Curmudgeon GamerAt its press conference, Microsoft calmly played their trump card, the Master Chief, and basked in the second wave of games for its Xbox 360. For once, it could claim not to be the new kid on the block. Instead of boasting what it would do, it showed what it had done -- Xbox Live Arcade and 3 million systems sold so far -- and was appropriately content.
Nintendo confidently waved its magic wand and swore they'd capture the great untapped casual market. They touted some completely new games, and also showed a full roster of old games with new tricks, a sure crowd pleaser.
Sony, on the other hand, forgot its duck.
In lieu of a duck, it brought out a console we've known about for months and expected the crowd to go wild. They tried to dazzle us with the same slides we'd all seen several weeks ago at the Game Developers Conference. Sony brought out its own clone of the Wii controller -- oddly confessing that they'd only had "a couple of weeks" to put together a demo -- and emphasized a little too loudly that it didn't require ANY EXTERNAL HARDWARE, as if this were the bullet point which would put poor old Nintendo out of its misery. Toward the end, Sony did come up with a duck for Phil Harrison to play with using the "new" old controller. As the crowd sat silently watching a grown man make a yellow duck jump in a pool of water, they must have been wondering when the real show was going to start.
The real show wasn't long coming. The answer to the million dollar question was $600, and the response was stunned silence.
Yeah it's pretty cut-throat out there. Sony has had plenty of time to get their new system out the door despite having technology issues. I'm still trying to decide which system to get: 360 or the PS3. It's looking like the 360 right now as it's cheaper and a lot of the games will be the same on both systems.
By 
Shane, at
10 May, 2006 12:29
Well said, well said.
Sony wants to get Blu-ray into one million homes so badly that they are willing to destroy their own empire of console domination. I think they're going to lose alot of market share in the console space this generation, but their blu-ray figures will more than make up for that loss.
There are at least 1 million people out there who will buy a PS3 at launch, even if they charged Six Thousand dollars per console (see the e-bay listings for PS2s during the last gen bloodbath.) Then Sony can go to every movie studio and say, "look at all those blu-ray players out there. Gee, you sure would be stupid to put your films out on HD-DVD." And, to quote the Halo 3 trailer, "This is how the world ends."
By 
The MJW, at
10 May, 2006 18:22
For some reason i first saw this and thought it said Sony forgot it's DICK
By , at
10 May, 2006 21:33
Thing is, if they can use the PS3 to sell blu-ray to Hollywood, they might then be able to turn around to use Hollywood support to sell PS3s to more casual gamers.
Once people decide they want a blu-ray player, they might be a little more accepting of the price. Similar to the PS2 selling as a DVD player to many in addition to being a gaming system.
By , at
11 May, 2006 19:40
me...well i know i want the 360 no matter what. i have all my friends to think about after all, but personally speaking it's down to the ps3 and wii for me.
guess what i'm most likley to buy? no really.... guess. lol i could buy a brand spanking new computer for the price of the ps3 and it can do MORE! why??? whyyyyy.
there's no way in hell i'd buy it. sucks because i really love sony... i simply can't afford it.
By Maharet, at
01 June, 2006 15:15
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