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11th July 2008 - The Waiting Game
So, the PS3 is now outselling the 360 by two to one in some territories. Who those new customers are is an interesting prospect. It could be the gaming mass market, finally realising Sony had their latest Playstation iteration on the market, buying it primarily because of the name. Certainly, the recent price drops will have helped this sudden boost to the format. It could be all those Wii owners realising their machine doesn’t play proper games. In my opinion it’s most likely to be the drop out of HD-DVD, moving Blu-Ray into pole position as the only Hi-Def movie format.
In a way, Sony is brilliant at business strategy. They’re making huge losses on the PS3, as it still costs over $100 less to buy than it costs to produce. However, by using it as a trojan horse for Blu-Ray, they’ve created a whole new business for themselves – and one they will totally dominate. Recent reports say the adoption to Blu-Ray has actually been around four times faster than from VHS to DVD. If Blu-Ray grows to cater for even half the demand for DVD home movies, with Sony owning all the manufacturing rights, and producing all the players, their sales will grow exponentially. It will certainly make the PS3 losses look insignificant.
However, we’re in quite a different situation to when the PS2 included a DVD drive. Back then it was true that the PS2 did drive DVD sales on release, but there were hundreds of for-the-purpose DVD players available for less money than a PS2. This time round, bespoke Blu-Ray players are considerably more expensive than a PS3. Sony are in control of the pricing for both, and while this situation is great for boosting PS3 sales, they are severely diluting their audience. Millions of non-gamers are buying PS3 just to play Blu-Ray movies on their 42” Plasmas. They don’t care for games at all, they’ll probably never even play one. These suspicions can be confirmed when you look at the attach rate for PS3, less than two games per machine, while the 360 is at nearly ten.
You’d think that the best way to get these non-gamer owners into games would be to make the PS3 easy to use, fun to play, and make plenty of brilliant games available. The opposite is true. Before I go into full rant mode, I should say I was also un-impressed with the first year or so of PS2 releases, but compared to the PS3, we were in gaming heaven.
I don’t recall a new console having so few first party games, the PS3 is relying on third parties to make a PS3 version of their 360 games, which is frankly not good enough. Ask anyone who owns both machines what they think of the PS3-only output, and they’ll probably say, What-PS3-Only output? From memory I can’t think of a bespoke PS3 game since Drake’s Fortune before Christmas. I’m not counting Gran Turismo, as it’s still not finished!
In actuality though, it’s not the lack of first party software which makes me dislike the PS3, it is the operating system. In fact, i’ll go as far as saying, it’s the most infuriating games console i’ve ever experienced.
Because the PS3 isn’t the home of countless arcade games worth playing, I maybe only turn mine on around once a month. I’m sure there are many owners of a PS3 who use it even less, but let me talk about when I did play that newly unfinished game, Gran Turismo five.
I put it in the drive, oops, need to update the system. That triggers the download screen, watching that irritating counter crawl at a snails pace up to 66% then just finish in one more second. Of course, with the PS3, there’s no instant restart and away you go, no, then you need to agree to install the update, then you have sit and wait again while it installs it (once you’ve managed to find that silly wire to connect the controller directly to the machine – despite it being fully charged anyway!)
Finally the machine resets and you can load the game, but oh no, ten seconds of loading, and then the game requires an update. Another round of incredibly slow downloading and installing, another reset, and off we go. This time the game loads, but hang on, once it loads, IT NEEDS TO INSTALL ITSELF.. AARRRGGGHH!!!
Finally installed, ready to play, but why does a game which installs itself on the hard drive take so long to load between menus and the game. This is worse than the loading on MSR on the Dreamcast. Oh well, I stick with it until the loading between garage and option screens drives me almost insane. I think i’ll try the online game, hang on, requires an update!!! You can not be serious! Downloaded the update, but it got stuck and aborted itself after thirty five minutes. I decided it might have been my internet connection, i’d give it another go, another thirty five minutes and it aborts again. No update, no online play. Four hours of irritation (I am actually not exaggerating) and I give up, turn it off and go to bed.
A couple of weeks later, I persuade myself it couldn’t have been that bad, must have just been me having a bad day. Turn on the PS3, requires system update!!! Arggggg. Download, find the joystick wire, agree to install, install, restart the PS3, start game, Arrrgggghhhh! Game requires update!!! NOOOoooooooooo! Update game, install update, get to start menu, update for online, aborts again!!!! I’m not wasting another minute on that poorly programmed pile of poo.
Back in the NES/SNES/MD days, games had to be made to work correctly before they went into manufacture. Downloadable updates have made developers lazy. “Ah, we don’t need to do all our testing now, we can just make them download a patch later” – NOT GOOD ENOUGH! The 360 already wound me up, but at least the updates seem to be fast on there. When Microsoft announced that they would make their games so they did not depend on the Hard Drive, I thought it was a bad thing. I thought games wouldn’t be as good as they could be. Now having experienced the PS3’s boot then install method, I am thankfull for Microsoft’s decision. Sony seem to have forgotten what console gaming is about, if I wanted all this hassle i’d be fragging morons in my PC. I want to turn on my console, and have instant escape, instant fun.
The hell of PS3 doesn’t end there either, if I play a game from last year, Sing Star for example, I still have to install a lengthy update. Possibly you may think that my attitude is partly down to being a life long gamer, spoilt by all those years of cartridge games, but after using the PS3 I can now load the 12 minute C64 cassette marathon which is’ Tales of the Arabian Knights’ with a smile on my face.
So, Sony have made a big mistake. To convert all these new owners into using the ‘gaming’ heart of their PS3 console, they needed to keep things simple. They’ve failed miserably, and they know it. They think their new ‘HOME’ operating system will resolve the situation, but it is no remedy for the constant updating of the games themselves, and i’m sure this new O/S is going to need as much updating as the current one. (despite the delays)
The Wii front end may be a bit clunky, but it’s quick, the 360 may have irritating downloads, but they are also quick and install themselves. Both look incredibly good in comparison. Perhaps it’s actually our fault, nobody told Sony how crap the PSP updating system was, so they thought they could get away with it on a bigger scale.
Grrrrrrr, well, I think i’ve got it out of my system. Sorry there’s been a long long gap between rants, i’ve been brewing that one up for months! If you’re still reading, and wondering what is actually worth playing, I have to say I was recently thrilled by New Track & Field on the Nintendo DS. One of the all time greats, truly updated in amazing style. It’s an absolute triumph and an essential game to anyone who hankers after those hyper button-bashing sports days of yore.
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