Don't forget the Game.com. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Melf
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Don't forget the Game.com. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Melf
Speaking of which, ever since Beta Sony has desparately wanted to "own" a format more than anything else in the world. It is their dream. A dream they have failed at many, many, many times. Poor Sony. I shed a tear for thee.Quote:
Originally Posted by Melf
Beta = Failed. Sony = PWND!
8mm/Hi8 = Failed. Sony = PWND!
MiniDisc = Failed. Sony = PWND!
SDDS = Failed. Sony = PWND!
UMD = Gonna fail! Sony = Will be PWND!
BluRay = ? Sony = ?
Poor Sony. Poor, poor Sony.
Well, I dare say that is one very, very bad track record. It doesn't shine well on BluRay.
Some products are doomed to fail. There is a lot more to successful marketing than just good advertising. The single most important step in creating a marketing plan is correctly identifying your target market, and whether or not it's large enough to make the proposed business venture turn the desired profit. You need people to buy your shit, after all. You also have to consider strength of the competition, the unique selling point of your product, etc. etc.
Blu-Ray does nothing for me, personally. I like DVDs, I don't want to change formats just yet, and I don't have a fancy television. Sony has their work cut out for them if they hope to convince people like me that Blu-Ray is worth my time and money, and they may have made a serious miscalculation as to the willingness of adpotion within their proposed target market. Are any of you genuinely excited about Blu-Ray as a format? If not, what would it take for you to be?
At any rate, Sony's going for prestige pricing with their spiffy PS3, those frisky bastards. They're hoping that you'll associate an outrageous pricetag with outrageous quality, which will conjur a strong sense of materialistic pride within your gluttonous soul and have you falling over yourself to buy one immediately in order to be the coolest and most trendsetting fucker around. That's the kind of thought that goes into deciding on a launch price, and these are the kind of people Sony will be banking on.
As always, we'll let the games decide. That being said, even a weak launch title buffet didn't stop the PS2 from setting the Dreamcast ablaze, but ehhh, I expect the 360 to do just fine. It, like the PS3, has sway over the brand loyal of the current gen.
I think it has a lot to do with consumer apathy towards upgrading. Telling people that they're going to have to buy a new DVD player (though their existing collections will be compatible) kind of makes them say "what for?" Remember Super VHS? We still don't know if Blu-Ray will beat HD-DVD or if both will fail. Neither have been really warmly received so far, and the time when the general consumer will own a set up that takes full advantage over the new format is still a ways off.
Moreover, people comparing Blu-Ray in the PS3 to DVD in the PS2 are forgetting one thing: DVD was already the accepted format by consumers when the PS2 launched. People were going to upgrade eventually anyway, because that was the accepted successor to VHS. It's not so clean cut this time around.
IIRC, when the PS2 launched in Japan a tad over six years ago, DVD players where very expensive, and as a result, at first the PS2 sold very well mostly because it was a cheap DVD player.
I brought this up, because maybe the same will hold true for the PS3 since it is a Blu-ray player, and maybe cheaper than current blu-ray players? In Japan they are expensive and kind of scarce, so...
Yeah, but that success was attributed to the fact that the DVD format was already established as the clear successor to VHS. This is different because we don't know if Blu-Ray will be accepted, or HD-DVD, or neither. People may just opt to stick with regular DVD, like what happened with laser disc. It's not going to be so simple.
Personally, I hope both formats fail. I'm sick of companys trying to shove their proprietary formats down our throats. DVD has barely started and already we're supposed to upgrade? By the time these next gen players are cheap enough to buy, regular DVD will be firmly entrenched as the home video option. People can now buy a DVD player at Wal-Mart for less than $50, and I doubt $500 and $600 players are going to look attractive to the general non-gaming public. Most people aren't even aware that there are two new formats being pushed.
I still fail to see the reason for new home video formats, and I'm not going to deny that VHS -> DVD was a huge difference. But now it's getting insane.
So, was (or has) DVD pushed to it's limits? Maybe someone like Joe can confirm or deny?
DVD was pretty much pushed to its limits the moment dual-layer discs were introduced. It won't be tremendously long before blank dual-layer DVDs become common, further entrenching the format. DVDs run in 480p and 16:9 (when authored to do so) and they look more than good enough for most people. Even with advertising, the average consumer won't give a shit about BluRay or the inferior HD-DVD. DVD is plenty fine. The ONLY way BluRay could EVER be an advantage is if you had an HDTV. Not enough people have them yet. BluRay is being pushed too soon. It's a good format, but it needs to wait at least 2 more years.
As far as DVD being pushed to its limits, at least in terms of picture and audio quality, the Superbit series of DVDs is pretty much it. The whole deal with Superbit is they drop the wasted space of special features and such, devoting nearly 80% of the DVD's storage space to the video alone. As far as I am aware, it's as close to high definition as DVDs come. And they have really ugly packaging.
Superbit DVD's are fantastic. And Joe is right, there's nothing more we can do with DVD to upgrade the picture quality, even though like most of you said, for the average consumer the pq is fine as it is.
DVD is not a high definition format though, as it can only display in 720 x 480 pixels displayed in progressive scan format, which is only HALF the resolution of HDTV. The pixel count on an HDTV is typically 1280 x 720(720p) or 1920 x 1080(1080i) I know you guys think that the current DVD picture quality is fine, and that the new Blu-Ray and HD-DVD won't be a significant upgrade, but honestly if you wait to judge this until you actually see Blu-Ray up and running and what it looks like, I think you might be pleasantly suprised by the upgrade.
It's certainly not the jump that VHS->DVD was, but then, it's not being marketed to the mass consumer either. This is something for the HDTV owners out there, and the price in HDTV has come down very far in the last 2 years, and it will continue to drop, so many of you don't know it, but you might be upgrading to HDTV in the near future...and why not?
Look, I don't know about you guys, but when I play a game on the computer I play the game in atleast 1024 x 780 resolution. I like the crisp image displayed on my monitor, and with HD-DVD/BD I'll be able to have this kind of resolution on my HDTV set, thus I'm pretty interested in this new format right now. It's too expensive right now, but I'll wait for a year and then look at it again. I won't buy a PS3 for the Blu-Ray though, I prefer to have dedicated hardware on my DVD players, and I don't really like Sony brand electronics. I'm sure Toshiba will have a superior product in the near future, and I wouldn't be suprised if some company makes a HDDVD/BluRay combo player. Not to mention these new formats will both be backwards compatible with DVD, so it's not like anyone has to get rid of their current DVD collections....just keep your DVD's and buy the new formats from there. Seems simple to me.
Hey Drixxel muh man, which Superbits have you seen that you saw an obvious upgrade in quality? I have about 10 of them, and from my experience, Starship Troopers is hands down the best Superbit DVD on the market. I think Desperado was actually rated the best upgrade from what I've read around the net, but it's hard to say, though it is damn awesome.Quote:
Originally Posted by Drixxel
This is a good time to get Superbit movies. Best Buy stores are clearancing them out at $9.99 for any Superbit title. I've been going there every weekend and buying a few before they get rid of them. It wasn't a very successful format, and I can sense that the superbit line will soon vanish from retail shelves.
So far I bought:
-Jonny Mnemonic
-Black Hawk Down
-Lawrence of Arabia
-Desperado
-Starship Troopers
-Heavy Metal
-Cliffhanger
-Snatch
-The Patriot
-Seven Years in Tibet
-Gattaca
I've had the opportunity to watch three Superbit DVDs in addition to their non-Superbit brethren, and they were all improved enough for me to vouch for their better quality, at least when watched on a top-notch television.Quote:
Originally Posted by Russman
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Leon the Professional
The Fifth Element
I watched the Leon Superbit on my pansy 24" random brand television and the experience really was nothing noteworthy compared to the standard DVD. These discs need a good screen. For the most part I'm willing to settle for the overblown special edition DVDs with the features I'll never watch, but when I eventually invest in an absurd entertainment center years down the road, I'll undoubtedly wish that I had snapped up more of these Superbit DVDs. For now, though, lower resolution and occasional artifacting doesn't bother me.
Perhaps I should've said "When done right".Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Redifer
Whatever the case with former Sony formats, they didn't have a successful game console pushing it. And, while DVD may have been the clear cut successor to VHS, the Japanse market didn't know it until Sony showed them the way.
Also, as previously stated, home entertainment is becoming incredibly expensive. People are treating themselves to sub-cinema stuff here, buying outrageous ss and HDTV.
If a person spends thousands of dollars on a TV, a sound system, a stereo, and they want to get the max out of it, a PS3 seems like a good choice.
Alot of it depends on who buys what, but there are plenty of whos. Rich whos, poor whos, extravagant splurging whos.
Sony will sell their PS3, they just need to find their who.
I do believe that the HD-DVD, Holographic Media, and Blu-Ray will be the final true "hard" format before everything is digitally uploaded to blocks holding memory. Blu-Ray has the most support, so it will probably be the main choice.
Well, yes and no. A person like this would unquestionably purchase a PS3 if they were into videogames... big "if". But this same person, gamer or not, would most likely have a stand-alone dedicated BluRay player. I am one of these pretentious assholes. I never settled for playing movies on ANY of my game systems. Ever. I bought the first LaserDisc/DVD combo player that came out (still have it) and made sure to get a really nice DVD player with all of the required outputs and capabilities. Playstations are known for their horrible drives, so I didn't want to ruin it even more quickly by playing movie DVDs in it as well. The same will go for BluRay if that format takes off.Quote:
If a person spends thousands of dollars on a TV, a sound system, a stereo, and they want to get the max out of it, a PS3 seems like a good choice.
Does anyone think the PS3 will be a durable machine?