If you havent been watching the going ons of E3 then you probably haven’t seen how horribly bad the whole ps3 is looking to everyone besides dedicated sony fanboys. This past week sony’s pressconference was basically an utter bore. They announced a new controller… well not really “new” its the old dualshock ps2 controller, they added 6 way tilt control to it which is great but since we discovered it was only added in the last 2 weeks, it’s pretty obvious that it was added in a last stitch effort to try to keep up with Nintendo’s WII, but this came at a cost, the last stitch development and legal issues have forced the “Shock” out of the dual shock. In fact sony wont have any rumble features at all!!! Sony is saying that shock was last gen but in my opinion when you move to nextgen your not supposed to loose important features from past gen your supposed to build on them. And their excuse of the gyros and movement not working properly kinda is a moot point since the WII has both vibration and motion control, on top of that the ps3 controller lacks the location awareness that the wii has so that will also cut back on it’s gaming features.
Sonys conference had a few good games like Eight Days and Heavenly Sword that looked great but the fact is they weren’t “stellar” they were about what you’d expect from a 360 game. Then their was the fanboys favorite MGS4 i must say the footage looked great but the fact is, once again it was a CG trailer not actual gameplay, if you look on the forums for the majority everyones compairing this CG trailer against Gears Of War that is ingame footage… strange eh?
In the end it all came down to price, sony announced 2 SKU’s of its PS3, something it had earlier critisized Microsoft for as being “too confusing”. And not just 2 SKU’s to quite expensive SKU’s 500$ for the low end model and 600$ for the high end, many will argue that the price point is a deal for a bluray player, but that fight remains to be seen as not many people want or need bluray, i’d just as well wait 2 years and get a bluray or hddvd player for 100$ at bestbuy. And in the end it’s sony forcing a standard (Bluray) on gamers. Just as the UMD was forced on PSP fans when in the end the movie industry is dumping it.
Now unlike the 360 that just had the harddrive and a bezel different between models, sony mentioned that the low end will have a 20gb drive and the highend a 60gb drive. People in the conference were led to believe that was the only difference, in the end however many other cutbacks were seen on this 20gb version in what can only be explained as a way for Sony to force people into getting the premium 600$ edition.
Features missing from the LowEnd ps3 include:
1. No HDMI ports
2. No WIFI
3. No Memory Slots (no cf, sd, etc)
4. No wireless remotes (this is a rumor that has been going around on all the big sites but it seems very realistic)
5. Non upgradeable harddrive (this is a rumor as well but from the look of the unit i dont see any slide on attachment slots)
Now as if this wasnt enough, it also turns out one of the most beloved and look forward to games shown “Assassin’s Creed” has come under a bit of scrutinization. The game looks awesome it had sony fans screaming since they saw it. And from day 1 i said it was the only game i thought was really “awesome”. But heres where the rumors started at X05 last year assassin’s creed was announced for the xbox360! No change was announced no press releases nothing but at this years E3 all you can here mentioned is that its for the PS3. When asked “will it be coming to the 360 as well?” all ubi representatives replied “we can not comment on that”, normally in marketing when that happens, it means there is some form of coverup.
The day after E3 another rumor announcement came this time an earth shattering one. Assassin’s Creed demo at the PS3 closed rooms was hidden and the rumor is it was on a Xbox360!!! Unlike other games that were playable behind closed doors or in public no PS3 was visible in this demo, in fact even the controller was different it was a aftermarket usb ps2 controller, that was plugged into “something” under a table covered with a cloth. And with the rumor of it being a xbox360 that the demo was run on leaked and no official denial by anyone this leaves alot to be imagined.
My question is can Sony really expect people to settle for this and ignore the facts just because they’re Sony?
