Best Buy's biggest competition is Walmart. I don't see them sacrificing any sales until Walmart drops HD-DVD as well. Walmart and Best Buy will hold onto HD-DVD until either Toshiba concedes, or until sales completely drop off. View

Adam, that's exactly why I think this is a strong move by Apple. While I imagine HD-DVD burners being used for data back up, I honestly see most of them being used for pirating, or storing divx rips. Blu-Ray in the professional sector, namely Macs, reinforces Blu-Rays large capacity and its use for more than just playing HD films. View

It's pretty clear to me that the author obviously has no clear idea what he's talking about. Then again, it's a blog post so what should we expect?

I agree, this guys points are either irrelevant or not legitimate.

1: "Release a game with little to no bugs, playable etc"? Is this a joke? Shouldn't this be the goal of every single software developer? Every console suffers from this.

2. I think the too many sku's complaint is ridiculous. The 20gb was dropped because it wasn't really selling. The 60gb was dropped because it was replaced with a larger harddrive, and the 40gb was a decision to hit $400 before the holiday season.

Having different SKUs and reacting to the market in that sense is exactly what Sony should have done, and Pachter, Croal etc, have stated this. His reasoning that customers will hold off purchases is incorrect.

The worst offender is Microsoft, Arcade, Core, Premium, Elite. The core has been replaced by the arcade. At one time there were non-hdmi and hdmi versions of the premium sitting on the shelf. There's also a Halo package SKU. Falcon chipsets are also a guessing a game for many individuals. I'm sure people are still searching for certain manufacturing dates.

3. "Exclusives" Sony has the largest exclusive line up for 2008 out of the three consoles. Regardless, Sony doesn't want to buy exclusives because it's huge money out of pocket with little immediate return. There's no guarantee that if you pay several million for a game, that you'll ever recover that loss, even over the lifespan of the system. Microsoft has less qualms about this because they're building a brand, and they know that there's going to be huge losses associated with that. They're just being bankrolled by their parent company so that they can hopefully create a larger market share for the next generation after this when they will presumably be more successful.

I'm becoming a little too long winded, but I think it's fair to say that this blog post is, well, just bad.

I'd say there's only 3 things Sony needs to do for 2008:

1. Continue strengthening ties with third party software developers.
2. Re-design PSN asap with better friend-tracking, in-game chat, etc a' la XBL.
3. Maintain competitive in price point. View

The 360 is just on sale. What's the confusion? Retailers often do this to increase peripheral sales. If you can get a 360 on Amazon for $20 off with free shipping, why go to Circuit City? Why go to Best Buy?

Most consumers will buy at the very least, an extra controller, 1-2 games, charging kits, and maybe a wireless add-on. (The wireless add on has about a $35 margin)

Amazon is just capitalizing on the numerous amount of consumers who will be picking up a 360 this week due to the price drop. View

Sony won't allow porn to be produced in the same studios that Disney films are produced in. It's a contractual agreement with Disney. However, pornography can be produced in different studios, no problem. Blu Ray is just offering extended support to independent porn studios in Japan.

I don't anticipate porn to play a significant, if even marginal role in this generations physical format wars. During VHS and BetaMax, the internet was still a fledgling and porn was only available in magazines or seedy cinemas. Accessible internet wasn't really public until the early 90's. (Betamax/VHs war ended in 1988)

This generation is different. Porn is instantly accessible, and in many cases, free. There's plenty of internet based subscriptions and "On demand" porn, some if it is certainly in high def as well. Given this situation, I don't see high def porn on an expensive physical format growing faster than instantly accessible, typically free, internet served pornography.

You can get it at home, immediately, typically for free, behind the privacy of closed doors. View

This is a ridiculous article. The concept that PS3 sales increased because of porn is absurd. The increases in sales is no doubt due to the release of Everybody's Golf in Japan and the nearing Fall blockbusters.

The timing of the porn announcement is just coincidence. Correlation does not equal causation. View

What are you waiting for then? Submit it as news!

*rolls eyes* View

I was rather disappointed when I heard this was going to have shooter elements. View

Don't dismiss it to just being a child's fare. This game will likely have a broad international appeal with a likely dedicated fanbase. There's a lot of CCG fans out there beyond Yu-Gi-Oh. (Magic The Gathering in particular, which has been out forever).

This game is probably the last thing I would touch on my system, but I imagine for quite a few people, it's going to be pretty cool. I would hope for them to implement international online, seeing as how competitive some CCG players can be. This will definitely sell systems for some individuals, and I see it having a pretty steady fanbase at least in Japan if not in Europe and the US as well. View

It doesn't support WMP 11. So I AM fully updated, but I am TOO fully updated. esport.tv is garbage, is this video rehosted somewhere else? View

Is anyone else not getting the sound from the video when using IE? It won't even let me load in Firefox. View

I think their point was that for many reviewers, they were turned off by the controls. I think the devs response was that the controls weren't done poorly, but they were different then what people were used to. View

I didn't care much for the motion control in Warhawk. They're supposed to be extremely responsive machines, so it more demands the preciseness of the two sticks. Lair on the other hand, you're flying a living (fire) breathing dragon. I imagine the motion control makes it feel a little bit more natural. In every instance, I've heard they've done a great job of making the controls work. I never planned on buying Lair, and probably won't buy it unless the demo convinces me otherwise, but I think that the controls aren't too unwieldy. View

This isn't too surprising. Seeing as him and his wife have been extremely busy with the Melinda Gates foundation. He's stated multiple times over the last year that he wants to phase out of Microsoft and transition the executive decisions over. View

Quality is the same. Potentially, the additional 20gb on a dual layer disc could be used for any reason. Less compression, new codec, etc.

Most importantly, BD+. Blu-Ray discs incorporate an additional layer of copyright protection. It's invisible to customers, but it's not to studios. That's why Blu-Ray has signed up so many studios, because they're concerned about protecting their intellectual rights.

Sure, it will eventually be broken I'm sure, but it's another impedance to pirating that it's competitor doesn't have. View

This entire story is ridiculous. The fact of the matter is that Sony is giving options to all it's consumers. SACD and CD users alike. To assume that Sony is backing down from formats because they are including upsampling is preposterous.

Brian Depert has lost sight of the forest for the trees. View

They're really pushing it with 4 SKUs this holiday season. Especially since the difference in this new edition isn't just cosmetic.

So you have:

Core - No Harddrive, component cables not included, no HDMI

Premium - 20gb Harddrive, Component cables included, no HDMI

Elite - 120gb harddrive, component and HDMI cables included, HDMI ready.

Halo360 - 20gb Harddrive, component cables included, HDMI cables not included, HDMI ready View

Don't be too happy for Tort law. While in some situations it can be beneficial to the consumer, most of the time it's just more money in the pocket of tort lawyers. Tort is some of the scummiest and corrupt justice seen in the last few decades. Millions in the pocket of the lawyer, a few dollars in the pocket of the wronged consumer.

While Microsoft strategy of refunds was obviously easiest and most financially palatable for the company; it was better for consumers too because it means that they get exactly what they deserved.

Microsoft has a lot of issues they need to fix when it comes to hardware. Harddrive failure, DREs, complete failure and disc scratching are all frequent enough of issues that they should be resolved in as timely as a manner as possible. A tort lawyer isn't going to help us get there though. It'll be longer and more arduous and at the end of the day, there will be less money in Microsoft's pocket, and even less in the consumers. View

It's likely a combination of both. But I would mostly say that it's due to resupply. View

It's clear that Sony is just talking around the subject right now. He's not lying but he's being very misleading. Essentially, at the very moment, they don't have any plans to immediately change the price. All this means is that they won't be changing it today, but we all know it will come after their E3 conference. I can't blame Sony though, they don't have any other options then to dance around the subject. They've made their agreements with retail companies, and the confidentiality was broken by retail not Sony. Virtually every retailer will refund the difference if the system was bought within 30 days, so while it makes things more complicated for customers, they won't be shorted $100. View