital rights management (DRM) and locking consumers into a product line like Apple all while they beg for more. Consoles are little boxes of DRM waiting for happy consumers to buy into the concept all while avoiding the hacking and bittorrenting like you’ve been seeing on Spore in the last few weeks. Had Spore been released on a console this DRM fiasco would have been avoided because gamers don’t even realize (or care) that a console locks them into playing and, more importantly, buying the game for the hardware.
Go enjoy the holidays. We’ll be back in 2023 after all the holiday ham has been consumed.
