Tag: Console Wars

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, rumors of Blake Lively posing nude, bamboo combs, or your favorite mustard, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

One of the most fascinating (and expensive) parts of E3 is its press conference. A handful of large publishers hold pressers, but the ones that matter most are held by the console manufacturers. Before the show floor opens, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony crank their hype machines to 11 and set the tone for E3. This year will surely be the same. What I really want to know is (Lenny Kravitz) which E3 2011 press conference are you looking forward to the most and why?

Nintendo and Sony will definitely be showing off new hardware. What will Microsoft do to compete with that? Which console will have the most exclusives? How about the best ones? How many times will Sony say, “I’m sorry.”? These are all things to consider when making your choice. So kindly pick one in the poll and expand on your choice in the comments section.

[poll id=”119″]

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, those pesky Memphis Grizzlies, the Bin Laden attack being described on Twitter hours before the U.S. government acknowledged it, or wanting to hug awesome apps, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

Gamasutra’s Colin Campbell wrote this excellent article on how the PlayStation Network outage has further devalued the PlayStation brand. Colin is awesome and his article is great, but I don’t think he went far enough. There’s no question that the PSN attack has damaged the PlayStation brand. It’s more than that though. The PSN outage has damaged the (already declining) Sony brand.

Remember when Sony was the premiere name in consumer electronics? There was a long stretch when the consumer electronics market was Sony, followed by everyone else. From televisions to audio components to laptops, Sony products were almost always best in class. A lot has changed since then. The company absolutely bombed in the modern portable audio space (which is funny because it basically created the market with the Walkman). PC manufacturers were able to offer computers that were almost as nice, but much cheaper. The television market got a lot more competitive, with Korean companies like LG and Samsung outdoing Sony in both price and performance.

For two console generations, Sony dominated the field. Its third go-round didn’t go nearly as well, for numerous reasons. Although the PlayStation 3 was starting to pick up steam globally, the PSN outage will definitely impact performance and perception. Rightly or wrongly, people will use the PSN outage to illustrate that Sony has lost its grip on yet another market.

What do you think? Will the damage be confined to to the PlayStation brand or is the Sony brand in jeopardy too? Or is all of this being overblown? Perhaps the PlayStation and Sony brands will be just fine by the end of the year. Kindly share your thoughts on the nebulous value of branding!

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, the rise of Ivan Nova, the latest iPhone 5 rumors, or your favorite painkiller, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

While we were talking about the digital future of consoles, I was intrigued by one of RPadholic smartguy’s comments. He believes that the next generation of consoles will use solid-state storage instead of disc-based media. It’s an interesting argument. There are great reasons to do it and great reasons not to. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

Publishers love that cartridges are better than discs at combating piracy. A combination of anti-piracy measures on the cartridge (that can be updated) and online authentication would be tough to beat. Solid state would also mean sturdier products. As smartguy mentioned, the less moving parts a console has, the longer it will last. That’s great for the consumer.

On the downside, cartridges will always be more expensive than discs and digital downloads (obviously). Future games will require at least 16GB flash cards and some will require much more than that. While the price of solid-state memory will surely go down over the next few years, it will still be more expensive than a Blu-ray disc.

Speaking of Blu-ray (and DVD), one of the reasons disc-based gaming took off is that movies used the same format. Lots of people used their PlayStation 2 as their primary DVD player and the PlayStation 3 is still on of the best Blu-ray players around. While digital movies are becoming more and more popular, discs aren’t going away just yet. It can be argued that console manufacturers — especially Sony — still want to offer the ability to play disc-based movies on their consoles. Then again, it might be easier and cheaper to set up an exclusive deal with a digital movie partner. Or maybe they’ll have their own service, like the rumored Orapa for Microsoft Xbox.

Do you see cartridges coming back to home consoles? Why or why not? Would you prefer cartridges or discs for the next generation of videogame consoles?