I love this idea. The king of a 2D fantasy realm declares his kingdom will upgrade to 3D. An extra dimension is added, some awesome water effects and… well that’s about it. Actually, something else goes wrong and it’s up to the hero to resolve it.

I have no idea about gameplay, but the ugliness of the pixels is so cute I’m thinking even harder about getting that PS3. I saw that my local EB has a 2nd-hand 60Gb version, but they’re charging retail for it ($680). Maybe when the PS3 slim is launched they’ll drop the price to the new retail: $500. Heavy Rain‘s on its way soon, too.

SCE Australia have finally announced their 40Gb PS3 for $700. This represents a complete turn-around, not least because when the PS3 was originally launched elsewhere in the world there was already the choice of either the 40 or 60GB SKUs, but for whatever reason it was decided that Australia and Europe would only want the 60Gb one. Now, however, they intend to discontinue the 60Gb version once the current stock is sold.

Bizarrely, this discontinuation seems to be something that only Australia is condemned to suffer – it doesn’t appear to be happening in Europe. I can only hope that this is a precursor to the announcement of the world-wide (including PAL territories) release of the 80Gb model previously only available in South Korea, although this still seems unlikely.

To top things off, this new 40Gb version is said to contain no backwards capability whatsoever – not even their stop-gap emulation software. This seems particularly strange given Sony’s once vociferously pledged ongoing commitment to the PS2.

I understand that Sony and Microsoft don’t have Nintendo’s luxury of not actually making a loss on hardware sales, and that this $700 unit represents a significant undertaking on their part. Unfortunately though it seems far too little at a time when the PS3 is really floundering in the console war.

Not only did we have the Emotion Engine (a chip which allows PS3 owners everywhere else in the world to play PS1 & 2 games) replaced by far-inferior emulation software, but now we don’t even get the otherwise worldwide price cut. The PAL territories (essentially Australia and Europe) were already getting a raw deal price wise, considering that not only was the hardware inferior but the RRP was considerably more expensive than in the US and Japan. Oh well, at least now everyone else will get to be as disadvantaged as us.
http://blogs.theage.com.au/screenplay/archives//006752.html

Our PS2 died a few months ago which totally sucked and I put off replacing it because it just didn’t feel justified with the PS3 about to come it. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that my likelihood of forking out $$$ for the PS3 was very slim in the immediate and medium term future. We don’t have an HD TV and the whole Blu-ray revolution does little for me. I don’t buy a huge amount of movie DVDs anyway and there isn’t one must have PS3 exclusive title. But we still had lots of playable PS2 titles and enough PS2 titles that were on the covet-list so yesterday we got a new PS2 and I don’t feel even the slightest bit bad about it.

So the PS3 is to launch in March in Australia at two price points, $829 or $999. I’m not going to speculate on whether enough people will spend that much on it or not. What I do find weird is how little apparent price differentiation there is between the two offerings. I guess it’s a $170 but just comparing the prices makes it seem somewhat less. I guess it’s like the difference between a $1.2 million dollar house and a $1.3 million dollar house, it’s just all so expensive that $100 000 doesn’t seem like a huge difference.

I think if I got the $829 version, I’d just be unhappy that I didn’t wait a bit longer and get the better version because I don’t think it feels like the saving is worth it. $799 vs $999 would appear to be a lot more of a saving when it’s only another 30 dollars. Maybe they only intend us to get the $999 version and the $829 one is only there to give the illusion of comparison. Ugh! The psychology of purchasing…

Wagner James Au at Gigaom talks about PS3’s impending doom and points to graphs by Curmudgeon Gamer which show how Sony have overpriced PS3 and missed the sweet spot (which Wii hits perfectly). Much as I’d like to see Sony fall on their face after their pointless persecution of Lik-Saang, I don’t think it will be that dire. I think Wii will do really well but much of that will be picking up on people who don’t normally play games and people with kids who want something that appears more kid friendly than something you can play GTA on. It’s just a really different market from the core gamer market of Sony and Xbox. The thing about Sony is that they attract the vast middle ground of gamers because they have the most choice and depth of games. I think it’s possible that Sony may end up making Xbox the new standard if they completely stuff things up and developers start moving ship but they aren’t going be replaced by the Wii.

In any case, it seems unlikely that PS3 will do as well as it should. Earlier this week, I was reading an article about how the guy who developed the Walkman was retiring and how Sony Electronics was basically going nowhere. It’s sad how the content owning side of the company have been such jerk-offs and how that’s really pulled down the electronics. For ages, Sony DVD players were the only ones that didn’t come with region “protection” overrided. I think now even they have buckled, but it’s too late, if it involves anything computerised and may have anything to do with enjoying something that may or may not have copyrights attached then I just don’t trust them.

After an interview posted early Tuesday morning in the Melbourne Age, SCE Australia boss Michael Ephraim was quoted on American and English gaming sites for what have been construed as controversial remarks on the various price points for next-gen consoles – particularly in reader comments. It’s a shame when honest responses are punished in such a way, and leads to the usual sound-bite PR mentality that gamers and journalists profess to rail against. You can read Ephraim’s response to the hoo-ha here.