PS3 €630 in Ireland threads (merged)

Winters wrote:

Thats Europe wide afaik.


I think the obvious thing would be for consumers to boycott the product and show them that they cant **** people around like that. However, there are going to be people who will buy it in the shops here reguardless of price, and Sony know that. They are going to sell them here and thats really all that matters to them.

To many rich kids not enough sense.

I wager you a packet of country vegetable that the price will have no effect on the amount sold. I have an xbox360 and love it. I'd nearly buy one of those PS3's as well but my wife would lose it. Now if I could get my hands on one of those 40inch Aldi LCD's mumble mumble mumble..</hatches dire plan>

Of the three consoles the PS3 is the most ambitious. It's hardware is the most powerful. But powerful hardware does not equal success, good games make success. Sony are taking a big gamble with the PS3 but in the long term I think they will succeed.

The Xbox 360 is impressive, but it's not that much of an advance from it's previous iteration. The Wii has a very innovative control system but is the weakest of the three graphically. Nintendo are keeping gameplay a priority over expensive graphic chipsets. The PS3 has the potential to still be producing high-end graphics that will rival the next generations of the other two consoles.

Those predicting Sony's doom fail to realise that for the vast majority of console owners in Ireland and elsewhere use the word playstation instead of console. To the general public a Sony badge is one of quality. They will pay extra just for that badge. I recently managed to convince my mom not to buy a Sony laptop and instead get a HP one that cost a lot less and had better features. And my mom is no luddite.

Yes it's more expensive than a pc but only a pc costing three times the price of a ps3 would be able to rival what a ps3 can do.

I'm not a fanboy. I hate fanboys. Instead of blindly worshiping a particular company I've been reading technical information about the three written by nerds that only care about specs.

Sony's biggest problem isn't the price point of it's console, it's the quality of the games produced for it. They have lost a lot of exclusives, which will hurt them. They also seem to be completely out of touch with the gamer community as seen with their ridiculous attempt at virally marketing the psp.

But I wouldn't count them out just yet.

I agree with Amp on Ireland's take of of all things Sony, and the playstation brand is certainly phenomenal here. Early days at least it will ensure strong sales. However, the big publishing house are generally US or Japanese based and they supply the AAA games. It will depend moreso on the takeup of PS3s in those regions to see what games follow, and that ensures the long term EU PS3 success.


As for graphical power, I remain to be convinced that the PS3 has and major graphical edge over the 360. The cell processor as far as I'm concerned is a load of waffle.

Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid are still very much Sony-only as far as I'm aware, and are big titles. I'm sure there are plenty more. Let's not forget games like Katamari, Ico, SOTC, God Of War.

If I had to predict what'll happen, and I hate doing that, I'd say the PS3 will do really well but they won't have the same market share as they did with the PS2. Nintendo will have a much bigger share of the pie this time around and the 360 will be much bigger than the Xbox, and they have made some mistakes (the price will prevent some from buying, either because they don't have the money or don't want to spend that much on a console).

If they are expecting the same dominance with PS3 as they had with PS2, they'll probably be surprised. It won't fail though, it will sell well based on the Playstation brand alone, and even despite the price, all they need is a few good games and it'll do even better.

What's best for everyone is that they all do well, and keep bringing out games. More choice is good if it means they'll all be working on getting the best games that'll sell their console, and that's what it's all about.

thrill wrote:

Anyone know what the average price a game for the thing is?

Sony are trying their damndest to make it about €60, but retailers and publishers (*cough*EA*cough*) want it up with the 360. more mark-up. so expect it to be about €75 for new releases, then down to €60 once the "next big thing" arrives. this is also a ploy to try and reduce the popularity of traded games. why trade when a few weeks later it's value drops quite considerably?

mickoneill30 wrote:

I got a 360 premium with 3 games 2 controllers and plugged it into my existing network in the sitting room for €409.
Your HD-DVD add on is for watching videos, not for playing games. WiFi is handy but not everybody has a wireless router (or even broadband) so don't need to pay for that either.

while that's all true, is it not nice to get all that in a box? fact is a ps3 is €630, a 360 with all the same capabilities (as in, wireless connectivity & high-def movies) is about €670, and then there's the cost to play games online on top of that.

mickoneill30 wrote:

The PS3 is going to look great if HD-DVD wins the format war. It would be even more expensive then to buy a PS3 + a HD-DVD player. No point arguing about that though as neither format is going to win for a couple of years and by that time they'll probably have come down to the price of a good DVD player.

you're right that the format war is nowhere near finished. we don't even know if consumers want a new format. personally, i'm quite happy with DVD. but sony wants a format, and have done for many years. now they can use the excuse that people like kojima want more space for games to bring an entire format to the market.

also, NPD figures from the states for the month of december shows that blu-ray is winning the "format war" so far, with about 20-25% more sales then HD-DVD. keep in mind those figures are more then likely heavily influenced by the ps3's release (i.e. people buying one or two films to "check it out"). as a result movie studios are vowing for 2-3 major releases every single month from here on in.

Sony hasn't ruled out that separate games may be subject to charges to play online though.

Most things are accessible on XBL Silver, including updates AFAIK. It's only playing against others online that requires XBL Gold.

Other way around. 1080p is on newer TV's and 1080i is older.

TBH we are unlikely to see and huge amount of games in 1080p and even then it will be a nice extra not essential.

Are you saying that because a game was made in 1080p that it will not work on any TV that isn't 1080p compatible?

seraphimvc wrote:

oh,and anyone here also realise tat?

if u get a ps3,sooner or later,u still need a 1080p HDTV for it.(eventhough there is no REAL 1080p support game out there now for it)

just remember to calculate the total price that you actually need to pay for that company.(well,i assume you first aim to the Bravia?):o

EDIT:careful about that 1080p,i remember 'older' HDTV only support 1080i....correct me if i am wrong...and that 'older' means many HDTV came out from last year...

you can just run it at 720p. no game will say "requires 1080p", it'll say "supports 1080p". same with the 360, you don't need a hd-tv for the games, it just makes them look a lot better.

Ok but the PS3 games are in Bluray format...
Bluray isn't an added extra you are being forced with.
Why would they make an external Bluray drive for the PS3?
Then you wouldn't be able to play any PS3 games, this isn't an optional or forced piece of hardware, Bluray is the format the PS3 is going with, all it's games are Bluray format.You can't say that choosing between the HD-DVD add on with the X-Box is better in comparison to the PS3 "forcing" a Bluray drive on us.

Retr0gamer wrote:

Sony may claim that games like Resistance take up 16GB but they fail to mention that the data is all uncompressed and the massive packing files on the disc using up space.

Resistance is about 7gb with the FMV removed IIRC.

EDIT: http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?p=881724
Padding file size = 32MB.
Total padding = 1.9GB.
Total FMV = 7GB.
Audio = 2.24GB. (605MB for music and English language only)
Game Assets = 6.12GB.

So 6.7gb with just the English stuff and still small enough to fit on a DVD with all the audio.

BlitzKrieg wrote:

I find that hard to believe since most of the shops make their money off traded games.

yeah, thus making perfect sense. you don't remember the scandal of blu-ray only working on 1 ps3 for its life, like pc games? (which wasn't true, but indicitive of the industries opinion of trading)

while xtra-vision, gamestop et-al make loads off traded games, developers/publishers and sony/microsoft/nintendo make absolutely nothing off that second or third sale. if it were up to them traded games would be abolished.

Retr0gamer wrote:

Sony may claim that games like Resistance take up 16GB but they fail to mention that the data is all uncompressed and the massive packing files on the disc using up space.

didn't insomniac say resistance is 22GB uncompressed?

either way, that's the first game to come out on the machine. we've got another 5 or 6 years of games to come, and the power of the machine being extracted will only force games to get bigger as designers vie for more textures etc. even kojima says he wants the 50GB blu-ray discs out ASAP

AceCard Jones wrote:

Why would they compress a file if they didn't have to?
And doesn't compression mean losing quality?
If I had a 50gb disc and I put 22gb of data on it I sure as hell wouldn't compress it.

it's more about making it easier to sort the files on the system, and letting it access certain parts quicker.

that's why when you unpack pc games they come in "packs" (like source uses .cfg, fear uses .pak, etc.), with one for textures, sounds etc. it sets up "tables" of all the sounds, textures etc. that are easy to load into RAM and allow for quick access to load when you're in some specific part of a map or whatever.

with a 50GB disc, these packs can be much bigger, and they can stream the data a lot better with cell (hence why it has more memory on it). it'll take time before this is apparent, but from what i've seen, not that much time!