PS3 Retails for $500-600, Controller Copies Wii

[J.M. Vargas]

$500 for PS3 with 20 GB Hard Drive, $600 for PS3 with 60GB Hard Drive on 11/17/06.  The PS3 controller now resembles the Dual Shock controller but is bluetooth wireless and has motion sensors ala the Wii's add-on.  Sick!

[Atarifever1]

[QUOTE=J.M. Vargas]

$500 for PS3 with 20 GB Hard Drive, $600 for PS3 with 60GB Hard Drive on 11/17/06.  The PS3 controller now resembles the Dual Shock controller but is bluetooth wireless and has motion sensors ala the Wii's add-on.  Sick!

[/QUOTE]
Yep, I feel bad for the Sony fanboys who have been calling the Wii's controller scheme dumb for so long.  Now they have to do a complete 180 and start talking about the new game experiences it opens up. 
I think the reason for the boomarang is obvious now: give the fans somethng ugly and dumb to complain about until Nintendo shows it's hand and then jam whatever that particular hand is into a dual shock.  How much you want to bet they had a dual shock with a touchpad made just in case?

[J.M. Vargas]

I was watching the Sony conference online and the developer of the new version of 'Warhawk' was trotted on stage to demonstrate his game using the new Dual Shock w/motion sensors ('kinetic sensors' or something dumb like that is what the Sony suits called it).  Poor guy, he did his best but he kept over/understeering his ship with the controller.  Back and forth, left and right, the 'Warhawk' ship on the demo looked like a ragged doll rather than a superb ship cruising through the skies.  I think Sony seriousy needs to make the developers of PS3 games offer the typical standard controls for their new games (like it will be for older PS1/PS2 games) or risk having people grow frustated as hell with coming to grips with this new interface.  I would steer clear of any Nintendo fanboys for the next few days though, because they must be stark raving mad Sony has yet again stolen one of Nintendo's innovations (remember the Dual Shock coming soon after Nintedo's analog controller for the N64?) and will make its own through media hype and blind fanboy support.

 

BTW, very few of the games/demos/trailers shown at the Sony press conference were clearly superior or in any way better than what the XBox 360 offers right now.  Sony London's 'Eight Days' was awesome (think of the most overwrought action scene from a Joel Silver or Jerry Bruckheimer summer flick, only slicker-looking and completely playable), as was an untitled 'Tomb Raider with a male guy'-type 3D action game from Naughty Dog.  'Gran Turismo HD' running on 1080p at 60 frames-per-second was looking dull until the very last track (Grand Canyon), which literally too my breath away despite my watching it on a tiny low-res screen.  Every other game for PS3 just looked like 'me too' high-resolution software that the 360 could emulate with ease.  And the AAA titles were shown on video only, with 'C' and 'B' titles like 'Genji 2,' Insomniac's 'Resistance' ('COD 2' on steroids and in a sci-fi 50's setting) and an EyeToy game that makes game cards come to life via computer graphics (think 'Yu-Gi-Oh!').  Overall one of the weakest Sony press conferences in recent memory, and a poor start to the PS3 hype machine.

[J.M. Vargas]

UPDATE: Holy Cow.  I just checked a downloaded PDF document from Sony about the PS3 release ([url]http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/release/pdf/060509ae.pdf[/url]).  Check out page 3, the $499 bundle [b][u]DOES NOT[/b][/u] have HDMI output and Memory Stick/SD/Compact Flash slot.  Wow, this is a huge deal-breaker because people looking forward to the PS3 as their entry-level Blue-Ray system of choice that want 1080p will have to pay $100 more for the privilege of HDMI interface.  Un-freaking-believable!

[sega saturn x]

Sony stealing other companies ideas!?  Will wonders never cease!  I'm pretty pissed that sony spends so much time trash talking nintendo only to steal their ideas.  But not surprised in the least.  and knowing sony the motion sensitive controller will br poorly made and all around half assed because that's the kind of quality I have come to expect from sony.

 

Now I'm really stoked to see all the first gen ps3 games have the motion sensor aspect totally tacked on and poorly implamented.  You just know sony will try and push this hard on developers.  Which is great since you can be sure it will work with about none of the agmes since it was never meant to.

 

And now that dragon quest is headed for the wii I have no reason in the word to buy a ps3.

[J.M. Vargas]

If anybody here can watch it please try to see video of the Sony conference (Gamespot has it archived somewhere for non-paying members).  The apathy from the underwhelmed crowd is palpable, which is sad because the media/fans present were ready to explode with joy had they been fed the playable demos/games/movies (lengthier than the seconds-long one's on the trailers) the massive hype led them to expect.  Sony really did itself more harm than good with this E3 conference, and given Microsoft and Nintendo a blueprint of how NOT to do their respective pre-E3 demos. 

[bluemonkey1]

The thing that makes the PS3 controller so much better than the Wii controller though is that:

 

1)It is in a single piece - no ripoff charging for add ons, no awkwardness because your hands aren't holding the same piece of the controller.

 

2)It offers the standard controls as well.  So decent FPS will still be possible on it with the dual sticks.

 

It's got the best of both worlds. 

[Paul Campbell]

Are you sure the controller isn't just sensitive to leaning?  That .pdf seems to say it has an axis-based sensory system, which suggests to me that it just has some kind of tilt sensor in the controller, which wouldn't even touch the complexity of the Wii's controller, or more importantly the Wii unit itself, which actually senses where the controller is in 3-dimentional space.  Big difference.

[Paul Campbell]

After looking further into it, I see no reason to believe that this is anything more than a normal motion sensitive controller.  Heck, there are Tiger handheld games with some form of that built into them.  I'm not too concerned at this point.

[Paul Campbell]

http://revolution.ign.com/articles/705/705870p1.html

There's an in-depth comparison or the controllers.  They are very different.  It actually makes me hate Sony a little less because they could have easily done this without actually copying Nintendo again.  Now, if it were more like the Wii controller, I would be pissed.