Saturday, December 02, 2006

Verdict's out - Wii Vs PS3



My exams are still going on. Must have noticed, seeing the frequency of my blog posts. Anyways, thanks to digg and cnet, I was able to closely monitor the market response to the Wii, PS3, X360 and Zune.

It's been an intresting Console war. Nintendo seem to be winning the battle due to their strength in their operations, which has enabled them to churn out 4 million Wiis, this holiday season. Industry analysts say that PS3 having able to produce only 200,000 for US and European markets, may have frustrated fans, who've been queing up for days to get hold of a PS3. Ebay is seeing PS3s sold for insanely high prices and one wonders why.

The launch title for PS3, Resistance: Fall of Man , is a regular run-of-the mill,  FPS , offering the same old fight for existence story seen so many times in n number of titles
 before. Some good CGI and graphic tweaks, but bloated ( 20 gig game), is the only thing playable on PS3. A quick look at gamespot ratings reveal, apart from Resistance, none of the PS3 games have 8.0 or above ratings.

Wii on the other hand, is getting praises all over, due to its innovative new controller, fun games and easy availability on majority of retail shelves. The New York times and Popular Science rate it as the best innovation of this year, further down playing the superior and more expensive PS3s.

PS3 is Sony's biggest gamble. They are making a loss of over 300 USDs per console. Their only respite is the failing Yen rates against Dollar which may ammortize some of their losses. Nothin else seem to be working for the time being. Developers are complaining about the complexity to write codes for the multi cell CPUs. Gamers are complaining about the PS3s online experience had high game prices. And, with their supply being far less than the demand, they also have lost oppurtunity sales.

Wii might have won, but for how long is the question. Sony promises to ship out another 4 million by July and is definitely made to support games for the next 3-4 years. Only time will tell us, how Sony fares.

As far as Xbox goes, PS3 fanboys are being smitten by the awesome XBOX live service, the Gears of War title and the festival offers of Microsoft. Why not get a X360 instead, if you can't find a PS3 this christmas ? Microsoft is basking their success for now. They even reported , finally making a profit off every console sold. A year back, when it was released, Microsoft was also losing a lot, like Sony now. Time to rejoice finally, MS.

On the other hand, Zune seems to be traumatis
ed by bad reviews everywhere. Poor sales support this. More about this in my next blog. cheers.
 

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