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Re: [News] [Rival] 11.6 Million XBox360s are Defective

In article <pgmnm4-f8a.ln1@xxxxxxxxxx>, "[H]omer" <spam@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > They recently said (someone from Sony, in Bloomberg, I think) that
> > they would lower the price by Christmas.
> 
> However, this is at the cost of losing the "Emotion Engine" legacy
> emulation hardware, although that was never shipped in PAL machines
> anyway, much to European PS3 customer's chagrin.

Sony is all over the map on this.  First, they drop the price in the US, 
from $599 to $499.

Then some high-up from Sony in Europe says that when the 80 gig comes 
out, it will be $599, and the 60 gig is no longer being made, so the 
$499 is just to clear out inventory.

Then some high-up from Sony in the US says that the Europe guy was 
wrong, and the 60 gig is not being discontinued.

Then some high-up above both of those two basically says the Europe guy 
was right.

This has caused quite a lot of confusion in the gamer world and among 
consumers, needless to say.

In Europe, they aren't doing a price cut, but rather are bundling more 
with the console.  They'll bundle a game or two, and I think one story I 
read said an extra controller.  This will be for 60 gig.  They haven't 
said if or when Europe would get the 80 gig model.

> It may well be that the software (firmware) solution is more flexible
> though. Did the Emotion Engine provide 100% guaranteed backwards
> compatibility?

I don't think it was 100%, but it was better than the initial software 
version.  The software has gotten better, though.

The non-software version also had problems with scaling, so some games 
looked horrible.  A patch fixed most of that, but I've read that the fix 
was to use the software emulation instead of the Emotion Engine when you 
are scaling.

Sony is not helping themselves by (1) offering such different products 
in the US and Europe, and (2) having such public disagreement between 
different top executives over what they are actually doing.

> Frankly, with *real* PS2s going for as low as 20 quid on eBay, I don't
> see this as a massive problem.

It could cost them a fair number of sales.  I have a Wii.  There are a 
few games for 360 and/or PS3 that I might be interested in, so I can see 
getting one of those someday.

There are also a lot of PS2 games that look like they would be 
interesting.  If the PS3 handled them all well, that would be a point in 
its favor, pushing toward my eventual setup being Wii+PS3.  However, if 
they have problems, and I have to go out and get a PS2, then I'd 
probably lean toward Wii+PS2+360 over Wii+PS2+PS3.  360 seems to have 
better exclusives than PS3, and the games that are on both of them look 
and play the same on each.

But I really don't want to have 3 boxes.  I don't have enough inputs on 
my TV to make that convenient, nor enough on the stereo for the audio.  
So I'd either end up doing a lot of switching plugs around, or have to 
get switch boxes, which can get expensive for good ones.

-- 
--Tim Smith

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