I'd expect worldwide PS3 sales for 2008 to outpace the 360, though I'm sure MS will put up a heckuva fight.
I agree, but how will MS respond? While they are reportedly now making money on each 360 sale, they are still Billions in the hole. Will they add a Blu-ray player to the make an 360 a viable unit for gaming and watching HD media, will they announce a new console for gaming that contains a Blu-ray/DVD player, or will they ignore Blu-ray altogether. I think they have to eat some humble pie and go with the first option to stay competitive and recoup some of their substantial loses on the gaming front.
They hand picked xbox360 units for a conference, and one of them still got the red ring of death - hah hah, next time test your hardware better before rushing it into production to beat Sony to the market. The PS3 can run for days in a sauna, the xbox can't be placed on carpet or it overheats - Microsoft is a company filled with morons.
They hand picked xbox360 units for a conference, and one of them still got the red ring of death - hah hah, next time test your hardware better before rushing it into production to beat Sony to the market. The PS3 can run for days in a sauna, the xbox can't be placed on carpet or it overheats - Microsoft is a company filled with morons.
Wow... Engadget is just straight clowning on MS:
Just days ago, we heard that Microsoft's Xbox 360 failure rate was at a staggering 16-percent. Not helping Redmond's cause in making you believe otherwise, one of the hand-picked machines used at the 2008 Game Developers Conference was actually suffering from the infamous Red Ring of Death. Comedic gold? Yes, indeed.
I know they deserve it, but again, wow. The 360 is really cementing its rep as a reliability problem child/POS.
Just days ago, we heard that Microsoft's Xbox 360 failure rate was at a staggering 16-percent. Not helping Redmond's cause in making you believe otherwise, one of the hand-picked machines used at the 2008 Game Developers Conference was actually suffering from the infamous Red Ring of Death. Comedic gold? Yes, indeed.
I know they deserve it, but again, wow. The 360 is really cementing its rep as a reliability problem child/POS.
.
The unfortunate part is that I do have friends that work at MS. They're a really good bunch. I can only figure that the XBOX is a good architecture executed tragically by beancounter crippled manufacturers. The only horror story I've heard concerning the PS3 is the one where they tried to void the warranty due to excessive "dust" and that played out to the customers satisfaction in the end.
In addition, given the time they've had to work on it, gaming companies have said that the tools provided have finally matured. They were pretty rough at launch, and that contributed to the game delays later on. but this is behind them, and more games are arriving.
Are you forgetting how rapidly new gen consoles sprout up? By the time the PS3 "catches up" (if it ever does) the new consoles will be coming out. Now Sony can possibly be in a good position for next gen depending on how games go in development. I personally do not think devs will make games on Blu Ray cause it's too niche. But I may be wrong. The thing is nobody knows at this point and at this point in time, despite having more potential than an Xbox360 the PS3 still is not the better choice for gaming.
Quote:
I've found it to be very interesting that for the past year, the anti-PS3 and Sony camp has alternately said that while the PS3 was a better player, it was an inferior game machine, then, despite it being a better game machine, it was an inferior player.
I've also read ad nausium that it sold because it was a player, but not as a console, and that it sold because it was a console, but not as a player.
I do wish people would make up their minds!
There has been a lot of fanboyism on every side. It really gets ridiculous. The anti Microsoft crowd has certainly said some irrational stuff. Case in point: that the PS3 is a better gaming system choice.
EDIT: Typos since I was about to run out the door. Sorry.
Are you forgetting how rapidly new gen consoles sprout up? By the time the PS3 "catches up" (if it ever does) the new consoles will be coming out.
How rapidly? About every six years or so (playstation1/2/3 shipped in 1994, 2002, 2006).
If that pace is maintained, PS4 in 2012.
PS1 sold 102 million. PS2 sold 120 million (and counting). So far Wii has only hit 20 million, typically sales ramp up over the lifetime of a console as prices drop and the game library gets bigger.
Do you honestly think that only 1.5 years after release, and with the top console only at 20 million, AND with bluray winning the HD battle, there's no way for PS3 to catch up over the next FOUR YEARS?
Are you forgetting how rapidly new gen consoles sprout up? By the time the PS3 "catches up" (if it ever does) the new consoles will be coming out.
Meh... the PS3 is about 7 million consoles behind the 360 in total sold, which isn't that much if you consider that in the previous generation, around 165 million consoles got sold (mostly PS2s).
The three next-gen consoles, between them, have sold around 48 million units so far worldwide. As games go, this one's barely finished the first quarter.
Quote:
There has been a lot of fanboyism on every side. It really gets ridiculous. The anti Microsoft crowd has certainly said some irrational stuff. Case in point: that the PS3 is a better gaming system choice.
It may end up being better in the end. Remember the PS2? Had maybe two good games at launch. Yet it ended up having the deepest and best gaming library of any console of its generation (with only a small minority of the hardest core Nintenheads and Microsofties disagreeing). Heck, it still sells well today, on the strength of its library, plus being cheap.
All I know is, the Blu-Ray factor will likely tide the PS3 over 'til the library of games gets better--- tide it over and then some, actually, considering that many ppl who were waiting on the sidelines to buy a next-gen disc player were waiting for the format war to be resolved; it now is, and the best Blu-Ray player is the PS3.
The PS3 will likely outsell the 360 in 2008 worldwide sales. The interesting questions are, by how much? And can it catch the Wii?
I think we're in for one helluva three-way console war, and it won't be resolved any time soon.
Though, can anything knock off the Wii? It's so very well-positioned with that low price during a time of economic uncertainty. And mainstream gamers just flat-out love it.
.
Nothing lasts forever.
It was thought that Sony OWNED the console game space. Well, we see what happened.
I'm convinced though, that with what I've said about manufacturing costs, the PS3 price will eventually, perhaps in the next year to 18 months, come down enough so that it will be no higher, and possibly lower, than the price of the 360, and not much higher than that of the Wii.
On a longer term, I believe the price should come in at $250. What will Nintendo do? They can't come down by the same percentage.
The advantages of the PS3 will be realized at the lower price points.
So now we are slamming people for posting news that is 9 hours old? AI didn't post an article on it and I had not read that so I'm quite glad minderbinder posted the link.
Geez. What bug crawled up your butt? Slamming? Are you aware of what things like \ mean? It was all over the big news outlets anyway. If you just rely on AI for your news, you've got bigger problems.
I know about the memory leaks. But I often keep Safari running for days without any problems.
But the question is: how much RAM do you have and how many other RAM-hogging applications do you have? For me, running OmniWeb (webkit based) and Word on my MacBook with 1 GB RAM can get very trying if there are other apps I want to use in addition to those two. If those two apps could at least cut their RAM usage in half (even then, it would still be excessive), it'd make things a lot nicer.
For my GF with 768 MB RAM, Safari's memory leaks are also a problem.
And who knows, maybe HD DVD drives would have been less likely to scratch discs?
MS has had a lot of problems, including that one. The other was that the DVD playback was supposed to be horrible, though I never saw a DVD through a 360, there has been a slew of articles about that. I don't know if it was fixed or not.
I agree, but how will MS respond? While they are reportedly now making money on each 360 sale, they are still Billions in the hole. Will they add a Blu-ray player to the make an 360 a viable unit for gaming and watching HD media, will they announce a new console for gaming that contains a Blu-ray/DVD player, or will they ignore Blu-ray altogether. I think they have to eat some humble pie and go with the first option to stay competitive and recoup some of their substantial loses on the gaming front.
A couple of months ago, MS was asked that question, and the response was that if there was sufficient demand for it, they would have one.
The unfortunate part is that I do have friends that work at MS. They're a really good bunch. I can only figure that the XBOX is a good architecture executed tragically by beancounter crippled manufacturers. The only horror story I've heard concerning the PS3 is the one where they tried to void the warranty due to excessive "dust" and that played out to the customers satisfaction in the end.
Nobody doubts that the people at MS are a good bunch. It's upper management that's the problem.
Unlike Sony, they rushed the 360 out the door. As a manufacturer of electronics years ago, I can tell you that reliability testing is very expensive, and can be time consuming, but it must be done properly.
Either it wasn't done properly, to save money, and get it out, or the results were ignored.
The only thing that was more open was the lack of region codes. But, Bd has fewer than DVD currently has, and are not being used to this date. Even so, almost no one cares about that anyway.
Blu-Ray's region codes are being used on some discs. I have a few Sony/CTS titles that at least say they are region coded on the package. There is at least one site that list tested region codes of Blu-Ray discs. Region coding doesn't matter much in the US, but outside the US, it's a much bigger concern for consumers. The last time I saw figures, 70% of DVD players in Europe were region free.
The people that seem to know say that BD-J documentation is quite expensive but HDi is much less so. Blu-Ray supposedly requires the use of a $2500 AACS key to produce a commercial disc, no matter the lot size, and HD DVD did not.
It was thought that Sony OWNED the console game space. Well, we see what happened.
I'm convinced though, that with what I've said about manufacturing costs, the PS3 price will eventually, perhaps in the next year to 18 months, come down enough so that it will be no higher, and possibly lower, than the price of the 360, and not much higher than that of the Wii.
On a longer term, I believe the price should come in at $250. What will Nintendo do? They can't come down by the same percentage.
The advantages of the PS3 will be realized at the lower price points.
I tend to agree, but the Wii is going to be hard to catch. They've already made their rep as the runaway hit of this console generation; meanwhile, Sony is going to have to fight to overcome their rep as an underachiever, thanks to the lackluster first year of the PS3.
Yes, the stars are starting to align the PS3's way: Blu-Ray won the format war, the PS3 price drop has helped (and no doubt there's more to come), Sony's online efforts are getting stronger, and they're finally due to starting to get some good games. All good in a conventional console war.
But the Wii isn't a conventional opponent, due to its ability to appeal to mainstream gamers, and even what were previously non-gamers.
When you see news stories about senior citizens happily playing Wii Bowling together in retirement homes, you know something's up in a paradigm-shifting way.
Are you forgetting how rapidly new gen consoles sprout up? By the time the PS3 "catches up" (if it ever does) the new consoles will be coming out. Now can possibly Sony be in a good position for next gen depending on how games go in development. I personally do not think devs will make games on Blu Ray cause it's too niche. But I may be wrong. The thing is nobody knows at this point and at this point in time, despite having more potential than an Xbox360 the PS3 still is not the better choice for gaming.
How fast do they sprout up? Every five or six years.
The PS3 will catch up in a year to 18 months, maybe even surpass the Wii in that time. I've read that it's expected that in the long term, the PS3 is expected to become number one, but not buy as much as before.
Also, it's possible that this console might last longer. The Wii is way behind in the area of capability. There might have to be another before Sony has to do their own. Or each company may just have to improve what they have now rather than starting over.
Quote:
There has been a lot of fanboyism on every side. It really gets ridiculous. The anti Microsoft crowd has certainly said some irrational stuff. Case in point: that the PS3 is a better gaming system choice.
I haven't been a gamer for years. My daughter is the one. She has all of the previous generation, and the one before that. Right now, she has the Wii. We'll be getting the PS3 once I know what the new model does in regards to backwards compatibility. That's up in the air right now.
Nobody doubts that the people at MS are a good bunch. It's upper management that's the problem.
Unlike Sony, they rushed the 360 out the door. As a manufacturer of electronics years ago, I can tell you that reliability testing is very expensive, and can be time consuming, but it must be done properly.
Either it wasn't done properly, to save money, and get it out, or the results were ignored.
Having worked in the console gaming industry, I can tell you that within it, there's little to no doubt that Microsoft's strategy was to get the 360 out in time for Holiday Season '05, come hell or high water.
The thing could've been found to cause bubonic plague, and MS still would've shipped it. They desperately wanted one Christmas all to themselves in the next-gen console race, and they got it. I just feel bad for anyone who beta-tested... err, bought the thing. \
But the question is: how much RAM do you have and how many other RAM-hogging applications do you have? For me, running OmniWeb (webkit based) and Word on my MacBook with 1 GB RAM can get very trying if there are other apps I want to use in addition to those two. If those two apps could at least cut their RAM usage in half (even then, it would still be excessive), it'd make things a lot nicer.
For my GF with 768 MB RAM, Safari's memory leaks are also a problem.
I use two machines. The one I use for most of my browsing is a mirror door dual 1.25 GHz G4 model, obtained after my older, upgraded, Digital Audio mobo died. (One minute of silence, please!). This has 2Gb RAM. I do various things on it, but no video encoding, though sometimes Photoshop work when my other machine is in use doing encoding.
My other machine is a dual 1GHz G5 with 8GB RAM. I sometimes do browsing with that machine, but do my more difficult work on it.
I keep putting a new machine purchase off, though I have made the decision to go with a Nehalem machine when it comes out, hopefully, later this year, as the chips are due in the third, or latest, the fourth quarter.
I tend to agree, but the Wii is going to be hard to catch. They've already made their rep as the runaway hit of this console generation; meanwhile, Sony is going to have to fight to overcome their rep as an underachiever, thanks to the lackluster first year of the PS3.
That's all true. But I don't see as much potential in new games for the Wii. Tons of people will buy it, but how many games will they buy for it? And will they stay amused or will they get bored and start looking at the less "casual" games available on other platforms? The Wii is a great box, but I wonder if the limitations will make it seem dated faster than the other platforms?
I can see many people having both a Wii and one of the other platforms (probably mostly PS3 going forward)...and buying far more games for the other platform.
Comments
MS possibly made a fatal decision in not including HD-DVD as a built-in.
And who knows, maybe HD DVD drives would have been less likely to scratch discs?
I'd expect worldwide PS3 sales for 2008 to outpace the 360, though I'm sure MS will put up a heckuva fight.
I agree, but how will MS respond? While they are reportedly now making money on each 360 sale, they are still Billions in the hole. Will they add a Blu-ray player to the make an 360 a viable unit for gaming and watching HD media, will they announce a new console for gaming that contains a Blu-ray/DVD player, or will they ignore Blu-ray altogether. I think they have to eat some humble pie and go with the first option to stay competitive and recoup some of their substantial loses on the gaming front.
They hand picked xbox360 units for a conference, and one of them still got the red ring of death - hah hah, next time test your hardware better before rushing it into production to beat Sony to the market. The PS3 can run for days in a sauna, the xbox can't be placed on carpet or it overheats - Microsoft is a company filled with morons.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/19/m...s-rrod-at-gdc/
They hand picked xbox360 units for a conference, and one of them still got the red ring of death - hah hah, next time test your hardware better before rushing it into production to beat Sony to the market. The PS3 can run for days in a sauna, the xbox can't be placed on carpet or it overheats - Microsoft is a company filled with morons.
Wow... Engadget is just straight clowning on MS:
Just days ago, we heard that Microsoft's Xbox 360 failure rate was at a staggering 16-percent. Not helping Redmond's cause in making you believe otherwise, one of the hand-picked machines used at the 2008 Game Developers Conference was actually suffering from the infamous Red Ring of Death. Comedic gold? Yes, indeed.
I know they deserve it, but again, wow. The 360 is really cementing its rep as a reliability problem child/POS.
.
Wow... Engadget is just straight clowning on MS:
Just days ago, we heard that Microsoft's Xbox 360 failure rate was at a staggering 16-percent. Not helping Redmond's cause in making you believe otherwise, one of the hand-picked machines used at the 2008 Game Developers Conference was actually suffering from the infamous Red Ring of Death. Comedic gold? Yes, indeed.
I know they deserve it, but again, wow. The 360 is really cementing its rep as a reliability problem child/POS.
.
The unfortunate part is that I do have friends that work at MS. They're a really good bunch. I can only figure that the XBOX is a good architecture executed tragically by beancounter crippled manufacturers. The only horror story I've heard concerning the PS3 is the one where they tried to void the warranty due to excessive "dust" and that played out to the customers satisfaction in the end.
In addition, given the time they've had to work on it, gaming companies have said that the tools provided have finally matured. They were pretty rough at launch, and that contributed to the game delays later on. but this is behind them, and more games are arriving.
Are you forgetting how rapidly new gen consoles sprout up? By the time the PS3 "catches up" (if it ever does) the new consoles will be coming out. Now Sony can possibly be in a good position for next gen depending on how games go in development. I personally do not think devs will make games on Blu Ray cause it's too niche. But I may be wrong. The thing is nobody knows at this point and at this point in time, despite having more potential than an Xbox360 the PS3 still is not the better choice for gaming.
I've found it to be very interesting that for the past year, the anti-PS3 and Sony camp has alternately said that while the PS3 was a better player, it was an inferior game machine, then, despite it being a better game machine, it was an inferior player.
I've also read ad nausium that it sold because it was a player, but not as a console, and that it sold because it was a console, but not as a player.
I do wish people would make up their minds!
There has been a lot of fanboyism on every side. It really gets ridiculous. The anti Microsoft crowd has certainly said some irrational stuff. Case in point: that the PS3 is a better gaming system choice.
EDIT: Typos since I was about to run out the door. Sorry.
Are you forgetting how rapidly new gen consoles sprout up? By the time the PS3 "catches up" (if it ever does) the new consoles will be coming out.
How rapidly? About every six years or so (playstation1/2/3 shipped in 1994, 2002, 2006).
If that pace is maintained, PS4 in 2012.
PS1 sold 102 million. PS2 sold 120 million (and counting). So far Wii has only hit 20 million, typically sales ramp up over the lifetime of a console as prices drop and the game library gets bigger.
Do you honestly think that only 1.5 years after release, and with the top console only at 20 million, AND with bluray winning the HD battle, there's no way for PS3 to catch up over the next FOUR YEARS?
Really?
Are you forgetting how rapidly new gen consoles sprout up? By the time the PS3 "catches up" (if it ever does) the new consoles will be coming out.
Meh... the PS3 is about 7 million consoles behind the 360 in total sold, which isn't that much if you consider that in the previous generation, around 165 million consoles got sold (mostly PS2s).
The three next-gen consoles, between them, have sold around 48 million units so far worldwide. As games go, this one's barely finished the first quarter.
There has been a lot of fanboyism on every side. It really gets ridiculous. The anti Microsoft crowd has certainly said some irrational stuff. Case in point: that the PS3 is a better gaming system choice.
It may end up being better in the end. Remember the PS2? Had maybe two good games at launch. Yet it ended up having the deepest and best gaming library of any console of its generation (with only a small minority of the hardest core Nintenheads and Microsofties disagreeing). Heck, it still sells well today, on the strength of its library, plus being cheap.
All I know is, the Blu-Ray factor will likely tide the PS3 over 'til the library of games gets better--- tide it over and then some, actually, considering that many ppl who were waiting on the sidelines to buy a next-gen disc player were waiting for the format war to be resolved; it now is, and the best Blu-Ray player is the PS3.
The PS3 will likely outsell the 360 in 2008 worldwide sales. The interesting questions are, by how much? And can it catch the Wii?
I think we're in for one helluva three-way console war, and it won't be resolved any time soon.
.
Though, can anything knock off the Wii? It's so very well-positioned with that low price during a time of economic uncertainty. And mainstream gamers just flat-out love it.
.
Nothing lasts forever.
It was thought that Sony OWNED the console game space. Well, we see what happened.
I'm convinced though, that with what I've said about manufacturing costs, the PS3 price will eventually, perhaps in the next year to 18 months, come down enough so that it will be no higher, and possibly lower, than the price of the 360, and not much higher than that of the Wii.
On a longer term, I believe the price should come in at $250. What will Nintendo do? They can't come down by the same percentage.
The advantages of the PS3 will be realized at the lower price points.
So now we are slamming people for posting news that is 9 hours old? AI didn't post an article on it and I had not read that so I'm quite glad minderbinder posted the link.
Geez. What bug crawled up your butt? Slamming? Are you aware of what things like
I know about the memory leaks. But I often keep Safari running for days without any problems.
But the question is: how much RAM do you have and how many other RAM-hogging applications do you have? For me, running OmniWeb (webkit based) and Word on my MacBook with 1 GB RAM can get very trying if there are other apps I want to use in addition to those two. If those two apps could at least cut their RAM usage in half (even then, it would still be excessive), it'd make things a lot nicer.
For my GF with 768 MB RAM, Safari's memory leaks are also a problem.
And who knows, maybe HD DVD drives would have been less likely to scratch discs?
MS has had a lot of problems, including that one. The other was that the DVD playback was supposed to be horrible, though I never saw a DVD through a 360, there has been a slew of articles about that. I don't know if it was fixed or not.
I agree, but how will MS respond? While they are reportedly now making money on each 360 sale, they are still Billions in the hole. Will they add a Blu-ray player to the make an 360 a viable unit for gaming and watching HD media, will they announce a new console for gaming that contains a Blu-ray/DVD player, or will they ignore Blu-ray altogether. I think they have to eat some humble pie and go with the first option to stay competitive and recoup some of their substantial loses on the gaming front.
A couple of months ago, MS was asked that question, and the response was that if there was sufficient demand for it, they would have one.
The unfortunate part is that I do have friends that work at MS. They're a really good bunch. I can only figure that the XBOX is a good architecture executed tragically by beancounter crippled manufacturers. The only horror story I've heard concerning the PS3 is the one where they tried to void the warranty due to excessive "dust" and that played out to the customers satisfaction in the end.
Nobody doubts that the people at MS are a good bunch. It's upper management that's the problem.
Unlike Sony, they rushed the 360 out the door. As a manufacturer of electronics years ago, I can tell you that reliability testing is very expensive, and can be time consuming, but it must be done properly.
Either it wasn't done properly, to save money, and get it out, or the results were ignored.
The only thing that was more open was the lack of region codes. But, Bd has fewer than DVD currently has, and are not being used to this date. Even so, almost no one cares about that anyway.
Blu-Ray's region codes are being used on some discs. I have a few Sony/CTS titles that at least say they are region coded on the package. There is at least one site that list tested region codes of Blu-Ray discs. Region coding doesn't matter much in the US, but outside the US, it's a much bigger concern for consumers. The last time I saw figures, 70% of DVD players in Europe were region free.
The people that seem to know say that BD-J documentation is quite expensive but HDi is much less so. Blu-Ray supposedly requires the use of a $2500 AACS key to produce a commercial disc, no matter the lot size, and HD DVD did not.
Nothing lasts forever.
It was thought that Sony OWNED the console game space. Well, we see what happened.
I'm convinced though, that with what I've said about manufacturing costs, the PS3 price will eventually, perhaps in the next year to 18 months, come down enough so that it will be no higher, and possibly lower, than the price of the 360, and not much higher than that of the Wii.
On a longer term, I believe the price should come in at $250. What will Nintendo do? They can't come down by the same percentage.
The advantages of the PS3 will be realized at the lower price points.
I tend to agree, but the Wii is going to be hard to catch. They've already made their rep as the runaway hit of this console generation; meanwhile, Sony is going to have to fight to overcome their rep as an underachiever, thanks to the lackluster first year of the PS3.
Yes, the stars are starting to align the PS3's way: Blu-Ray won the format war, the PS3 price drop has helped (and no doubt there's more to come), Sony's online efforts are getting stronger, and they're finally due to starting to get some good games. All good in a conventional console war.
But the Wii isn't a conventional opponent, due to its ability to appeal to mainstream gamers, and even what were previously non-gamers.
When you see news stories about senior citizens happily playing Wii Bowling together in retirement homes, you know something's up in a paradigm-shifting way.
.
Are you forgetting how rapidly new gen consoles sprout up? By the time the PS3 "catches up" (if it ever does) the new consoles will be coming out. Now can possibly Sony be in a good position for next gen depending on how games go in development. I personally do not think devs will make games on Blu Ray cause it's too niche. But I may be wrong. The thing is nobody knows at this point and at this point in time, despite having more potential than an Xbox360 the PS3 still is not the better choice for gaming.
How fast do they sprout up? Every five or six years.
The PS3 will catch up in a year to 18 months, maybe even surpass the Wii in that time. I've read that it's expected that in the long term, the PS3 is expected to become number one, but not buy as much as before.
Also, it's possible that this console might last longer. The Wii is way behind in the area of capability. There might have to be another before Sony has to do their own. Or each company may just have to improve what they have now rather than starting over.
There has been a lot of fanboyism on every side. It really gets ridiculous. The anti Microsoft crowd has certainly said some irrational stuff. Case in point: that the PS3 is a better gaming system choice.
I haven't been a gamer for years. My daughter is the one. She has all of the previous generation, and the one before that. Right now, she has the Wii. We'll be getting the PS3 once I know what the new model does in regards to backwards compatibility. That's up in the air right now.
Neither of us have an interest in the 360.
Nobody doubts that the people at MS are a good bunch. It's upper management that's the problem.
Unlike Sony, they rushed the 360 out the door. As a manufacturer of electronics years ago, I can tell you that reliability testing is very expensive, and can be time consuming, but it must be done properly.
Either it wasn't done properly, to save money, and get it out, or the results were ignored.
Having worked in the console gaming industry, I can tell you that within it, there's little to no doubt that Microsoft's strategy was to get the 360 out in time for Holiday Season '05, come hell or high water.
The thing could've been found to cause bubonic plague, and MS still would've shipped it. They desperately wanted one Christmas all to themselves in the next-gen console race, and they got it. I just feel bad for anyone who beta-tested... err, bought the thing.
.
But the question is: how much RAM do you have and how many other RAM-hogging applications do you have? For me, running OmniWeb (webkit based) and Word on my MacBook with 1 GB RAM can get very trying if there are other apps I want to use in addition to those two. If those two apps could at least cut their RAM usage in half (even then, it would still be excessive), it'd make things a lot nicer.
For my GF with 768 MB RAM, Safari's memory leaks are also a problem.
I use two machines. The one I use for most of my browsing is a mirror door dual 1.25 GHz G4 model, obtained after my older, upgraded, Digital Audio mobo died. (One minute of silence, please!). This has 2Gb RAM. I do various things on it, but no video encoding, though sometimes Photoshop work when my other machine is in use doing encoding.
My other machine is a dual 1GHz G5 with 8GB RAM. I sometimes do browsing with that machine, but do my more difficult work on it.
I keep putting a new machine purchase off, though I have made the decision to go with a Nehalem machine when it comes out, hopefully, later this year, as the chips are due in the third, or latest, the fourth quarter.
I tend to agree, but the Wii is going to be hard to catch. They've already made their rep as the runaway hit of this console generation; meanwhile, Sony is going to have to fight to overcome their rep as an underachiever, thanks to the lackluster first year of the PS3.
That's all true. But I don't see as much potential in new games for the Wii. Tons of people will buy it, but how many games will they buy for it? And will they stay amused or will they get bored and start looking at the less "casual" games available on other platforms? The Wii is a great box, but I wonder if the limitations will make it seem dated faster than the other platforms?
I can see many people having both a Wii and one of the other platforms (probably mostly PS3 going forward)...and buying far more games for the other platform.