new york times review of the ps3, sony fanboys look away.

emma roids · 21-11-2006, 18:38

oh dear,,,,,

From the New York Times:
By SETH SCHIESEL
Published: November 20, 2006

Howard Stringer, you have a problem. Your company’s new video game system just isn’t that great.

Ever since Mr. Stringer took the helm last year at Sony, the struggling if still formidable electronics giant, the world has been hearing about how the coming PlayStation 3 would save the company, or at least revitalize it. Even after Microsoft took the lead in the video-game wars a year ago with its innovative and powerful Xbox 360, Sony blithely insisted that the PS3 would leapfrog all competition to deliver an unsurpassed level of fun.

Put bluntly, Sony has failed to deliver on that promise.

Measured in megaflops, gigabytes and other technical benchmarks, the PlayStation 3 is certainly the world’s most powerful game console. It falls far short, however, of providing the world’s most engaging overall entertainment experience. There is a big difference, and Sony seems to have confused one for the other.

The PS3, which was introduced in North America on Friday with a hefty $599 price tag for the top version, certainly delivers gorgeous graphics. But they are not discernibly prettier than the Xbox 360’s. More important, the whole PlayStation 3 system is surprisingly clunky to use and simply does not provide many basic functions that users have come to expect, especially online.

I have spent more than 30 hours using the PlayStation 3 over the last week or so and may have played more different games on the system — 13 — than probably anyone outside of Sony itself. Sony did not activate the PS3’s online service until just before the Friday debut. Over the weekend a clear sense of disappointment with the PlayStation 3 emerged from many gamers.

“What’s weird is that the PS3 was originally supposed to come out in the spring, and here it came out in the fall, and it still doesn’t feel finished,” Christopher Grant, managing editor of Joystiq, one of the world’s biggest video-game blogs, said on the telephone Saturday night. “It’s really not the all-star showing they should have had at launch. Sony is playing catch-up in a lot of ways now, not just in terms of sales but in terms of the basic functionality and usability of the system.”

Sadly for Sony, the best way to explain how the PlayStation 3 falls short is to explain how different it is to use than its main competition, Xbox 360. When I reviewed the 360 last year, I wrote: “Twelve minutes after opening the box, I had created my nickname, was in a game of Quake 4 and thought, ‘This can’t be this easy.’ ”

I never felt that way using the PlayStation 3. With the PS3, 12 minutes after opening the box I realized that Sony inexplicably does not include cables to connect the machine to a high-definition television. Keep in mind that one of Sony’s main selling points has been that the PS3 plays Blu-Ray high-definition movie discs. But high-definiton cables? Sold separately. The Xbox 360, by contrast, ships with one cable that can connect to either a standard or high-definition set.

Then, before you are even using the PS3, you have to connect the “wireless” controller to the base unit with a USB cable so they can recognize each other. If you bring your PS3 controller to a friend’s house, you’ll have to plug back in again. The 360’s wireless controllers are always just that, wireless.

If there is one thing one would expect Sony to get perfect, though, it would be music. Wrong. Sure, you can plug in your digital music player and the PS3 will play the tunes. But as soon as you go into a game, the music stops. By contrast, one of the things I’ve always enjoyed most on the Xbox 360 is being able to listen to my own music while playing Pebble Beach or driving my virtual Ferrari. Doesn’t seem too complicated, but the PS3 can’t do it.

In that sense it often feels as if the PlayStation 3 can’t walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. In the PS3’s online store (which feels like a slow Web page) you can access movie trailers and trial versions of new games, but when you actually download the 600-megabyte files, you’ll be stuck watching a progress bar crawl across the screen for 20 or 40 minutes. Astonishingly, you can’t download in the background while you go do something that’s more fun (like play a game). On the Xbox 360, not only are files downloaded seamlessly in the background, but you can also shut off the machine, turn it on later, and the download will resume automatically.

The PS3’s whole online experience feels tacked-on and unpolished. On the Xbox 360 each user has a single unified friends list, so you can track your friends and communicate with them easily, no matter what game you are in. On the PlayStation 3 most games have their own separate friends list and some have no friends function at all. There is a master list as well, but in order to communicate with anyone on it, you have to quit the game you are playing.

There are some high points. The multi-player battles in Resistance: Fall of Man are excellent. The arcade-style action in the downloadable Blast Factor is suitably frantic.

But the list of the PS3’s disappointments remains, from its undersupported voice chat to its maddening cellphone-like text messaging system. (In frustration I ended up plugging in a USB keyboard.) Overall, Sony seems to have put a lot of effort into cramming as much silicon horsepower under the hood as possible but to have forgotten that all the transistors in the world can’t make someone smile.

And so it is a bit of a shock to realize that on the video game front Microsoft and Sony are moving in exactly the opposite directions one might expect given their roots. Microsoft, the prototypical PC company, has made the Xbox 360 into a powerful but intuitive, welcoming, people-friendly system. Sony’s PlayStation 3, on the other hand, often feels like a brawny but somewhat recalcitrant specialized computer. (Sony is even telling users to wait for future software patches to fix some of the PS3’s deficiencies.) The thing is, if people want to use a computer, they’ll use a computer.

Through the decades of the Walkman and the Trinitron television, Sony was renowned as the global master of easy-to-use, seamlessly powerful consumer electronics. But recently Sony seems to have lost its way, first in digital music players, in which it ceded the ergonomic high ground to Apple’s iPod, and now in home-game consoles. For now Sony’s technologists seem to have won out over the people who study fun.

As a practical matter, given the limited quantities Sony has been able to manufacture, the PlayStation 3 will surely remain sold out throughout the holiday season. If you can’t find one, don’t fret. Sony still has a lot of work to do. As Mr. Grant of Joystiq put it: “Maybe in six months it’ll be finished. Maybe by next fall I’ll be able to do all the cool stuff. I’m still kind of waiting.”

Seems to me that Sony's entered a world of oops! They released the most anticipated console that could have easily granted them the market or the next ten or so years, but instead they rushed it and had the NYT tell America that the system is just alright. Ouch. Schiesel's article is friggin great, and I think that this will be a lesson to the rest of the industry: quality over delivery; if you deliver quality, you win in the long run.

X-Buster! · 21-11-2006, 18:56

Again its complete bull crap because just over a year ago you would see almost identical reviews on the 360 and how crap it was and how easy it was breaking and constantly churning out **** games not even worthy to be launch titles.

Some people are so hypocritcal, the PS3 has been out for a few days and people already draw conclusions, just wait till it gets on its feet just like the 360 did and then the war shall be on.

Harv · 21-11-2006, 19:19

Have to say the same as the above post. I still think Sony were rushed into playing there next-gen console too early and will be playing catchup for a good few months - probably till April

More to the point I can bet that if he hadn't given himself a get out clause he would very likely be eating humble pie down the line.

Hmmm lets see a few advantages over the Xbox at launch.

1. if you move a PS3 while playing a game your game disc is not destroyed.

2. if i plug my PS3 into the same area as lots of my other gadgets I dont need a cabinet just to house the power supply. In fact hold on where is the power supply - oh yeah its in the console.

3. After I have had my console for a few days I see that my dirty paw prints dont show up on the sleek and sexy black outer coating - unlike my white counterpart.

4. I noticed recently that Xbox360 have stooped so low that they are now giving them away as gifts if you take out a 12 month mobile phone contract. Can't see that happening with the PS3.

Dante · 21-11-2006, 22:09

Who gave emma roids access to the gaming section?

Minus · 21-11-2006, 22:25

well to be fair, sony do suck

X-Buster! · 22-11-2006, 08:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Minus

well to be fair, sony do suck

Biggest selling console ever? yeah they must think they really do suck...

emma roids · 22-11-2006, 08:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dante

Who gave emma roids access to the gaming section?

i broke in

like ive said in another thread, i do like sony its just everything i seem to read about the ps3 nowadays doesent make it look good.

Desire · 22-11-2006, 19:56

The PS3 deserves it. Sony have been promising and promising and hyping, and lying about the PS3 for years. Now its here and people are underwhelmed largely due to Sony's promises and hype. You have to be living in lala land to think there wasn't going to be a Sony backlash. There are some very just critisims here, and if Sony don't take note, they'll continue their downward spiral.

notsosilentbob · 24-11-2006, 02:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harv

2. if i plug my PS3 into the same area as lots of my other gadgets I dont need a cabinet just to house the power supply. In fact hold on where is the power supply - oh yeah its in the console.

Which means its going to overheat pretty quickly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harv

4. I noticed recently that Xbox360 have stooped so low that they are now giving them away as gifts if you take out a 12 month mobile phone contract. Can't see that happening with the PS3.

Yeah cause sony arent giving psp's away with twelve month contracts are they.

As was mentiond in the NYT article sony have forgotten games are supposed to be FUN! Thats why the superior PSP is selling less & less while the older allegedly crapper nintendo DS is selling more than double the amount of PSP's worldwide. I hope the same happens between the PS3 & the WII because if there's any justice in this world the much more fun WII will totally outsell the PS3 & no i'm not a nintendo fanboy or a sony hater(well a little) or a xbox fanboy infact the only modernish console i've got is a sega dreamcast which is still superior to the PS2 despite being out of production for a few years now.

Mankind · 24-11-2006, 03:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by notsosilentbob

As was mentiond in the NYT article sony have forgotten games are supposed to be FUN!

Sony don't really make games.

They make the hardware and let 3rd parties churn out the games. Of which there are hundreds of 'fun' ones on the PS1/2 and will be on the ps3.

Just because a game doesn't have cartoon graphics or moustachiod plumber doesn't mean it can't be fun. FF7 anyone?

It's funny how you say the Wii is more 'fun' than the PS3, yet neither console is out in the UK yet. Hmm.

21-11-2006, 18:38	#1 (permalink)
Name & Title emma roids dab some cream on. Avatar Mood Karma Pu17,610.94 Critters My Critters	new york times review of the ps3, sony fanboys look away. oh dear,,,,, From the New York Times: By SETH SCHIESEL Published: November 20, 2006 Howard Stringer, you have a problem. Your company’s new video game system just isn’t that great. Ever since Mr. Stringer took the helm last year at Sony, the struggling if still formidable electronics giant, the world has been hearing about how the coming PlayStation 3 would save the company, or at least revitalize it. Even after Microsoft took the lead in the video-game wars a year ago with its innovative and powerful Xbox 360, Sony blithely insisted that the PS3 would leapfrog all competition to deliver an unsurpassed level of fun. Put bluntly, Sony has failed to deliver on that promise. Measured in megaflops, gigabytes and other technical benchmarks, the PlayStation 3 is certainly the world’s most powerful game console. It falls far short, however, of providing the world’s most engaging overall entertainment experience. There is a big difference, and Sony seems to have confused one for the other. The PS3, which was introduced in North America on Friday with a hefty $599 price tag for the top version, certainly delivers gorgeous graphics. But they are not discernibly prettier than the Xbox 360’s. More important, the whole PlayStation 3 system is surprisingly clunky to use and simply does not provide many basic functions that users have come to expect, especially online. I have spent more than 30 hours using the PlayStation 3 over the last week or so and may have played more different games on the system — 13 — than probably anyone outside of Sony itself. Sony did not activate the PS3’s online service until just before the Friday debut. Over the weekend a clear sense of disappointment with the PlayStation 3 emerged from many gamers. “What’s weird is that the PS3 was originally supposed to come out in the spring, and here it came out in the fall, and it still doesn’t feel finished,” Christopher Grant, managing editor of Joystiq, one of the world’s biggest video-game blogs, said on the telephone Saturday night. “It’s really not the all-star showing they should have had at launch. Sony is playing catch-up in a lot of ways now, not just in terms of sales but in terms of the basic functionality and usability of the system.” Sadly for Sony, the best way to explain how the PlayStation 3 falls short is to explain how different it is to use than its main competition, Xbox 360. When I reviewed the 360 last year, I wrote: “Twelve minutes after opening the box, I had created my nickname, was in a game of Quake 4 and thought, ‘This can’t be this easy.’ ” I never felt that way using the PlayStation 3. With the PS3, 12 minutes after opening the box I realized that Sony inexplicably does not include cables to connect the machine to a high-definition television. Keep in mind that one of Sony’s main selling points has been that the PS3 plays Blu-Ray high-definition movie discs. But high-definiton cables? Sold separately. The Xbox 360, by contrast, ships with one cable that can connect to either a standard or high-definition set. Then, before you are even using the PS3, you have to connect the “wireless” controller to the base unit with a USB cable so they can recognize each other. If you bring your PS3 controller to a friend’s house, you’ll have to plug back in again. The 360’s wireless controllers are always just that, wireless. If there is one thing one would expect Sony to get perfect, though, it would be music. Wrong. Sure, you can plug in your digital music player and the PS3 will play the tunes. But as soon as you go into a game, the music stops. By contrast, one of the things I’ve always enjoyed most on the Xbox 360 is being able to listen to my own music while playing Pebble Beach or driving my virtual Ferrari. Doesn’t seem too complicated, but the PS3 can’t do it. In that sense it often feels as if the PlayStation 3 can’t walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. In the PS3’s online store (which feels like a slow Web page) you can access movie trailers and trial versions of new games, but when you actually download the 600-megabyte files, you’ll be stuck watching a progress bar crawl across the screen for 20 or 40 minutes. Astonishingly, you can’t download in the background while you go do something that’s more fun (like play a game). On the Xbox 360, not only are files downloaded seamlessly in the background, but you can also shut off the machine, turn it on later, and the download will resume automatically. The PS3’s whole online experience feels tacked-on and unpolished. On the Xbox 360 each user has a single unified friends list, so you can track your friends and communicate with them easily, no matter what game you are in. On the PlayStation 3 most games have their own separate friends list and some have no friends function at all. There is a master list as well, but in order to communicate with anyone on it, you have to quit the game you are playing. There are some high points. The multi-player battles in Resistance: Fall of Man are excellent. The arcade-style action in the downloadable Blast Factor is suitably frantic. But the list of the PS3’s disappointments remains, from its undersupported voice chat to its maddening cellphone-like text messaging system. (In frustration I ended up plugging in a USB keyboard.) Overall, Sony seems to have put a lot of effort into cramming as much silicon horsepower under the hood as possible but to have forgotten that all the transistors in the world can’t make someone smile. And so it is a bit of a shock to realize that on the video game front Microsoft and Sony are moving in exactly the opposite directions one might expect given their roots. Microsoft, the prototypical PC company, has made the Xbox 360 into a powerful but intuitive, welcoming, people-friendly system. Sony’s PlayStation 3, on the other hand, often feels like a brawny but somewhat recalcitrant specialized computer. (Sony is even telling users to wait for future software patches to fix some of the PS3’s deficiencies.) The thing is, if people want to use a computer, they’ll use a computer. Through the decades of the Walkman and the Trinitron television, Sony was renowned as the global master of easy-to-use, seamlessly powerful consumer electronics. But recently Sony seems to have lost its way, first in digital music players, in which it ceded the ergonomic high ground to Apple’s iPod, and now in home-game consoles. For now Sony’s technologists seem to have won out over the people who study fun. As a practical matter, given the limited quantities Sony has been able to manufacture, the PlayStation 3 will surely remain sold out throughout the holiday season. If you can’t find one, don’t fret. Sony still has a lot of work to do. As Mr. Grant of Joystiq put it: “Maybe in six months it’ll be finished. Maybe by next fall I’ll be able to do all the cool stuff. I’m still kind of waiting.” Seems to me that Sony's entered a world of oops! They released the most anticipated console that could have easily granted them the market or the next ten or so years, but instead they rushed it and had the NYT tell America that the system is just alright. Ouch. Schiesel's article is friggin great, and I think that this will be a lesson to the rest of the industry: quality over delivery; if you deliver quality, you win in the long run.
	emma roids's Sig:click this link, build my city. thanks When we grew up and went to school There were certain teachers who would Hurt the children in any way they could By pouring their derision Upon anything we did And exposing every weakness However carefully hidden by the kids But in the town, it was well known When they got home at night, their fat and Psychopathic wives would thrash them Within inches of their lives. awww bless em oblivion imperial tower jump
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21-11-2006, 18:56	#2 (permalink)
Name & Title X-Buster! Full Member Avatar Karma Pu13,131.85	Again its complete bull crap because just over a year ago you would see almost identical reviews on the 360 and how crap it was and how easy it was breaking and constantly churning out **** games not even worthy to be launch titles. Some people are so hypocritcal, the PS3 has been out for a few days and people already draw conclusions, just wait till it gets on its feet just like the 360 did and then the war shall be on.
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21-11-2006, 19:19	#3 (permalink)
Name & Title Harv Dr Slice n Dice M.s.C. Avatar Mood Karma Pu23,527.09 Critters My Critters	Have to say the same as the above post. I still think Sony were rushed into playing there next-gen console too early and will be playing catchup for a good few months - probably till April More to the point I can bet that if he hadn't given himself a get out clause he would very likely be eating humble pie down the line. Hmmm lets see a few advantages over the Xbox at launch. 1. if you move a PS3 while playing a game your game disc is not destroyed. 2. if i plug my PS3 into the same area as lots of my other gadgets I dont need a cabinet just to house the power supply. In fact hold on where is the power supply - oh yeah its in the console. 3. After I have had my console for a few days I see that my dirty paw prints dont show up on the sleek and sexy black outer coating - unlike my white counterpart. 4. I noticed recently that Xbox360 have stooped so low that they are now giving them away as gifts if you take out a 12 month mobile phone contract. Can't see that happening with the PS3.
	Harv's Sig: Click to add Harvopolis Residents , Harvopolis industrial units or Harvopolis Roads
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21-11-2006, 22:09	#4 (permalink)
Name & Title Dante ... Karma Pu0	Who gave emma roids access to the gaming section?
Name & Title Dante ... Karma Pu0
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21-11-2006, 22:25	#5 (permalink)
Name & Title Minus ... Karma Pu0	well to be fair, sony do suck
Name & Title Minus ... Karma Pu0
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22-11-2006, 19:56	#8 (permalink)
Name & Title Desire Full Member Karma Pu5,209.83	The PS3 deserves it. Sony have been promising and promising and hyping, and lying about the PS3 for years. Now its here and people are underwhelmed largely due to Sony's promises and hype. You have to be living in lala land to think there wasn't going to be a Sony backlash. There are some very just critisims here, and if Sony don't take note, they'll continue their downward spiral.
Name & Title Desire Full Member Karma Pu5,209.83	Desire's Sig: Wii60
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24-11-2006, 08:28	#11 (permalink)
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