PS3 is still a great piece of hardware at any cost. The technology is second to none, but the lack of great games are killing Sony. I will get most of the cross platform games for the Xbox 360, because I enjoy the rumble and the live support. I am looking forward to next year, with the addition of the new PS3 controller, little big planet and home. I want to see if Sony can rework their online interface. Btw: I am digging accessing the PS3 with my PSP. I have been streaming music directly from my PC.
Good Times!

I will be getting the 40gb model sometime in march. This was the price and performance level I was looking for in the system. It will look good sitting next to my 360...though my computer takes the cake over both! lol

Best,

The trolls that will undoubtedly spit on Sony for removing BC in the 40GB version, bitch about how buying a new vibrating remote is going to be expensive, how blu-ray is about to die, and how devastated they are that the easter bunny and santa aren't real.

Let the good times roll.

Personally I think this is great news, not because I own Sony shares, but because sustained sales will mean a larger selection of games.

Metal Gear Solid 4 aint even out yet. When that comes out i think it'll be the start for ps3, 2008 will be extremely crucial for sony.

I dont like microsoft much so come on! Youve won japan and europe is a close race!

I just checked playstation.com and they say (under product details) that the 80 GB version has "Backwards Compatibility." Now, does this mean that the 80 GB system has the emotion chip, or is it something else. A bit of clarification would be greatly appreciated.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd rather have backwards compatibility than a 20 GB larger HDD. I have no plans of selling my PS2 (even if/when I get a PS3), but I don't want to have both systems setting in my entertainment center.

Fence-sitters just pounced on the lowered prices. This does not a sustained effort make. Let's wait a bit before announcing a trend.

As title.

The no games thing is getting old:

Uncharted 9 score on ign
Floklore 9 score on ign
Ratch and Clank 9 score on ign
Warhawk 8 score (maybe a 9 I dont remeber)
Ninja -Sigma 9 score on ign
Restiance FOM 9 score on ign

And thats just exclusive.
Yes most ea games play better on the 360.
BUT, If a developer cares.
Then you get games like COD4 plays great on ethier system. also a 9 ign score.

I just got a 40GB model. Personally I could care less about BC since I bought it for current gen games not last.

The no games thing is getting pathetic. I would add Unreal Tournament and Killzone 2 to the list of upcoming titles. At first I didn't buy any games for it, just got it for the demos to help me decide. Uncharted is the first title for me.

Oh... and I picked the PS3 over the 360 based on two cruical things, nothing to do with games or movies:

The PS3 has a better track record of hardware quality
It's quiet (as in "you can hardly hear a whisper" quiet), which is extremely important since I don't want a console in my living room that sounds like one of those new Airbus A380's...

A

Yeah! Making progress....Now all we need is another $100 cut and I will buy one! And I want the people that flame me for being a cheapskate to ponder something:

PS1 Comes out for $150 waited, payed $90
PS2 Comes out for $300 waited, payed $150
PS3 Comes out for $600 waiting, pay $300 max!

When the PS4 Hits shelves in a few years for $1000 (based on the current trend) are you REALLY gonna run out and buy one?!!??!

PS3 Poor Performance
http://gamer.blorge.com/2007/1...xbox-360/
Jason Booth, a former employee at Harmonix, makers of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, has roundly laid in to both Sony and the PS3 on his personal blog. He reveals that the PS3 is much harder to develop for than the Xbox 360, and the he thinks Sony will lose this round of the console war quite spectacularly.
Writing on his blog 'Blog Of Booth', Jason has tried to debunk some of the preconceptions and Sony spin about the power and capabilities of the PS3. Seemingly frustrated by the never ending complaints of lazy developers and even lazier ports to the Sony console, he has tried to tell the truth about what he calls Sony's marketing spin.
Addressing the usual fanboy sentiment (fuelled by Sony's spin doctors) of the PS3 being graphically superior to the Xbox 360 he writes:
"Fill rate is one of the primary ways to measure graphics performance - in essence, it's a number describing how many pixel operations you can perform. The fill rate on the PS3 is significantly slower than on the 360, meaning that games either have to run at lower resolution or use simpler shader effects to achieve the same performance."
"Additionally, the shader processing on the ps3 is significantly slower than on the 360, which means that a normal map takes more fill rate to draw on the ps3 than it does on the 360. And I'm not talking about small differences here, we're talking roughly half the pixel pushing power."
But hang on, every news release and opinion piece I've seen written over the last year has stated quite categorically that the PS3 does beat the Xbox 360 on graphics, yet here is a bona fide game developer who has worked with both formats saying that's not so.
He then gives his opinion on the usual fanboy cry of 'Uh, Blu-ray!" saying:
"Great for watching movies, but not so great for games. Getting data off the blu ray drive takes about twice as long as it does to get the same data off the 360's DVD drive. That translates into longer load times, or god forbid if your streaming from disk, tighter constraints on the amount of data you can stream."
So Blu-ray may not be the thing which saves the PS3 from 'Dreamcast hell' as I like to call it, after all. No-one can deny the DVD format is great for films, and the PS3 being the cheapest Blu-ray player currently available gives it a certain edge, but it's second best when it comes to games? That's huge news.
He concludes by telling the truth on the harsh reality that is the current PS3 position in the marketplace.
"As outlined above, getting equivalent performance out of the PS3 requires a lot of work unique to the platform, and in many cases, even with all these tricks, you still won't see equivalent performance. Thus, many ps3 games have simplified shaders and run at lower native resolutions than the 360 versions. On top of this, there is shrinking incentive to do this work; the PS3 isn't selling."
And so begins the vicious cycle. The console isn't selling, which in turn makes less developers want to devote resources to it, which in turn again, makes people less likely to buy it. I'm probably less sure that the PS3 will truly fail than Booth seems to think, but his explanation of why he thinks this way makes perfect sense.
I think I'll leave the finals words to him:
"Sony let their hardware be designed by a commodity of business interests rather than a well thought out design that would serve the game development community. They are going to lose hard this round because of it, and I hope that in the next round they take lessons from this round and produce a more balanced and usable machine."

I just bought the 80GB version and it seems to play my PS2 games just fine. I did need to download an application for it, but that was painless since it comes with both wired and wireless ethernet. This unit also plays DVD's with great image quality -- better than my DVD player (upscales with HDMI, so I recommend buying the cable), so there's even more space savings.

I'm not a Sony fan, but I played the demo of Uncharted the other night at a friends house and HOLY COW I'd have to say that was one of the best games I ever seen in my many years of gaming. With the lower price and some great titles coming out I may have to consider buying one.

Larry,

From what I understand, the 80GB version has BC, but it's in software instead of having the actual hardware for it like the original 60GB and 20GB versions have. The 40GB, however, has no BC at all.

Warhawk - Online Only
Ninja Sigma - Remake
Resistance FOM - Overrated

PC is where the FPS games are, and if Sony is going for that market I feel bad with games such as Crysis, UT 3, and a slew of others out for PC (UT 3 is being slowed down for PS3, so I don't consider it the same game).

To the one asking the Emotion Engine QUestion:
there is no emotion engine in the 80GB model. The BC is done via emulation.

The 80 gig is similar to the 360 where they use software rather than hardware for backwards compatibility.

I'll have to check out some of those games Mike mentioned. There was allot of hype for Resistance: FoM and some comparisons to GoW but I'll be honest, I was not so happy with it. If I hadn't bought it already thinking it was as good or better than GoW then it is a pretty decent game. I am happy the sales of the PS3 are up because that will motivate the developers to crank out more games.

Considering 360 and Wii are averaging more then that per month it still leaves them firmly in 3rd going forward. It's also way out of the sweet spot for average buys xmas gifts so I wouldn't expect much more of a pickup in sales.

Not that I care I own a PS3 but it's just my opinion.

As far as I've seen, the Emotion Engine has been taken out for all of the new PS3s, but the 80GB one still has the PS2's CPU built into it, so backward compatibility is still doable on the 80GB version with a little software emulation (for the graphics). The 40GB version has (as far as I know) all of the PS2 parts removed, so if Sony ever did want to include BC in the future, those features would have to be emulated entirely in software, a very laborious and time consuming process.

So to recap:
60GB - Full BC
80GB - Limited BC, but still decent
40GB - Very limited BC and probably little - no improvement to be
expected over time
On the bright side, PS1 games are already done entirely in software, so those should still work on the new PS3 models.

This is a response to Larry's question about the 80GB vs. the 60GB. The 60GB has the emotion engine in it so it plays PS2 games better where the 80GB uses software emulization to play PS2 games.

I just bought a PS3 and picked the 60gig version for the better backwards compatibility b/c I knew I was going to sell my PS2 but keep some of the better games. Anyways, what is 20GB when you can easily swap in a notebook HDD with 200 GBs? And keep in mind that you stream music, videos and pics to the PS3, not download? I would recommend getting the 60gig if you can still.

The 40GB loses backwards compat. with ps2 80 has it, but it's the limited software variety.

The 80 GB model doesn't have the Emotion Engine, but it uses software emulation (and possibly a bit of hardware) to play PS2 games. Because of this, it can emulate some games but not all. Last time I checked, it covered 80% of all PS2 games. Sony once promised to update the software so it plays more games, but with the new PS3 model, I don't know where their stance is on that now.

The 40GB model has no PS2 backwards compatibility because it lacks the hardware and the software. Both models, however, have close to perfect PSOne compatibility.

The 80GB version has limited backwards compatibility, i.e. the way that XBox360 has limited BC with the XBox. The 40GB model has no PS2 backwards compatibility. That's the reason why I purchased a 60GB one on ebay for $400. Less hard drive space but it can play almost all PS2 titles !

Thanks Mike, I was totally going to point out the line up of games that are out/coming out and they are all pretty good and getting good reviews. You did forget Haze which will be soon and exclusive (at least for some time).

I hate saying this again but I say it all the time. BC is USELESS! I bought a PS3 to play PS3 games, not my PS2 ones, I can already do that. I still have all my PS2 games, do I play them? Nope. I played FFXII for a bit once I got my 60 GB PS3 and GH1 and 2 but that's it. I want to play HD games on my 50 in plasma HDTV, not grainy mediocre graphics.

Again this is my gripe with Wii - If you play Wii on any non HDTV esp if it's less than 42 or 46 inches then you don't know what some people deal with. I personally don't even watch normal TV anymore, as far as I am concerned, I have about 30 channels, the HD ones.

I was thinking, why do I even want backwards compatibility? I have a PS2 already. If I want to play a PS2 game, I can just turn on the PS2. I think I'll get one of the cheaper PS3s now that the cheaper model has the HDMI port.

The 80G doesn't have the emotion engine but seems to play most PS2 discs just fine in software. So far no trouble on San Andreas, though I haven't played too much.

Unless you have a huge library of PS2 titles, odds are the vast majority of your games will play fine. There's a list of the troubled ones, if you google around.

The 40G will not play PS2 games at all.

The EE chicp is not int he 80GB model or the 40GB model. PS2 and PS1 games are now ran under software fixes which is how the Europe & Japan versions have been running already. The problem is not all the games from PS2 and PS1 will work that way... for now...

The 60GB has the PS2 CPU and GPU
The 80GB has the PS2 GPU (sw emulation for the CPU)
The 40GB has neither

backwards compatible through EMULATION, not hardware, much like the 360. Reason the 40gb dropped software emulation? COMPLETELY UNKNOWN.

I believe the 80GB has software-emulated BC, meaning that things might not run as fast/smooth as the original. I'm curious to see how much more they can cut away from the PS3 when their sales begin to stagnate again. Eventually it will just be a blu-ray player with software emulation of PS3 games that run at 12 FPS...but it'll only cost $300.

@liquefire
"The trolls that will undoubtedly spit on Sony for removing BC in the 40GB version"

Yeah, because they claim it wasn't to cut costs, and it makes no sense otherwise.

"bitch about how buying a new vibrating remote is going to be expensive"

I'm pretty sure everyone wanted vibration from the begining, except for Sony execs because they got sued over the last dual-shock.

"how blu-ray is about to die"

That has yet to be seen, but blu-ray seems to be the only real reason to get a PS3 at this point, since the current library of games is severely lacking.

"and how devastated they are that the easter bunny and santa aren't real."

I am, actually. Because if Santa Claus was real, I could have gotten a PS3 when it launched, before it lost all it's features, and I wouldn't have to pay the ridiculous price it was at (eBay acutions topped at $1 million).

"sustained sales will mean a larger selection of games."

Maybe, but there's also the fact that it costs more and takes more time to develop for PS3.

too busy with Mario Galaxy to notice

It was just released that sony has abandoned the ps3 model entirely due to software developers dropping out of contracts. The developers would rather pay the contigency cost and end ps3 title development. They have more incentive to create 360 and most importantly wii games.

Like this is a Surprise or something. It was
as sure as the sun will come up tommorow. I
bet it kicks MS. Butt durring this Holliday
season too, i can't wait for the 360 FanBoys to scream bloody murder. What i really can't wait
for is all the excuses, it out to be alot of fun here come January...........

In a week too. And who cares about backwards compatibility? Use your PS2. That's like buying a Blu-Ray player to play DVDs when you can use a $29 DVD player.

The PS3 is a gaming system that happens to play BD movies. That's how the business people see it. Once you have games to play, you won't by 100 BD movies for your PS3.

What most people on these boards fail to see is that BD and HD-DVD sales are a mere fraction of what they need to be to be considered serious. People have to start buying HD movies like they buy DVDs for this small border skirmish to really be a war. PS3 won't ever have the movie buying draw of a stand alone player. It's for games.

Sony is playing "smoke and mirrors" because they have few games for the system, so they sell it by touting it's movie playing capabilities. As soon as they have the games, even Sony will forget that it plays BD movies.

How convinent it is for the compatition to say the PS3 isn't a BR player. Ask anyone how owns one, including me and I'll tell you point blanck, I bought the PS3 for Movies first and Gaming second. For many it will be the other way around but it is clearly purched for both and this craps getting old as well as the HD DVD camp saying there's no games. At every turn these people have been proven wronge but they don't seem to care about their credability. Take it from me, PS3 is the best player and value out there.

You should be embarassed to belive such a stupid story.

In North America the 80GB PS3 is exactly the same as the origional 60GB model including BC. Except for the larger hard drive their exactly the same. The Hard drive in the PS3 is so easy to replace it's not funny. Just 1 screw and slide a latch to the right and pull, and the drive is out and can be replaced with as big a 2.5 inch hard drive as you want. I replaced mine with a 300GB 7200 RPM from Seagate in less than 5 minutes and it doesn't void the warrenty.

Check the Sony PS3 web site for a list of the games that will still play.

Many peopel on this site are getting the European 80GB PS3 confused with the American Model. Their not the same. The American 80GB PS3 Model is the same as the the origional 60GB model exactly with the same BC.

Damn, how much does this emotion engine chip cost, if it could lower prices by a hundred dollars? They should of done this a long time ago!!!

SO the CEO of Sony has finally figured out ( after a year ) that dropping the price will increase the sales. Wow, what insight, any 10 year old kid could have told him that a month after it released.
I wonder if he knows he should use an umbrella when it rains??
DUHHHHHHH

The PS3 is a good console... better than the 360 in some ways (quieter, more reliable, better user interface, better controller interface, better multimedia interface, Blu-Ray), worse in other ways (weak developer tools, weak online support, worse controller layout, more expensive).

IMO the two critical problems with the PS3 are cost and development complexity, both are problems that COULD be overcome... but Sony isn't there yet. This price drop is a step in the right direction. Hopefully their toolset will improve to the point that they can start putting out Rachet and Clank quality games (if you own a PS3 you need to own that game) on a regular basis now.

The new versions may not be AS compatible with PS2 games as the version I have... but I don't own any PS2 games- I'd have rather bought this version ans saved money than the version I did buy.

Sure it's going to sell more a few days after a price change. All players do that. Next week it will be at the bottom again.

Sony's dying. Buying into any Sony now is a loosing bet.

First, I'm not the competition and I don't own anything HD except my TV which plays my DVDs just great. I don't even need upconversion!

Second, if you bought a PS3 just for BD playing, I'm sorry, but you got took. The whole console was designed for gaming. The BR was and is an afterthought. So you bought a second rate BD player without much game support.

I can guarantee you (as a Marketing Professional) that Sony started the whole BD on PS3 thing, first to promote their technology (this is why they announced that PS3 would play BD so early) and second to make up for the lack of games available.

Of course, the last console I owned was a PS1. After that, I realized that consoles aren't that great for anything and went to PC.