The Xbox has done a lot to shake off the RROD issues they've had and still has really compelling services including Netflix. A lot of people I know who haven't picked up a console yet find that as a big feature, while some consider the PS3's Blu-Ray as a big selling point.

There are still a lot of people who haven't made the leap to this generation as evidenced by PS2 software sales. Traditionally, a very large percentage of lifetime sales for a console come after 2 or 3 year as prices come down, so there's still a lot of sales left out there for all 3 competitors. View

Nah, apparently some guy named JJ Abrams does that. I'm just giving you guys some background on who I am and what SmashPad is for those who ask.

I'm speaking for other "little blog" guys who have spent years in the industry, have something to say, but are dismissed by people who haven't put in that work.

Google my name along with "Gamer 2.0" or "SmashPad" to see other articles I've written and if you enjoy, then great. If not, no sweat off my back, but there are a lot of bloggers out there many of you haven't heard of but have valid opinions usually steeped in fact. I try to make sure most of my articles have lots of statistics and references, which sometimes are refuted by commenters, which is great since it ignites debate. View

SmashPad is a side project of mine and extension of its mother site Gamer 2.0, which has been around since 2007. I'm an 8-year game journalism veteran whose written for publications such as GameSpot.

The article is mostly sarcastic as I've actually had pleasant e-mail exchanges with this Brian before (as I mentioned in the post.) But seriously, if you're a writer for Forbes and you post an article saying that what Sony has done with the PS3 Slim is "Too Little, Too Late," you gotta add some more meat to your argument.

As I mentioned in an earlier response, he only cited current price points and nothing else (not even current sales figures), so I sourced a handy table rather than writing it out in a less comprehensible prose style.

There isn't really much I could have replied to his "argument" with because he didn't have anything. The point of my "smackdown" was to point out how poorly written of an article it was for a publication with the esteem of Forbes and to continue the storyline between SmashPad and Forbes for our readers, which surprisingly do exist.

If he would have brought numbers to the table (as he has before), I would have responded to the article much differently, like I did in response to his article "Why Apple Could Kill the Nintendo DS," then I would have responded to it the way I did in "Sony, Not Nintendo, Should Be Very Afraid of the iPhone," which you can read here for comparison: http://www.gamer20.com/feat... View

It's okay, I'm used to it after years of this stuff. View

It's no problem. My delivery in this one was for stylistic reasons and to call out Forbes for their terribly unprofessional article. I choose my voice depending on the kind of article I'm writing. I'm much more casual in blog posts, generally. I've actually freelanced for GameSpot in the past.

If you want a sense of my more professional tone, I'd suggest these two article that I think you'd probably enjoy.

Sony, Not Nintendo, Should Be Very Afraid of the iPhone (note that this was written right after the iPhone 3G was announced and games were shown):
http://www.gamer20.com/feat...

And also, check out this feature about a new game developer:

Birth of a Game Studio: A Look at Prophecy Games:
http://www.gamer20.com/feat... View

Thanks, like I said, I've responded to a few of his articles in the past. In past articles, he's at least cited statistics (usually outdated, but statistics nonetheless). I was appalled by how void his article was of ANY justification. It sounded like a blog post written by an MS drone.

And that's coming from a 360 owner who doesn't even have a PS3 (yet, I'm liking the price drop even if the Slim is ugly) View

"To show up one element of his argument"

What argument did the Forbes guy have? He only cited current price points, so I sourced a handy table rather than writing it out in a less comprehensible prose style.

There isn't really much I could have replied to his "argument" with because he didn't have anything. The point of my "smackdown" was to point out how poorly written of an article it was for a publication with the esteem of Forbes and to continue a storyline between SmashPad and Forbes for our readers.

EDIT: Also, his "opinion" wasn't based on anything rather than a shallow understanding of the price points. You may say "well, he's right because the average consumer doesn't know about the difference the add-ons make," which is true, BUT, if MS' marketing department is full of at least high school graduates, they'll run an ad campaign targeting at that difference. View

I'll definitely agree with you on that end, themyk. I still personally think the 360 has better features (I wouldn't give my Netflix up for anything in the world), but I was never a big fan of XNE's look. I think the Cross Media Bar is superior, and the new animations look great. Hell, look at the vast majority of the comments here: Everyone thinks the LBP theme looks SICK View

Hey everyone, SmashPad publisher here:

I had a long talk with our writer about this update, and his main point is that none of the updates are necessarily "bad" but they're pretty underwhelming especially since the firmware version got the 3.0 treatment. Usually in software releases ".0's" bring significant additions to user experience and there are no big additions.

I actually argued with him over the grade, but he made that point and I had to agree. It jarred me too that the overall grade seemed out of place with the individual grades, but his reasoning was that those individual updates weren't bad, were convenient (What's New Section), were downright cool (Animated Themes), but as a whole there were no killer additions that really made it particularly exciting or worthwhile. Thus it got a C: an average grade.

As comparison, the NXE had lots of great additions (along with it's fair share of "meh" additions, as I've never cared about avatars) but it did bring features like Netflix, which by itself validated the entire update.

It seems that Sony still has a long way to go in matching a lot of elements of the Xbox experience, BUT that doesn't take away from the fact that Sony has made HUGE strides in the right direction over the past year or so after their barebones release.

To show how we've treated other updates, we put NXE through the paces when it was released as well: http://blog.gamer20.com/200...

Though we created a different kind of post with suggestions to Microsoft (none of which they used). In fact, if you have ideas for how Sony can get past a lot of the patent issues they're facing or any other additions you'd like to see, we'll put together a collection of all of your ideas and credit them to you. View

We talked about this after your interview and yeah, the negative reviews for Mirror's Edge don't make much sense. I can't say much about Dead Space since I only played it for about a half hour, but it has solid, if not exactly "groundbreaking," action.

But in regards to Mirror's Edge, I thought it was a damn fine game. I understand the issues some other reviewers had with it, but I didn't find them to kill the experience. I was actually grateful for the difficulty of the jumping puzzles. Blowing through a level is fun, but if you could make every jump and easily take out every bad guy, then people would be complaining about how incredibly easy, simple, and mindless the game is. View

That's beyond "long." That's a book lol View

Hardcore gaming is not just FPS. Many other genres fall into that category. RPGs, the adventure genre (which has all but died making it 'super-hardcore' lol) RTS, etc. View

I agreed that most of mainstream crap sucks but not necessarily everything and I don't subscribe to the belief that just because something is popular it's crap. Sometimes people get so into their anti-establishment beliefs that they dismiss perfectly good things as "bad" because they're "mainstream"

What I'm saying though is that there can only be but so many mainstream products before Company X's mainstream product isn't noticed by anyone because it's stuck behind 20 similar mainstream titles. At that point, they're gonna sell like crap if they follow the crowd. They may sell like crap if they do something different, but they'll more likely get noticed - even if by only the minority of gamers - by than if they followed the pack.

And you never know, the game can get a cult following that's gets passed around by word of mouth. We glue ourselves to sales, and selling 100,000 copies may not be good, but if you gain cult status and you sell 100,000 copies per month consistently for a year or so, then that's over a million copies. So, sure, it may not sell a million copies out of the gate, but it could over time and make you a profit. This happens sometimes happens in movies. If there wasn't a viable market for both indie movies and indie music, then there wouldn't be companies that help produce, market and sell those things. But there is, and the same will happen in gaming. It won't be glamorous, but it'll be there. View

@cmrbe

I see where you're coming from on that one, but I'm with blue. At least to me, hardcore games are more involving types of experiences (Halo, GTA, COD) while casual are short little pick up and play games along the lines of Rayman Raving Rabbids and so forth.

Also, both hardcore-styled games can be good (Mass Effect) and bad (Legendary) and casual games can be good (Rayman's not bad) and bad (Imagine Cheerleader).

But yeah, it does depend on your definitions. Mine probably don't match everyone's. View

A bit extreme, see my other comment. But I really just wanted to comment so that I could commend you on your avatar. I loved FFT. View

I HIGHLY disagree. Everyone thinks this happens in EVERY entertainment medium. "MAINSTREAM MOVIES SUCK!" "MAINSTREAM MUSIC SUCKS" and they do, for the most part with just a few exceptions, but an large and fairly profitable independent audience grows and "films just like they used to make them" thrive in their own way. We're just seeing gaming getting larger, but not exactly worse.

After all, if EVERYONE tried to make the exact same thing - really mainstream games - they'll be going up against unbeatable competitors like Mario, the Wii Sports games, GTA's etc. They'll sell just as bad as if they made something different. Therefore they'll make something different and get what they can of an audience looking for something a bit different.

That's actually something the article touches on really well. View

Maybe that's why that woman started hooking around in Second Life:

Italian Woman Tries Prostitution Through Second Life
http://blog.gamer20.com/200... View

Just wanted to touch on a few things.

I sometimes hate writing these kinds of articles because they're typically not read and quickly lumped in with the rest of the mindless drivel that's typically spewed out about the PS3 and its sales. So let me set some things straight:

* I have said publicly in the article linked in the blog post, that I think the PlayStation 3 will end this generation in the #2 spot in sales behind the Wii.

* My main thought is that the PS3 could be doing much better in sales had it not deviated from the basic strategy of the PS2. Good software on so-so hardware at a more affordable price, making an upgrade from the previous PlayStation to the next not an incredible burden on consumer's wallets.

* Instead, they have kind of adopted the strategy of the original Xbox. (Really advanced hardware, high price point, high production cost, etc). That has caused them to alienate possible consumers, allowed the 360 to hit a mass market price earlier, split the market and let some PS2 owners opt for the 360, this means it doesn't have the vast majority of gamers and because of that publishers now have to rely more heavily on a multiplatform strategy so they reach all potential gamers. This makes it hard for them to hold on to exclusives, as has happened.

I still think the PlayStation brand is good enough to carry them past the 360, but at what cost? With the fragmentation of users between Xbox and Playstation a bit more even, what effect will this have on the next gen war of the Xbox 720 vs the PS4? Will Xbox continue to move into the Playstation's territory?

I could be wrong, but I don't believe I just rant. I'm just looking for intelligent discussion and hope that my article is read through and considered. View

I think that's simplifying it a bit much. If you look at the body of the 2008 year, the PS3 did really well. Once the economy went to hell, the 360 bumped up in no small part because of its price point. The December numbers are more of a reflection of value than anything else. View

Dude, I have no idea, I found that on Youtube. I get a sense of fanboys trying to bury this with reports? Why can't we just have a convo about this? Oh well. View