Playstation 3. Let' s face it, most (if not all) of the articles and rumors that came out about the system in the last few months have been negative. The cancellation of the router, the end of FF exclusivity, the possible delay in release, the hard drive retailing seperately, Kutaragi' s ' it' ll be expensive' comment, japanese developers' fondness of Microsoft, the recent rumor regarding PS3' s power, that banana controller... you get the point. And even moreso, look at the competition. Microsoft' s coming at them with a bat, and Nintendo' s undergoing a Great Awakening. Could this all be a sign of a console overthrow? Well, if even half of those rumors are true, I' m thinking so. The fact that Microsoft will spend hordes of cash just to be recognized justifies my point. I don' t even know if Sony' s has a decent strategy! Maybe they think a brand could sell itself (it worked for the PSP )... Anyway, tell me what you think! Will Sony stay on top? Will consumers run to them despite the flaws and mishaps? Or will the market go to a dead-serious Microsoft? Or a cock-eyed Nintendo? Tell All!

Since people were willing to sell their arms and legs in order to get their hands on a PlayStation 2 at launch amidst the shortage I don' t doubt that the PlayStation 3 will sell well regardless of the price it comes in at... As for the end of Final Fantasy exclusivity, for now that only applies to the Online games, if I remember correctly Square Enix said that the offline versions would still remain on a Sony platform -- for now. At least the Enix side of Square Enix embraces the idea of multiplatform for the Dragon Quest series, while the Square side appears to still be Sony' s whore like it or not.

It doesn' t matter how power-less the PlayStation 3 is compared to its competitors, many 3rd party developers will back a winner in their eyes, and many see the PlayStation 3 as that lead horse. Microsoft has to work its ass off in order for the Xbox 360 to endear itself to Japanese gamers, Sony doesn' t really have to do a darn thing since they' re loved in all three major territories.

Don' t forget that Sony is saying it will be mega-expensive. I dunno about most people, but I get the general idea that there is a ceiling for what a console can cost. Even when the 3DO cost $500 it sold like ass. Also, Blu-Ray will be about as in-demand as SACD or DVD-A. The PS2 was in demand because it had a cheap DVD player. People without HDTV' s won' t give a rat' s ass about Blu-Ray, nor should they.

I think Sony will still stay dominant in Japan. However, Microsoft does stand in a favorable position with the US and Europe. I think Microsoft has the capacity and the drive to lead in the US and Europe. Japan won' t be the same story. The X360 will be more popular in Japan this generation but I really can' t see it turning into the market leader.

Sony will be extending the strategy used for PlayStation 2 for its next-gen PlayStation 3 console, allowing publishers to decide for themselves how to take their games and gamers online.

I hope Sony doesn' t do this. Lag, lag and more lag? That was my experience with the current PS2 online play. I found that very few developers actually had good servers running. Microsoft' s controlled environment allows everything to be standardized and stable. Which is a good thing, not a bad thing.

I doubt that xbox360 will do better then ps3.
I mean ps2 sold 27 million ex here,and xbox 4,3.
Now why should people who already have the amazing machine psx,and then went to ps2 suddenly decie to leave for something new like xbox360?
We already heard that the cost in europe gonna be expensive ca 100 dollar more for xbox360 which means it will probably cost the same as ps3 untill it come out,and if xbox360 lower their price then,its gonna be to late.

Don' t forget that Sony is saying it will be mega-expensive. I dunno about most people, but I get the general idea that there is a ceiling for what a console can cost. Even when the 3DO cost $500 it sold like ass. Also, Blu-Ray will be about as in-demand as SACD or DVD-A. The PS2 was in demand because it had a cheap DVD player. People without HDTV' s won' t give a rat' s ass about Blu-Ray, nor should they.

Just because you don' t have a HD tv that doesn' t mean that they won' t use the BR drive, I bet most RPGs on ps3 will be on BR not DVD as 9Gigs is kind of small for next gen.

Just because you don' t have a HD tv that doesn' t mean that they won' t use the BR drive, I bet most RPGs on ps3 will be on BR not DVD as 9Gigs is kind of small for next gen.

How can 9gb be small when you can compress files with xbox360 and dont gonna use FMV?!
Its like itagaki said if you skip pre-rendered graphic its no problem.
And if a game is bigger then 9gb,via bad compressing or not not just used to handle the next-gen like with enchant arm,they can just add 2 dvd' s.
Its not like i will cry because i have to change dvd.
I mean for ff8and ff9 you had 4 cd' s did i even bother?!

I' m not complaining about DVD space, hell it won' t even prevent me from buying a 360 I was just pointing out that the BR drive isn' t pointless for people who have sd TVs

This is one thing that just completely absurds me.

Why are the Americans fighting the Japanese in hardware creation?

Do you know where our electronics came from? Just about 70-80% of any computer hardware that was created a little over a vast of 5-10 years ago came from Japan. I don' t understand Microsoft' s goal here. They' re trying to outbeat the Super Japanese?!? I haven' t opened up my X-box but it makes me wonder if any of those pieces came from Japan.

Microsoft...

Did they start their company as a bakery company?

I think Sony' s downfall might be their total arrogance. They assume everyone will want a PS3 and expect us to sell our limbs for one (legs and feet of course, we need arms for playing). They would say they are just being aggressive, but they are going too far with it, constantly berating other companies and rearing their huge egos that have been let developed over the past 10 years.

The sad thing is I' ll probably buy one for the games coming out for it but will be rooting for Microsoft and Nintendo to wipe the smirk off Sony' s face.

Just because you don' t have a HD tv that doesn' t mean that they won' t use the BR drive

I don' t think you understand what I was saying. I am saying that Blu-Ray will not be a huge selling point for the PS3 like DVD was for PS2. People didn' t buy PS2 because they cared if the games themselves were on the medium, they wanted to play movie DVDs in the system. People without HDTV won' t give a rat' s ass about Blu-Ray movies, nor should they, thus the format will not propel the PS3 ahead like it did with the PS2.

To tell you the truth, I never really saw Sony as such an awesome console producer...it may just be that I grew up with Sega and Nintendo.

Those were the days...

Rather see Sony and their psx as the great days,they really made gaming mainstream. and delivers tons of awesome rpg' s.

Making gaming mainstream isn' t exactly a great thing. The Sega/Nintendo days were the true glory years imo.

I meant " gaming" went mainstream,it really made a lot of new people get into gaming,and open their eyes for it.
Yes PSX did it.
And also it was a very great console if you ask me.

It can be said that Nintendo had the lead back in the days, until psx came and eventually outdid nintendo. Whats to stop x360 from dominating the marketplace? I too don' t like the fact that sony been pretty lazy with its advertising campaign, IMO brand isn' t everything, for instance i' m really interested in the x360 features then said odd and ends features of sony. (which should really regulate the online base) Xbox live is a great thing, for control and community of the online aspect. (which i believe will lead x360 ahead).

Sony is whats going to stop x360, PS1 succeeded because sega was too busy killing their consoles every 2 years and nintendo had no 3rd party support due to cartridge format and bad relationships with developers like Squaresoft. People act like Sega and Nintendo were actually doing good during the 32bit era. Wrong, they sucked ass - thats why PS1 succeeded, a hardcore gamer such as myself had no choice but to buy a PS1, with Saturn and N64 getting 1 good game every 4 months, I didn' t have a choice, if I wanted to actually play more than a couple of games per month I had to own a PS1, period. No other choice.

All of you people that look back at Saturn and N64 and say they were great, puh-lease, did you actually own the consoles back then, or did you just buy it years after they came out? If you actually owned a Saturn or N64 during the 90' s you' d know the systems went MONTHS without even so much as a half-assed game being released, and thats why PS1 took over, it was the only console constantly pumping out quality games. My point is, its easy to say oh saturn had this and that good games, but its different when you actually live through the console' s life cycle and see that yes, saturn had AMAZING games the only problem was that after you beat a good game you had to wait another 4 months for another game to come out. It didn' t help that most of Saturn' s good game were arcade-style games with an average playtime of 5 hours so you could beat the game 3 times in a row on a weekend, then have to wait a long time for another 5 hour game to come out. When you look at the PS1 however, I actually DIDNT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY to buy all the games I wanted, I actually wanted them to slow down on the releases cause I was missing out on too many good games simply because I couldn' t afford to buy every single one of them.

Anyway, X360 is going a against a company that:

- Has complete and total consumer trust, PS1 lasted 6 years, PS2 is on its 5th year and still going strong, and by the looks of it is going to outlast both xbox and gamecube which are newer consoles. People aren' t afraid of buying a PS3 because they know it will last a long time, unlike with sega' s system, when I bought a DC I knew it was going to die in a couple of years, but Im a hardcore game so I dont care, however the average consumer does care about stuff like that.

- Has good relationship with developers.

- Is releasing a more powerful console, taking away the only advantage MS ever had over sony, slightly more powerfull hardware.

Its pretty obiviously that Sony with their ps3 win this war too,the question is how much or little will they win with?
How much of a impact can xbox360 do,and to they(ms) think that just sell xbox360 for a bit cheaper and release halo3 when ps3 coming out is a way to prevent people to buy it,then they are screwed...

Halo 3 wont be released anywhere near ps3' s launch, if Halo 3 is released next year it will be a piece of sh*t and MS would effectively kill its only well known fledgling franchise, Halo 2 was already less than stellar, and was in development for what, 2-3 years? Halo 3 will more than likely require a new engine to take advantage of the vastly superior x360 hardware over the old xbox hardware, so it will take even longer to make than it did Halo 2. Regardless one game isn' t enough, X360 needs a huge and extremely good 2006 holiday line up - not to beat the PS3 - but merely to not be totally annihilated by it, if the 2006 holiday line up for x360 is anything less than stellar its game over for that console and its gonna be like xbox and ps2 all over again where ps2 has a 10 times larger userbase.

And then there' s the whole japanese thing, I dont understand why MS doesn' t just buy some prolific japanese developers, there are alot of small japanese developers out there that could be making million selling games if they had the marketing muscle MS could give them.