Ok, now for something unusual for this blog. Herewith I’ll publish some of my thoughts about the Playstation 3 as well as the format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray. Why? Because within the last weeks I really was afflicted by a lack of understanding about some decision made.

1. A cheaper 40 GB version of the PS3 was anounced
   Only 2 instead of 4 USB ports, no card reader, lesser harddisk capacity, so far so good (specs). But no Playstation 2 emulation? After Removing the Emotion Engine (PS2-CPU) from the PS3 now also the Graphics Synthesizer (PS2-Graphics card) became a victim of savings. Previously, also without the EE, it was possible to emulate PS2 games, now even this became impossible. My simple question: Can the successor of the still most widespread game console succeed without backwards comaptibility? I don’t think so. Like this it’s only interesting for really ambitous gamers and for people without a PS2 (or people who don’t care about the old PS2 stuff). But from my point of view Sony really misses the large rest of us. And for what? Savings of a 100€.

   And as it gets rumored the removal of the GS isn’t event responsible for the savings. It get’s rumored that this is just a strategic step to force customers to buy new games. I don’t really believe that Sony is that crude - but isn’t a little bit of truth in every rumor?

   Ah and by the way. Let’s talk about the long term success of the Playstation 3. As publicly known the consoles current market share isn’t too good (take a look at nexgenwars.com). And some facts heard in the path let me speculate that it also will be hard in the future to gain marekt share. The key to every consoles success are the available games. And now I’ve heard that the UT3 engine based games as well as e.g. the new GTA are delayed because of “technical prpoblems”. I interestingly feel reminded of the Sega Saturn. The Saturn was an extremly powerful device for its time, but with its 2 CPUs and 6 other processors extremly hard to program. Well, I really don’t know or care about the details of the PS3’s Cell processor. But from what I’ve heard and read it consists of one PowerPC Processing Element and 8 Synergistic Processing Elements - Whatever this means, it even sounds hard to develop for! Nowadays, in the starting phase of mainstream multi-trheaded programming, this maybe is a little bit to advanced for the average studio. Well, as I don’t know the facts, this are only speculations. But I bet that developers prefer the Direct X development environment the XBox offers. Just my opinion.

2. HD DVD vs. Blu-ray
   Ok, there is a format war going on - But what the heck? Why do I have the feeling that neither of the participants even wants to win?

   Well, I only can tell how it’s like in Austria. The average household doesn’t have an HD display. If there is an HD display, i’s most probably only HD-ready, meaning 720p. But in my eyes only Full HD - 1080p - is real HD, and every “transitional solution” display sold - being HD “ready” - is a bad joke for the customers. But on the other hand full HD displays aren’t available at a reasonable price yet. So in the end, nobody has a suitabe display in Austria. Why should we buy HD content? Which brings me to my next question:

   Why should we pay twice the price of a DVD for HD content we don’t need? I know that we are currently in the early adaptor phase, and that in this phase everything is more expensive as it will be when established. But during a format war: Shouldn’t there be a price war? Wasn’t it one of the selling points of HD DVD that it’s cheaper to change the production over to HD DVDs than to Blu-rays? But HD DVD and Blu-ray cost the same in the store. Where is this price advantage for the end customer? If it really exists, shouldn’t it be used to gather market share? It would be much easier to convince people to buy the more expensive hardware if the films would cost the same. But like this it feels like feels like I have to pay more for the expensive hardware to be able to buy the more expensive disks. As I don’t have such HD stuff, I don’t know how much the HD experience is worth compared to the price, but for me this all sounds very strange.

   After all, in my eyes none of the two parties really tries to get their stuff to the customers. They are only playing bullshit bingo with each other and shoot new numbers and statistics into press to convince the people. I’m not convinced from numbers floating around in the press. I’m not convinced of anyone because he says me that he thinks he wins. This, and the fact of the Digital Rights Managment paranoia these technologies include, make me think that this is just about everything else that the customer. But who should buy the stuff in the end? Damn bloated industry…

Just my 2 cents…