I don't own a ps3 you're right. However I never said I disliked Sony's products (sitting here on a Sony Vaio laptop writing this so lol) or the ps3. I wouldn't consider myself to be a microsoft fanboy, theres plenty MS got wrong about the 360, for a start the HD-DVD format was a complete failure, supporting it in the face of Blu-ray was a costly mistake. The Red Ring of Death, ok so Sony has it's failure in the Yellow Light of Death which is just as potent but MS definitely could have handled the RROD better. In-house development games, MS is particulary bad at getting good ones on to it's console. Halo was exclusive but not MS developed. Same goes for Mass Effect 1.Originally Posted by eternal essence
In short I am a fan of gaming in general. There are a handful of games I cannot get on my 360 out on the PS3 I would consider buying the console for. However I cannot quite justify the cost just yet. I work in gaming retail, I can have a preference but it's easier not to because when I'm at work I can't be biased, I have to sell all formats with equal passion and zest. I haven't considered myself a particularly big fan of Nintendo's hardware or handhelds for the past 2 generations since the demise of the N-64 and the Game Boy Advance. The Cube was simply awful, the Wii a gimmick and Touchscreen controls on the DS rarely work well imho. And yet at work I am expected to understand, know and exhibit a passion for Nintendo products, in fact my "section" of the department is the 3DS format and I make it successful because I'm able to look past the failings of the touchscreen controls and see it as a fun handheld console with a promising future. My above post disassembling the failings of Sony to prevent, contain and control the hack of the PSN and the restoration the PSN to their own deadlines. Pointing out the cost to Sony (estimated) and what damaging lasting effects this could have on Sony is nothing less than that. I'm laughing with the rest of the 360 owners sure, our consoles work fine online. However I am laughing in the sense of pitying PS3 owners. It's a terrible joke really and genuinely I feel sorry for the millions of customers who've never done anything wrong and are now suffering because of this.
The figures and "business plan" as you put it in my above post are not mine, they are the summations of many different articles combined and cruel, cold, hard logic. It is irrefutable that the hack is costing Sony in the ball park of $1.25bn, it is irrefutable that the PS3 has been sold at a loss for many, many years, it is irrefutable that the changing of the hardware in a console of any manufacture costs money and that Sony has done this far more often than any other console manufacturer. It is irrefutable that the losses Sony has made and the failings of Sony to update and protect it's customer data and PSN servers could have been avoided or at least offset in some way by the charging of membership for the access of the PSN to play games online. Playing games online is a privilege not a right, bout time gamers realized that. It is irrefutable that Capcom at the very least has already dropped hints that it is considering the suing of Sony for hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars for lost revenue. If the lawsuit is not settled or if Sony wins it is logical that development companies might focus more on other formats which have not through incompetence left them out of pocket on large sums of money which was budgeted for and can affect the development of new titles, if a developer is not developing games then they are out of work and that means job losses as well as fewer if any games ever from that studio again. It is logical if Sony is to continue as a games console manufacturer that eventually they will (or should) remove the privilege of free online gaming in favour of charging for it, something Microsoft has proven works. This would allow Sony to recover some of it's massive losses on this matter and from the perspective of the consumer would be better since as you are paying for a service you expect and demand a far better service than you accept when it is free, again this is not me saying how I could do this better, it is me logically extrapolating and analyzing the figures.
As to which console is better and fanboyism? Well straight up here's the one question which makes everyone shut the smurf up when it's asked. What console do your friends have? If you answered that with the Xbox 360 then go buy a 360, regardless of which one has better graphics or hardware. If you answered PS3 go buy a PS3 because it doesn't matter who has the better online network. If you answered Wii, think about what games you would rather play, what kind of gamer you are and what features you'd like from a console because there is little sense in buying a Wii if you are a "hardcore" (god I hate that term) gamer. I own a 360 because my closest friends own 360s there was little to decide there. Todays gaming world is as much about socializing as it is gaming. The main reason for buying any console is always to enjoy playing games with friends, therefore regardless of features or hardware if your friends all have 360 consoles there is little to no point in buying a PS3 because then when they're laughing bout the ridiculous game they had last night online you won't be able to join in with them because even if you were playing the same game last night, you weren't there. Same goes if your friends all have PS3s. I do not consider myself a fanboy of any particular gaming format. Everyone has the right to choose what console they buy but the core reason should be the one which provides the most fun. As I said Gaming is as much about the social aspect of online gaming these days as it is the actual gaming. So 360 owners won't get to play Killzone and PS3 owners don't get to play Halo what can you do eh? Nothing really thats not to say that PS3 owners won't have fun because Halo Reach was better than Killzone 3 and it's not to say that 360 owners won't have fun because they don't have a game like Heavy Rain either. In the best possible situation, people would own both consoles but doing so is expensive and even those of us who work with games all day, every day can understand that you can't always get both more than most because if anything we are the ones who are most likely to want both. Therefore we all decide. I decided based on cold hard logic of what I want from gaming, that doesn't mean I hate the PS3, it doesn't mean I hate PS3 owners either or that I'm jealous of PS3 owners, if I wanted I could buy a second hand 60GB model or a 40GB model for under £100 today. Fact is I won't because at this time the 10 or so games what I want on the PS3 what are not on the 360 already don't quite justify the purchase of a new console, it'd also make me spend more money on gaming that frankly I cannot afford to spend if I intend to pay my bills, live independently of my family and put some aside for holidays etc.
The fanboy argument is hilariously funny in my eyes. I tend to join in the fanboy arguments for the laughs in it and because I own a 360 the PS3 fanboys decide that I fall on the 360 side of the line not I. However if actually asked my opinion on gaming away from the "fanboy wars" you'd get a very similar response to the above paragraph. I don't own a jester hat, though that sounds like a cool idea there, thanks! I happen to own a handful of gaming related T-shirts (no underwear though, if you see some around, feel free to mail me a size medium in them) they are more for individual titles however though the only ones for the 360 are my Gears of War one and my Halo ODST one. I own a Black Ops one which has the Xbox 360 logo but thats because MS paid for them to be made for promotional purposes at my work on launch day of Black Ops. The rest of my gaming shirts are an ancient PS2 launch TS and Nintendo 3DS ones I got from work (I also have a 3DS white coat from the launch event) I don't make a habit of buying gaming related clothing often, mostly I get them as promotional stuff from work where I'm expected to wear them for a couple of days/weeks and then get to keep them.
So to you Eternal Essence, get off your fanboy high horse there, chill out some. My previous post you commented on was not intended to get you all riled up but to point out that Sony has dropped a major ball here and that there are a lot of issues from this some of which affect not just Sony or Sony customers but the entire gaming market to a degree.
It's not the end of the world that the PSN is down but it is a major issue for Sony and the worst punchline in the world is that Sony are not going to be the ones to suffer for all of this, it's the people already suffering because of the lack of service, poor communication releases from Sony and general lack of competence being displayed by a company who infamously decided that they wanted gamers to feel like they had "worked for their console" when deciding it's launch price and said so publicly. If they want you to feel like you've worked for your console then the least you as a PS3 owner could expect or demand in return is the manufacturers to show a degree of competence when dealing with issues like this. As for if Sony brought the recent troubles with the PSN on itself? Yes, yes it did. Through many things, 1) trying to stomp around like Godzilla to protect it's hardware, there were many subtle things they could have done to protect the PS3 rather than the massive mess of a legal battle they have made. 2) through not updating it's webserver programs or utilizing basic network security such as firewalls. 3) and probably the biggest mistake of it all, assuming that no one would dare to hack the PSN to such a scale. Thats not the Sony consumers fault none of it is, it was all down to Sony. Have Sony consumers got the right to be mad at Sony for this? To stop using Sony products? To switch to their main rivals MS for their gaming needs? Definitely yes to all of those, especially since regardless of the package they offer, no compensation is ever going to be truly enough to repair the damage for something which should have been either impossible or never should have happened in the first place. Especially considering it was possible so easily through incompetence. Should heads at Sony's highest level of Playstation head office? I don't personally think they should, they probably will but I'm more of a fan of the idea that people will see situations like this and learn from their mistakes and rectify that regardless of what that takes so it doesn't happen again. However big corporations never work that way and once this is all over I would be unsurprised to hear that several people get moved around or dismissed/resign from the company.
Edit: WK read this post carefully for it seems you've fallen in to a trap here and well, you might learn something bout me from this post.
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