Over the years, the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 prices have fallen. With Microsoft once selling it's lowest-tier Arcade console for just £140, heavily undercutting the Nintendo Wii (which hasn't been cut in price, ever). The Playstation 3, however, took a single price drop over the same period to £300. Sales picked up for the console, however the Xbox 360 was still much cheaper and blu-ray player or not, the price seemed to be the deciding factor for a lot of consumers. Last week saw the release of the Playstation 3 Slim, which among other things, brought a nice £250 price tag to the party. Bringing it closer to the high-end Xbox 360 Elite model. Well, the gaming public have spoken with their wallets over the new price point and the Playstation 3 slim has sold. Oh boy has it sold.
MCV reports that sales for the Playstation 3 sky-rocketed by 999% week-on-week. Nearly one thousand percent, just in-case you thought I had made a typographical error. There are a few things you'll have to bare in mind when it comes to that figure, however. Sony did cease deliveries of the console to stores, creating a temporary shortage of consoles which added to this figure and people who were waiting purely for the inevitable Playstation 3 slim to arrive (after pictures were leaked all over the internet) would have bumped up this figure. But, who cares. 1000% increases are something to be celebrated, especially if it urges competitors to work that little bit harder for your cash.
[Source: MCV]
Now that the Playstation 3 is slimmer, cheaper and spots a new branding logo, you can expect Playstation 3 game boxes to the exact same thing. The Playstation 3's love-or-hate 'Spiderman movie font' logo is gone, it's dead, kaput and just to drive this point home, you can expect to see re-styled Playstation 3 box art designs in the future which sport the new, more rounded Playstation 3 branding. The new box art has removed the logo 'spine' which ran down the side of the game's case-front and instead has been moved to the top of the box.
Personally, the box art rearrangement isn't much of an improvement. It's akin to the same format boxart which the Playstation 2 and several other consoles have used for some time now. Only problem is that Sony will continue to use the smaller-than-DVD-case Blu-Ray boxes for their games, meaning that although there's far more horizontal space available to artists, there's much less vertical space. Many up-coming games including Uncharted 2 (pictured, big thank you to Kotaku for the image) have had to dash-and-slash together the box art for the new, reworked Playstation 3 box art design. Which basically means that the artwork has been severely cropped at the top. Of course, newer titles will have their artwork with this redesign in mind.
[Source: Kotaku]
Well, surprise! This year's worst kept secret; the Playstation 3 Slim has been announced, along with it, a Playstation 3 price drop. The smaller system will start to hit store shelves on September 1st at the price; $299, €299 or £250. The PS3 slim doesn't add anything new to the current model, so don't expect magical Playstation 2 compatibility to reappear or the card reader to return. What you can expect though is a slightly bigger... Smaller, depends on what model you were thinking of owning/are owning right now, hard drive: The PS3 Slim comes in 120GB flavour.
GamesCom brought a bunch of other announcements as well; including prepaid Playstation Store cards, the rumoured mini-games hub for the PSP/PSP Go and a new Playstation 3 firmware (version 3.0) which introduces a re-worked XMB and Playstation Store. There's also some new PSP colours in-coming and the ability for users to register their PSP Go and get Gran Turrismo PSP for absolutely nothing. So, quite a strong showing from Sony, with their main punchlines (PSP Minis and PS3 slim) already leaked onto the internet perhaps they should invest in keeping mouths closed and Chinese factory workers away from cameras. Oh well, still nice to see that Playstation 3 price drop.
[Sources: Joystiq, Press Release]
12/08: PS3 Slim: The Guessing Game
At E3, well, just before it; pictures were leaked onto the internet which depicted a new, slimmer Playstation 3 model. Rumours have been rampant about the new hardware ever since. Some claim ownership of the cast moulds and claim it a fake, meanwhile a Chinese firm sent out Cease and Desists to blogs which reproduced the imagery (this wasn't one of them, obviously. I'm just not cool enough and have the readership of a community newsletter) and Amazon, in various different regions, have added a Playstation 3 Slim item listing to their website.
We all know that a Playstation 3 slim is coming eventually. Whether it be announced at GamesCom and out this November or if it be two years from now, we know Sony will eventually release a new Slimmer model of console. It's what they do. However, it really does look like the earlier will be correct. Joining the support of that sentiment, UK retailers are now saying that Playstation 3 stock supplies are being cut off, Sony had ordered in enough parts over the last few months to create a whole army of Playstation 3 consoles. The two statements don't make any sense unless you factor in a new model of Playstation 3 console. That or they're just buying in cheap parts now, rather than waiting until the price rises again... But that's boring.
So, fairly convinced that Sony's about to drop the Slim bombshell on us, what about the other important stuff? What HDD capacity will be included? Will the HDD be interchangeable like the original PS3 console? What price will the new console land at? I could be an arse and point out the PSP Go's approach to pricing; stick it at what the PSP originally launched at. Somehow I think Sony would have learnt a lesson from launching a console onto the market for £425. Although, this is Sony and we are in Europe... So basically anything can happen.
As you may know, I'm a strong advocate of electrical devices being a certain primary colour. So it comes as no surprise that I'm reporting on the fact that Sony has announced a red colour variation of the DualShock 3 which should be heading Stateside in October. No word if Europe will ever see a release, but I think for a red controller, we can live in hope. We can also live in hope that by final release, they'd have made a slightly darker red colour of the controller, as the current one looks really, really bad... Which puts a big ol' sad-face on me. But still, a red controller is a red controller.
Oh and there's a blue coloured controller...
[Source: Engadget]
Let's have a short history lesson. Back in 2007, Sony released the Playstation 3. This big, bulking, behemoth of a machine launched with no less than amazing specifications for a home console... However, it also came with a huge price tag to match. After sales of the console were slow world-wide and developers and publishers alike were starting to grow wary of the Playstation 3, if they pulled out, it would be devastating for Sony, who had invested billions into the Playstation 3's development. The errors made in the release of the PS3 was so bad that the 'father' of Playstation, Ken Kutagari was effectively fired.
When the console was released in Japan and North America, the system had the same processor from the Playstation 2; the Emotion Engine, which meant that all Playstation 2 titles were 100% fully compatible with the console. However, along with a card-reader and other assorted cuts, the Emotion Engine was removed from the Playstation 3 on release in Europe, which I wont make any qualms about; I went ballistic about the move, especially since the console still retained it's ludicrous £425 price tag. Later variations of the console world wide would be missing the Emotion Engine clip along with other parts of the Playstation 2 included to make software-based backwards compatibility possible.
Present day; the Playstation 3 has but backwards compatibility for Playstation 1 titles, Playstation 2 compaibility has gone with the wind... Or has it? A new rumour circulating these-here Internets is that Sony is looking to re-introduce backwards compatibility of Playstation 2 titles to new hardware variations. It comes after Sony patented Emotion Engine emulation technology for the Playstation 3's main CPU; the Cell Processor. This means that Playstation 2 games could be back on the big black box... Or the small black box, if those PS3 slim rumours are true as well... Sometime in the near future.
[Source: CVG]
There's lots of things at E3 that gets over looked, so better late than never, let's discuss some missed games. First up; Tecmo's 3rd person shooting game; Quantum. Quantum is named and typographically logo'd like a Western 90's first person shooter. The only impression I get from Quantum is that it's a Playstation 3-exclusive, Eastern developed Gears of War. Now, I don't make these similarities likely. Check out this E3 trailer for the game here... Now watch some Gears of War 2 gameplay. Now, I don't know about you... But the two look very similar. The cover system, the over-head camera angles, the HUD... The only descernable difference other than the obvious story and character differences is the fact that you have the obligatory Eastern sword-play gameplay.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that Quantum is a cheap knock-off, as Tecmo does put out utterly wonderful titles. I only make the comparison between Gears of War and Quantum as... Well, look at it. It's blatant and just can't be ignored. But if it plays anything like Gears of War, Playstation 3 owners are best to get their preorders in ASAP. The cover-based TPS (Third Person Shooter unless you missed that) gameplay which Gears brought to the table made the game ever-so-enjoyable and Quantum looks to deliver much more of the same... With the aforementioned swords... And women.
Onimous pictures have leaked onto the internet today depicting what could quite possibly be (although not definite in any way what-so-ever) a new Playstation 3 console which many are already dubbing the "Playstation 3 Slim". Pictures of the outer shell of the console as well as a picture of a box the console will supposedly ship in were sneakily taken by those making the consoles in factories in what I presume to be China. The helpfully annotated pictures show the console to be a lot less shiney and a lot more Playstation 2-like, lacking a Hard Drive bay and Spiderman font. The box shows the console will at least come in 120GB variations if the console isn't just some very convincing hoax.
This will mark the first radical change to the Playstation 3 console's design. The console itself isn't unfamiliar with change, it's already had plenty of iterations in it's current form dropping Hard Drive capacity, Card Readers and Playstation 2 chips which snookered backwards compatibility for Playstation 2 titles. The lack of HDD bay means that the capacity of a Playstation 3 Slim unit will be limited to what it says on the box, unless you're willing to forego a warranty and open that bad boy up. So, is this another E3 surprise from Sony? 'Another' referring to the potential announcement of the PSP Go! also rumoured to be announced at E3. Not long to go now to find out...
[Source: Gamecolumn, via Joystiq]
Okay, sure, I should have guessed it was going to be crap the second I saw "Wrappz"... Almost as bad as Ubisoft Imagine *z series... But, out of all things to make a 'cover' for, the biggest console of this generation and make a 'cover' out of... A light-coloured picture of the deceased king of rock 'n roll... On a black console, unless you somehow imported a Silver PS3 from Japan or have access to a time machine to travel to the year 2055 when Sony finally cares about any other region of the world outside of Japan and releases products like the Silver PS3 in other regions. (And then the year 3411 when Europe finally gets the silver PS3)
Oh and if you're reading this and not aware of the British counterpart to Cheapassgamer, why not check out VGBargains.
God that was a terrible title... Moving on, Bandai Namco Games has given us the first look at the next Katamari Damacy game; Katamari Forever (JP: Katamari Damashii Tribute). A Playstation 3 exclusive which promises a full 1080p screen resolution. If this were any other game, I'd say that having screen resolution as a selling point is scraping the bottom of the barrel, but for Katamari, I'm willing to overlook it. If you've never played a Katamari game, which is understandable in Europe, then you're surely missing out. The game's all about rolling stuff, the more you roll the crazier and trippier things get. ... Wait.
The game will hit Japan and America later this year. If previous Katamari games have taught us anything, we'll get the game several months too late at a price which will put off just about anyone willing to commit to it. The game itself was shown off last month, complete with strange animal teaser trailer. However, since then Bandai Namco Games have released some screens for us to gawk over. The game still follows it's square/block approach to visuals and introduces some cell shading here and there to smooth things over a bit, so really it's not all that surprising that the game is in full 1080p. The real intriguing question is: did Katamari do so badly on the 360 they're not putting this one on there?
[Source: GAME Watch]
