Console Wars

Once again, this generation, we have 3 videogame companies in a huge sales war. This time though I feel it is more interesting than ever because there is no CLEARLY better product.
The Wii is much less powerful graphically and has less space to work with, however it have many motion sensing abilities and a new balance board periphrial. It's being marketed to kids, casual gamers, and housewives.


Xbox360 is powerful - but uses DVDs, has a lot of storage space, good online components in xbox live, and some good exclusive content.

PS3 uses Blueray DVDs which are the highest capacity out there, it has plenty of storage space, works online well enough, is region free, can play the blueray movies and outputs 1080 graphics which are the highest definition available currently.

My white PS3 - to match the Wii, haha!

I went for the PS3 because of the blueray, the region free aspect, (I can play European, Japaneses, and American games.) Also some of my favorite series are still on PS3, such as Tekken and Metal Gear.

Recently the gaming industry went through a hiccup with E3, the big videogame expo, they cut it down in size and moved to a new location to try to make it manageable. Without going into the details it was a disaster and this year a lot of companies are not interested in going back. The videogame industry is HUGE pumping out tons of games which often beat the movie industry for money earned by the companies.

I am curious to see what happens in the future. People are saying that the wii is too limited and will die out soon, however sales are still going strong and beating out it's more powerful competators. Xbox360 is in a bit of a bind because Sony has the monopoly on HD discs with its Blueray DVD, as well as the fact that the Microsoft owned company is failing in Japan against the home team Sony.

My hope is that the Wii starts to get better 3rd party games, not just Nintendo owned properties. The controller has been proven to be good by various games and is just waiting for a masterpiece to put it all together. PS3 has had a slow start but they are getting rolling now. Once all the japanese companies like SquareEnix, which usually stay Japan focused start releasing their next gen games, I think we will see that because Japanese people don't care for Xbox360, that the number of games for PS3 will surpass Xbox and the once exclusive Xbox games will be ported to PS3. It seems likely to me, but we'll see.

Living here in Taiwan the gaming industry here hangs on the industry in japan. Most games here are just the japanese originals. Taiwanese who wish to play these games must either learn japanese or go online and download fan translated scripts to go along with it. Quite a hassle.

HIGH DEF!

The world is now in HIGH DEFINITION! It's the next generation in entertainment. Now to tell the truth, I am fine with our current TVs and DVDs, but HD is replacing it whether you like it or not, and truthfully it does look pretty awesome.

There is an idea in the US that in Asia you can buy electronics and media and such things much cheaper. Well I haven't seen that in Taiwan. Right now I am considering going HD with my gear. I just checked those prices and they are pretty heavy, looks even worse when you see the price in NT.


SOOOO PS3, it plays Blueray DVD, the only way to go for HD movies now that HDDVD has gone out of business. At the store up the road the PS3 bundle costs about NT$17,800. That includes any two games, an HD Cable for connecting with an HD TV, and a new Dualshock 3 controller. Its a decent deal - comes out to about US$580. I think this is affordable enough. It seems I will be able to save about US$300 - 500 a month with my current spending and work hours and all that, just guessing.

HD TV = NT$34,500 for a big one, that's about US$1,125. It's about the same as in USA... I think its a decent price for what you are getting. Maybe I can get the PS3 first, check my spending for the next month, and if I decide I can afford it, maybe get the TV.

Whenever I leave Taiwan I'd have to re-sell it or something I guess which will suck. Really, moving back to the states sounds like a super pain in the ass. Leaving USA was easy because I could just give things to relatives and so forth, but going back - I think I need to sell everything.

Xbox360 VS PS3 - HD-DVD VS Blue Ray

Well sorry to tell you this mom, but your HD-DVD just went obsolete!

In an amazing marketing move Warner Bros, Walmart, and some other big name companies have decided to go exclusively to Blue Ray technology. Similar to VHS and Betamax there were two formats of the next-gen DVDs. Back when Sony was selling Betamax they had the better product, but made it too inaccessible. This time Sony learned their lesson by putting out the comparatively cheap Blue Ray player in the PS3, and getting other companies to go 'Blue-Ray' only.

The companies backing HD-DVD decided to hurry and cut their losses by cutting off their production. This also means that PS3 now is the only video game console that can play Blue Ray movies, Xbox 360 is stuck with HD-DVD, and since Sony is competing with Xbox360 its unlikely that they will allow them to use Blue-Ray technologies on that machine.

So I am guessing there will be big HD-DVD sales and you can grab up some good quality movies cheap, but not too long down the road they will stop selling normal DVDs and you will have to move to the Blue Ray player. Now that this has happened it's likely that PS3 will see a large shift in sales, however, the Wii, which relied on its controller as the main draw, should be unaffected.

Very interesting stuff!