It’s about the games, and what you can do about it, silly. People are going ‘ohh sony is soooo doomed’ about them charging $600 for the full version of their console that can do everything. Interesting. Now how much have they invested on gaming themselves?
I have 2 PS2 systems. One of them has a Linux kit on it. Between those two I have $800 invested in the PS2, in the consoles alone. The fact that the PS3 is $600 all at once might be a brief pinch, but it’s not out of the question for me. But what it does do is push this from “I’m buying it when it comes out” which I would have done at $400ish to “I’m buying it when there are sufficient games to justify it.” I have a $150 Gamecube, I’ve invested tons in my main PC, and in the past 3 years I’ve bought $800 worth of palmtops.
With my $300 Ps2, it took FFX, Ratchet and Clank and a number of other releases before I considered it worth the price. Even though the Gamecube was $200 less, it didn’t have enough games at any point to justify that cost. It wasn’t until it had Skies of Arcadia, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, the Zelda Collectors Edition, and Zelda WindWaker that it was enough to justify even the $150 price it had when I bought it.
If the Nin Wii is $150-200, it still needs to come out with 2-3 good, solid RPGs before I’ll buy it. The flipside is that it will have RPGs from older systems in its library, 6-10 good RPGs there (that I haven’t yet finished) could justify the console alone.
The PS3 would need 6-10 good modern RPGs to justify its cost. I don’t see it getting those before 2008. 4-8 RPGs and a Ratchet and Clank game could push it over too. Other features could bring this down as well. I have no High Def TV, so the movies won’t be a factor for awhile. Maybe if it acted as a DVR or some other similar toy. If I could run Linux on it that would drop the need down to 3-5 games too.
The Xbox 360 needs at least 5. I only see 2 even on the future release list… The FFXI plus another good game in another genre could make up one of these “good modern rpg” weights. Oblivion might make ¼th or 1/5th of a good modern rpg weight.
Really the least value of all my current consoles has been my PC. I only have 3 games that use anywhere near the power the system has, and I probably have more invested in my main PC than the $800 for my PS2s. The rest of the games on my PC are cheesy little puzzle and logic games that could run anywhere. The Zodiac was also a pretty crummy investment with only having about 5 games before it went out of use and I lost the darn thing.
Even though the PS2 has cost me $800, it’s had the most games and has been the best value of all of them. I think the PS3 will probably have the same thing going for it, but I doubt I’ll be an early adopter of it this time around.