[quote name='bbj77']I was in gamestop a few days ago, and a guy walked in and wanted to sell his 80BG PS3. He said his wife was making him sell it and they gave him like $250 if I remember correctly. I asked them after he left how much they would sell that one for and they said around $450 I think! WOW! What a rip off. If I had the cash on me at the time and knew this before the guy left I would have asked him if I could buy it from him for $260 or whatever. Amazing[/quote]
Hee hee, yeah, that's how they make their cash... The worst is when it comes to games. They get a huge chunk, the seller gets a little, the buyer hardly saves anything, and Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft and/or whoever the 3rd party developer is, gets nothing. A huge amount of revenue changes hands, but none of it does anything for the industry itself.
About the 20gb PS3, I didn't even realize that was on sale here in the States. Shows how much I know. It's confusing with all these different SKUs floating around. Sony is all over the map.
I personally think the hardware isn't the problem at all; maybe the price point isn't even the problem. I think the real difficulty is lack of good software. I wish the solution would be a steady flow of Japanese stuff translated into English (that would tickle me as a Japan buff), but that wouldn't do anything to attract what Sony considers the American hardcore market, the people who I guess buy 12 shooters per year (or at least Microsoft seems to think that), and as for the "casual" (so-called) market, maybe Sony is content to leave them to the Wii.
Unfortunately, even great games like Uncharted and Ratchet aren't selling, nor are they moving hardware. We may see a change with Metal Gear and Gran Turismo.
I still want that flood of quirky Japanese games.
I think Sony is having a hard time carving out a niche. Maybe they haven't decided what they want their niche to be (thus all the different hardware versions). Technically speaking, the multi-platform games should be much better on PS3 than Xbox 360, but we're seeing just the opposite. And thus, no one buys a PS3 for multiplatform games. So what are they buying it for? Blu-ray? Probably not. That's why, in addition to what's already out there for the PS3, we need more subtance. $40 English translations of weird Japanese stuff would sell me in a hurry. Other people? Dunno. But it wouldn't hurt to try. Ratchet and Uncharted didn't work.
Meanwhile the PSP is selling well, but people keep pirating games for it instead of buying them.
Thus is my depressing (for now) take on the industry.
What does this have to do with anything? I don't know. PS3 really should have a great future ahead of it, though, probably a very long one. I look forward to the years to come and hope it shapes up the way PS2 did a few years into its life cycle as an awesome platform for Japanese games. Where else are they gonna go? Not the 360. It's still not doing well in Japan, and the Wii is a different beast entirely.
Or maybe the Japanese are content to do their hardcore, non-first-party-Nintendo-gaming on portable systems.
I'm not gonna go back and edit this. :S Sorry if it makes no sense, but is anyone seriously going to read it?? ha!