Brown, hmm, Brown ? Brown ! Brown :(
Brown, hmm, Brown ? Brown ! Brown :(
Oddly enough, most people agree that brown is the most interesting colour when you see it in person. Companies like MS don't just pick colours out of a hat... they do some serious research first.
I think the thing is ok; not an iPod killer, but it might take a chunk out of the rest of the market and steal some sales from Sansa, Creative, etc.
Yeah, I don't think its a iPod killer, but I also don't think its a flash in the pan either. Apple is taking Zune seriously even though iPod users are not.
Ask Sony about the X-box. When it came out it lost millions.
Now, the X-box poised to take over the adult gaming market if Sony doesn't fix its supply problems or if its bet on Blu-ray technology doesn't work out.
Cam is right. Apple is watching Zune for good reason.
In Japan, companies product test by releasing electronics onto the market that are half-baked. Microsoft seems to be doing the same thing. The X-box is a winner, and Zune could be too.
I think the Wii will do better than the Xbox, microsoft is having a lot of technical problems with services that work through the xBox.
If a woman I work with is any indication, you are absolutely correct jabberwocky.
She loves the G-rated and interactive games Wii offers. She also loves the fact you can download old-school Nintendo games.
I don't think the Xbox and the Wii are mutually exclusive..the hardcores will gravitate towards the 360, and the casual gamers will go for the Wii.
Sony is the company that should be worried. They have no showcase games as exclusives (whereas 360 has Gears of War, Oblivion, GTA IV coming and Halo 3also on the way) and they don't have a year's head start or the well thought out online component that Microsoft has. If anyone is gonna get trounced, it's Sony, and if they don't, it'll only be because a million fanboys are deluded.
Yeah, Sony is the company that really has to over haul how they do things when it comes to their products.
Oh have you heard what MS calls their Zune's song sharing? If you haven't they are calling it Squirting. I think that MS has a few staff that are obsessed with porn.
Sony does have one thing going for it over Microsoft.
The company has bet on Blu-ray technology. And because it delivers content through its entertainment division, it can push Blu-ray on the public. Samsung is also pushing Blu-ray "100 per cent". So are Disney, Fox, Miramax and MGM.
It may still be Sony's 21st century FREY!
Supply issues aside, the PS3 is (for now) the cheapest way to get a Blu-Ray player. Any early adopters to the technology won't really care about that as the early adopters will pay whatever they have to in order to get the technology; Sony's standalone player has been repeatedly delayed, and Samsung's flagship BR player is far from bug-free, but people who want BR have no doubt grabbed a Samsung unit. So where does that leave the PS3? By the time PS3 supplies are sufficient enough to satisfy BR demand, there exists the possibility (however remote) that the Samsung or other BR standalone players will be cheaper than the PS3 (and you won't have to use a flippin' gamepad to control BR playback!). That means the units will be out there, but those who want just BR playback won't be buying the PS3 if they can get something better (read: focused) for less. Sony's dug themselves a hole, and I have every confidence the fanboys will help them get out of it... but they may only be treading water afterwards (to mix metaphors).
My question: why the hell is the Wii so expensive? Miyamoto has said he aimed for a $99 price tag, and I'm not completely sure how they missed the target (or at least missed it by so much) considering the Wii is a GameCube with new controllers and slightly beefier graphics (but only slightly). And no DVD playback out of the box? Well, I can understand that given the ubiquity and low cost of DVD players, but it still seems silly to not offer DVD playback from day one given there will be some people out there who want a Wii but don't want yet another device attached in their electronics daisy chain. I know I sure as heck don't want anything more running through my setup (too damn much already there). Actually, on another note, what's the deal with the price point being missed by such a large margin and still not delivering anything beyond 480p? Surely they could have pushed 720p for the same price point, and (in the words of a friend of mine) let Sony and Microsoft duke it out over the 1080p market. Nintendo gave up that fight long before the Wii shipped, but they could have tried a little harder to get 720p in there. And lastly, it truly sucks that the video cable is different on a Wii, since the proprietary end of the cable has been the same for the SNES, N64 and GameCube. Those of us who splashed out for the GC Component cable have pretty much now got a worthless cable. It's even a greater shock considering Nintendo neither shipped a component cable with the Wii nor even had the component cables available to the consumer market at launch (I've heard mid-December for the cables to hit market). That's a real piss-off for anyone with a big screen and a Wii. (Apparently Zelda looks like crap on a large screen in 480i; I've not seen it first-hand, but I don't doubt it... you're going to either have jaggies from hell, or overly large pixels... either way it can't look good!)
I think the whole HD format is up in the air. I saw Blu-Ray at an electronics store the other day, and yeah, it looks better than DVD on a big screen. Does it look good enough for me to shell out $600 for a game machine, or even more for a standalone player? Nope. And I'm willing to bet there;s a sizable chunk of the public that doesn't care about it either.
And if I do want high-end video,I can always get the standalone HD-DVD player that hooks up to the Xbox 360. That's if I had a HD set, which I don't. I'm using my girlfriend's 20 inch tube tv, and I will be for a while. And if a nerd like me is doing that, you can bet the much more sensible rest of humanity is too.
Eventually, prices will come down on LCD HDTVs (they already are falling, but it hasn't hit the sweet spot yet) but by the time that happens, I'd bet on digital downloads overtaking both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.
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