Blueray-HD war over

[MegoSteve]

Developers aren't going to make games for a system that's not selling and consumers are starting to lose faith in Microsoft's ability to make a quality product, it's just that simple.

Yeah, which is why NPD consistently shows the 360 outselling the PS3 by a two to one margin for the past twelve months. (According to NPD, the 360 sold 4.5 million from Dec. 06 through Nov. 07, and the PS3 sold 2.25 million.) The red ring of death has had a negligible effect on sales, unless you're arguing that the 360 should be outselling the PS3 by three or four to one. It's just a ridiculous argument to make... the PS3 couldn't even outsell the 360 the month they announced their $100 price cut! If anything, they lost ground, because the 360 was back to outselling the PS3 by two times in August when MS cut the price, then in September the 360 outsold the PS3 by a factor of four to one.

I would be willing to bet that when NPD announces the numbers for December 2007, the 360 will have outsold the PS3 by two times at least.

I don't want to be rude, but you just couldn't be more wrong. I'd love to hear about developers that aren't creating games for the 360 anymore because of low sales of the 360. There are absolutely no facts to back up that argument. Not one.

Honestly, if you think somehow the 360's sales are going to suddenly plummet and developers are going to abandon them now because of the RRoD issue, I'll have some of what you are smoking, please. If they haven't by now, they just won't. The 360 just had the highest sales volume year in video game history!

I'm not a PS3 basher by any stretch, but one need only walk into any store that sells consoles to see which ones are selling and which ones aren't. The PS3 is the only console that was easily available this season. All but the Arcade version of the 360 were hard to find this Christmas, as was the Wii. It's only in the past week or so that I'm seeing any kind of restocking on 360s, but I'm still tripping over stacks of unsold PS3s that were there before Christmas. You practically see tumbleweeds in the PS3 aisle...

Were it not for the Blu-Ray playing capability, I'd say that the PS3 would be totally dead in the water within two years if not sooner. The only reason to buy one at this point, aside from one or two appealing games and maybe two or three good-looking future games, is because it plays Blu-Ray disks, and Blu-Ray standalone players cost about the same as a PS3, so why not buy one? The problem with that is, if the price of Blu-Ray standalone players goes down substantially, the PS3 becomes a less appealing buy to non-gamers, which puts them back in jeopardy.

Frankly, I'm hoping WB's decision to go Blu-Ray exclusive comes to bite them in the rear end... they made the decision to try to force people into one high definition format now because high definition players are seeing nowhere near the mainstream adoption DVD did. I'm guessing the studios aren't too happy about that. Problem is that most people still have SD TVs, and DVDs are about as good as it gets on those. Also, Blu-Ray players are still too expensive for anyone but tech geeks to buy them, so now instead of two formats no one is buying, we'll have one format no one is buying for the foreseeable future, until economies of scale kick in and prices come down. And with no competition and incredible arrogance on the part of Sony management, I just don't see pricing on Blu-Ray coming down that quickly.

[MegoSteve]

Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD
On a related note, my launch 360 finally went RROD on me a couple of days ago. Yeah, it really sucks. To be fair though it outlasted my launch PS1 and PS2 and unlike Sony, Microsoft is going to fix it. While I’m waiting for MS to send me the coffin box to ship back to them, I went ahead an upgraded to the Elite 360. That way I’m getting the new RROD free motherboard, plus HDMI and the 120 GB hard drive. When I get the repaired one back from MS I’m going to either give it to my sister or trade it in.

Sorry to hear about that!

How's your experience been with the Elite vs. the Premium? Is it quieter? I already bought a larger hard drive because I love demos, but I'd be tempted by the Elite if I could get a quieter machine with HDMI.

[Werewolf]

Sorry to hear about that!

Yeah, I was pretty bummed about it. I was able to re-download all my arcade games but four of the Venture Bros episodes I bought off the video market place got corrupted.

How's your experience been with the Elite vs. the Premium? Is it quieter? I already bought a larger hard drive because I love demos, but I'd be tempted by the Elite if I could get a quieter machine with HDMI.

It's really nice. Unlike a lot of them, my launch 360 was really never all that loud. My Elite does seem even a bit quieter though. The biggest thing is the massive hard drive and HDMI. Halo and Gears look pretty sweet upscaled through the HDMI port. Oh, it also has the new lower wattage power brick and it came with an HDMI cable.

[MegoSteve]

My Premium is pretty loud, especially when I'm playing something intense like Gears. Thanks for the info on the Elite... so tempting!

[ZICA]

I guess time will tell. If what some of you say is true and consumers continue to be happy with the current POS that Microsoft is selling as the Xbox 360 then the company has nothing to worry about, except for the constant high shipping bills they're getting form UPS and FedEx for returns. And FYI, the new Falcon boards haven't fixed the RROD problem. There's a huge thread dedicated to the Xbox 360 hardware issues on the Cheapassgamer.com forums and this has been mentioned there.

I realize I'm coming across like a Sony fanboy but that couldn't be further from the truth. Like I mentioned before, I own both consoles and enjoy both of them equally. It's just too bad that Microsoft can't get their act together and make a more reliable console.

[MegoSteve]

I don't mean to be a naysayer or anything, but buzz on the internet doesn't mean squat in reality, or else Snakes on a Plane would have been the #1 movie last year, Apple would manufacture the best selling computer, and Ron Paul would win the election in 2008, replacing our outgoing president Howard Dean.

[Werewolf]

I realize I'm coming across like a Sony fanboy

It is honestly fairly obvious.

The PS1 and PS2 also had more than than their fair share of hardware issues early on. Certainly didn't hurt them in the long run and their warrenty wasn't nearly so good. People tend to forget that. But that was before blogs and the Internet fanboy craze.

I personally still can remember the hassle of calling Sony's help line. Anything from non Sony memory cards to AV cables voided their very limited warrenty. I had to play my first PS1 upside down just to get the audio to stop skipping. My second PS1 just up and died. Same as my first PS2.

[edit]

On a side note for PS3 fans, I bought a import Dualshock 3 a couple of weeks ago. It is awesome! Not only does it bring back (sweet, sweet) rumble, the analog sticks are improved and it is just an all around better quality control pad. Some have said the the rumble is a bit on the weak side, but I've found that actually just depends on the game. Unreal in particular rumbles quite strongly. When something explodes, you know it!

[ZICA]

It is honestly fairly obvious.

Think what you want but I've owned pretty much every game system since the Atari 2600, most of which I still do, and have never seen a console with a failure rate like the current XBox 360, never.

[Dave Mc]

Back to HD and Film. The company I work for owns and Uses the Sony F900 HDCam to shoot some high end stuff. Lucas used this when shooting the new Star Wars films. There are a lot of things you have to do to make this look like film. Grain attachments and such. Basically you do things to degrade the image.

More and more filmakers are using HD tape to make "films". It's just so much easier to use.

As for the Blu-Ray HDDvd vs. Standard DVD thing. You wont notice any real difference unless you are watching an HD TV, and then it depends on the resolution of the HD TV. I have a 1080p machine. A decent standard DVD that is enhanced for widescreen viewing looks real good played on the HD machines (upconverted). Still, there is no comparision to a movie played back HDDvd or Blu-Ray that is presented in true 1080p. The difference is stunning.

Still, there is an expense issue. I wouldn't buy old westerns or many older movies if they were released in an HC format at this point, but modern fx movies are just SO COOL on these new formats.

I'm guessing eventually the price on the machines will drop enough that people will replace their old DVD players with blu-ray and eventually convert. The industry will only stand for releasing everything in multiple formats for so long. They'll make it so you'll switch over time, and not even mind it.

[Bo8a_Fett]

I've got a Wii....and i likes it alot.........

[boss]

Dave... my wife and I watched "Surf's Up" on Blu-Ray last night (1080p) and you can really see where the "grain" is added to give it more of a film look. kind of freaky.

[Mikey]

I don't own any HD's or whatever ........
But when I go to Walmart and the TV's are playing HI-DEF? HD? -- whatever....
To me, this stuff looks like a regular TV with the contrast turned up so high it gives one a headache.
I really don't like it.

[JPkempo]

In most walmarts and other stores the Hi-Def TVs arnt being shown with a Hi-Def signal so they don't realy look as good as they could.

[Werewolf]

HD-DVD fighting back with price cuts.

“Effective on January 13, 2008 the MSRP of the entry-model HD-A3 will be $149.99, the HD-A30, with 1080p output, $199.99, and the high-end HD-A35, $299.99.”

http://www.dvdtown.com/news/toshiba-...-campaign/5120

[Corellian Corvette]

Werewolf - Send me a PM, please. I'd like to hear about your experience.

Regarding the RROD. Certainly the problem is worse than we would have liked. Unfortunately, in the days of the internet these things get magnified at an unbelievable rate, and many of these outlier stories you hear (got 5 bad units, etc.) become the urban legends that everyone is having a bad experience.

Much of the problem stemmed from a bad Customer Support issue. People were having bad experiences with our CS reps and we weren't doing as good of a job taking care of them as we should. I'm encouraged to hear this is getting better.

Interestingly – we get a lot of “NFF” consoles, or No Fault Found. One thing about the Xbox 360 is that if you do not have the AV pack plugged into the box tightly, even a little loose, the console gives you 4 red rings. We have had a lot of people who, obviousy, don’t differentiate “3 red rings” from “4 red rings” and assume their console is bad. This happens more often than you would think – in fact that’s been the problem with 2 people in my family; it wasn’t a bad console it was a loose AV cable.

The good news is, as a consumer you are safe. We take care of the console free of charge for 3 years no cost. In truth, the you’re really only likely to experience the problem with the older consoles. Any unit you're going to buy right now is much less likely to be a problem.