We' ll all be too busy drooling to see much of anything.

We haven' t had any confirmation about the HDD.

we haven' t had confirmation about freakin anything from sony, we barely know that it' s coming out. sigh... they think they' re being smart with this " let' s keep everything a secret" plan.

New Final Fantasy for 360 and SNK support news don' t exist on any respected site ...I wonder why

Well I remember reading about the HDD being included as for before or after GDC, I don' t really care...
I' m sure they will release PS3 with a HDD. Otherwise if all games " require" the HDD it' s like releasing the system without a controller or cables to connect to your tv, or even a wired controller with the wire sold seperately (congrats you bought a piece of plastic)

ORIGINAL: ]GaNgStA[

New Final Fantasy for 360 and SNK support news don' t exist on any respected site ...I wonder why

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=63769

http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=12344

The Eurogamer link mentions a new FF game, but there may have been confusion in the translation because it seems they showed XI at the beginning of the conference. I' m not sure, ...i just posted what i read.

The SNK support is 100% correct though.

We keep talking about the PS3 price but what will the games costs?
The Blu-ray will surely make them more expensive than 360 games but can anyone make an educated guess?
How about additional controllers, Blu-ray movies, online services etc.
Will the PS3 use memory cards?
I have a feeling buying a PS3 will get very expensive even if the console itself will be cheap.

Yeah I think this new FF thing is some mistake but when it comes to SNK ' m not even checking hehe I just want it to be true so much.

Metal Slug ,Shock Troopers , Mark of the Wolves ...all on 360? DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN :)

We keep talking about the PS3 price but what will the games costs?
The Blu-ray will surely make them more expensive than 360 games but can anyone make an educated guess?

I' ve been saying that all along. If you look at Blu-Ray films, ...there prices are set to be 15% more than the first generation of DVD' s (way back when).

Higher development costs pushed 360' s game prices up by £10/$10 (whatever), and we know for certain that PS3 development is much more expensive, and we know that Blu-Ray is much more expensive to put a game out on, ...so an increase looks likely.

I' d say that £60 are very possible (N64 games in the Uk cost £70-80 for new titles), ...but that would only mean another $10 increase in the US.

This is all spectlaution ofcourse and Sony could just have games released at £50 like 360 and stand the losses. But since PS3 is going to make them lose an incredible amount of money in it' s first year on release, i don' t think they' ll be happy with losing money on software too.

The price will nod doubt be down to the publishers though, and since the developers have been FORCED to use Blu-Ray by Sony, they probably won' t want to lose ANY money at all and will price the games highly.

How about additional controllers, Blu-ray movies, online services etc.
Will the PS3 use memory cards?
I have a feeling buying a PS3 will get very expensive even if the console itself will be cheap.

Yeah, ...it' s impossible to know right now, but perhaps we should estimate...

The console is rumoured to cost between $730 and $800 to manufacture, so even if they released at $500 they' s be taking a bigger loss than Microsoft, at least initially.

So say the console cost' s you $500, then an additional wireless pad stes you back $40, ...and two games priced at $75 each...

That' s already $690.

If you have to buy the HDD separately then you' re looking at $60-100 if you go off the price of say PS2' s HDD.

Game saves will likely use the HDD, but for transporting them to your friends house you will be able to use one of the different memory card formats that the machine will support, but they vary drastically in price so there' s no point in even thinking about it.

Then there' s other stuff you might want like the PS3' s EyeToy, or different cables for your TV, ...pad charger and console stand.

...

I want a pS3 at launch but i don' t know if i will be able to convince myself it' s worth it. Especially when 360 has some GREAT games coming out at the end of the year and Revolution' s launching in November.

At the moment one single empty-blu-ray disc cost 60 dollar,when it goes into mass producing i dont know what the cost will be,but much lower ofc.

Also,sony claimed the delay was thanks to blu-ray,well mayby 360 would have came aroun summer if they included HD-DVD,could have been problems there as well?

DVD9' s cost less then $1 to manufacture. Blu-Ray will cost about 5x that...

60 for a game is a crime - I don' t believe that development costs got so much higher than during the PSX/PS2 switch (when many studios were closed and bigger ones merged).

It' s always like that - those costs get really high at the begining and slowly go down to a lower level.

Why MS wants 60 $ per game? Cause they are a software company - they won' t earn money on 360 (yet again) and they need to cover those losses somewhere.

That could attract more 3rd party as well since any dedicated userbase used to 60 $ price tags is a dream come true for them.

I' m not sure but I believe that DVDs where just as expensive (or close) when PS2 launched in Japan (that' s why most launch titles were on CDs)

prices will go down very fast so I wouldn' t count it as a long term factor.

Yeah, I' m thinking K is gonna do the same thing again like he did with PS.

" All games must be 3d"

Yet all games werent... Then..

" All games will come in DVD incase of piracy"
All the first games weren' t in DVD so they slowly gave in.

PS3 will probably do the same with his claim of all the games only being in Blu-Ray.

And prices will go down and I will be happy.

I don' t care if Blu-ray is necessary or not or how well it works or if developers can release games on regular DVDs. I' m just pissed of with the fact that it will raise the price of the PS3 console.
And I think Sony should stop trying to develop new formats all the time. They can' t possible make enough profit to cover all the losses.
And as it looks right now something stupid like Blu-ray could be the one factor that stops the PS3 from being a success. I just can' t understand why it' s so important to Sony. They are ready to doom one of their biggest successes for the sake of Blu-ray. It' s crazy!

Probably piracy issuies. They suck with piracy, but at the same time they are releasing burners. I don' t get it either. I' m starting to lean away from Blu-ray but then again new technology to me is quite interesting.

What I want to believe is that they need blue-ray when the games start going 720p or higher, all the time...Is it possible? Time will tell but if it is gonna require way more data to be stored and what better way then a new technology.

Piracy?!

It' s all well and good talking about Sony and their piracy issues, but perhaps games are simply too expensive for what they are. I mean, some games, games like Kameo are only 6 hours long. Yes i understand the production costs for a game like Kameo are high, but to make people pay £50 for 6 hours worth of entertainment?! It' s not even like there is an awful lot of re-play value there.

The same stands for other games like King Kong (or pretty much any movie-tie in) and the annual editions of sports titles.

On the other hand you have games like Oblivion and the Metal Gear games where there is lots of re-play value and " full" price is reasonable.

But for game sthat use DVD9, 360 games rateiling at £50 is a little much. You' re telling me that to make a game display in resolutions of up to 1080i cost' s THAT much?!

I mention game pricing because it' s one of the main complaints from the people who buy pirated software.

Piracy isn' t as big an issue as Sony are making out, but it' s something that Hollywood are terrified of, especially with less and less people going to the theatre/cinema to watch movies. Sony want to make the big movies studios feel that Blu-Ray is much more secure than the competition.

The funny thing is that Sony seem to be advocating people ripping DVD' s storing them on their memory sticks and watching them on their PSP' s now that UMD' s are bombing and Hollywoood is withdrawing it' s support of the format.

Now, piracy is making developers to lose money, quite alot actually. How much is impossible to tell though since lots of those who have pirated games wouldn' t buy them anyway.
But fighting piracy is important because if companies realize that they can' t get as much money as they should then they' ll just quit the business. Or make low quality games to make up for the losses.
But if these actions against piracy means that honest people like us (abasoufiane included, he' s OK) has to pay more for our games then something has gone wrong. Very wrong.

It' s just like saying...Life isn' t fair. :P

New formats are made because new ways to crack them are made and the cycle continues.

Anyways, away from piracy....Games costing that much is a rip off. I' m kinda pissed off at hearing these prices it makes me not even wanna play console games anymore. Soo tempting though when games really capture you and you enjoy playing them, it' s a great feeling. OH well..Guess I' ll just have to become a programmer, sell games for 70 dollars and become rich to buy games I won' t be making. :P

Although the prices mentioned here almost made me choke on my lunch, it' s important to remember that the margins are not as high as they used to be.

I can remember going into comet in my heady megadrive days and paying £44.99 for new games and £39.99 for the rest - for at least the first full year or so - now with the average A grade title budget shooting up to £15million or so, developers are being forced to outsource parts of their code to keep costs down, with teams spiralling to 250 or so.

I don' t mind paying the cash if the title is up to par, but thats a gamble for the developers too, they don' t mean to make bad games after all, and as has allready been stated, we as consumers are DEMANDING more than ever!

Speaking to the chaps behind Batlefield 2 MC at EA got me thinking, they started work on the game 16 months ago, had no idea of final dev or specs, and basically had to guess what would be possible. They pulled off some very pretty effects and developed a load of new shading techniques, but when your designing a game a year ahead of a consoles launch your taking a massive gamble, so the costs are higher at first, but they do drop off.

I think it' s nice when a game thats not from a major studio takes off in a big way, and I don' t mind paying the cash. I remember when they said PS2 games would be 50-55 (same for xbox) I' m sure this is subtle marketing, so when the games come out cheaper they seem more " reasonable "

As for BR as a format, Sony have always gone for formats which cost more - look at PS1, where the discs all had to be produced from cdr at some special mastering plant in Northern Europe so the disks were black!

End of the day it will hit the quality of the titles if they stick to a traditional price point for the PS3 games until they have finished shedding the $$' s!

Will be interesting to see the final pricing for the console & hardware, but I doubt they will let anything definite slip until a month or so before launch.

The perfect solution would be for devs to make a game as good as possible - and as good as they can.

Then the special JEDI Council would review it and rate it from 1-10.

Depending on Rating the very same comitee would name the price for every title they review.

Benefits:

-Devs doing their best
-Consumers paying for quality

Cons:

-Lazy developers would die a quick and painfull death (wait that' s a god damned benefit)
-It would take some thinking to create the right comitee for that kind of thing.(it' s not hard to imagine some games getting lower ratings than they deserve if that crew isn' t up to the challenge)
-No publisher would agree to that (not even Nintendo) :)