We have a DATE!!!
Monday May 8, 2006 at 11:19 pm | Filed under Gaming
What are you doing November 16th? It’s a Thursday. Go ahead and check your calendar, I’ll wait. …okay, I’m not waiting that long. Where did you go anyway? I was trying to tell you something. Aww, screw it, I’ll tell you anyway. Sometime on Thursday November 16th, I’ll be making my over to the Cerritos Best Buy* with my zero-G sleeping bag and some food and I’ll be camping out until the morning of the 17th when said Best Buy opens. Why? Oh, just for fun. C’mon! It’s the launch of the Playstation 3! It’s taken all of the willpower I have not to have jumped on the Xbox360 bandwagon (well, okay, the limited number of games and the fact that you still can’t FIND a system for a reasonable price has a lot to do with it too).
The reason I know my schedule 6 months in advance is because Sony released the hard facts about the PS3 today. It seems to have most all of the stuff that we had heard about before… Cell chip, CD/DVD/Blu-Ray (for the geeks out there, it’s a 2x Blu-ray drive capable of 72Mbps), Bluetooth, WiFi, Ethernet, Dolby Digital, Full HD Support 1080p (although details are still coming in on this as it doesn’t look like the PS3 will have dual HDMI outputs as previously proposed), wireless controllers (up to 7, for some reason), a pre-installed Hard Drive, USB, and a Memory Stick/SD/Compact Flash reader built into the unit. Not to mention the thing plays EVERY PS2 and PS1 game ever made. It will also have an online community (yes!) as the Xbox360’s “Live” does, we’ll see if this still turns out to be a freebie thing.
Also, the boomerang controller is dead and there’s a new, but oddly familiar controller that was announced. This one is much like the dual shock 2 that came with the PS2, but it has NO RUMBLE! What? Yeah, not sure if I’ll miss that or not. I mean, it’s kinda cheesy as it doesn’t really do much for the game, but I’ve gotten kinda used to it. Anyway, the controller has been updated with analog (some would say trigger-like) L2 an R2 buttons, a new PS logo button (probably to bring up a menu of some sort… online account?), bluetooth wireless, and some sort of gyro functionality that will enable the controller to know where it’s positioned and be able to react to tilts and altitude changes. This could make flying games much much better!
Here’s the big number part of the post. The PS3 will have two different configurations, and while the differences in features aren’t all out on the table yet that I could find (we’ll learn more in the next couple of days at E3) the cheaper one will have a 20Gig Hard Drive while the premium model will have a 60Gig hard drive. They’ll sell for $499 and $599 respectively. *gulp* Good thing I have about $250 in Best Buy gift cards I’ve been holding on to. There’s more on the two flavors of the PS3 here.
So anyone who wants to come hang out with me outside of a best buy for a handful of hours, lemme know!
P.S. Sharks won tonight! YEAH!!
*Best Buy location subject to change based on in-stock estimates.
6 Responses to “We have a DATE!!!”
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Monique Says:
May 9th, 2006 at 6:47 amI’ll come bring you some warm food and drinks…wherever you decide to hang your hat for the night. Maybe some warm homebaked cookies and hot chocolate too!
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Gordon Says:
May 9th, 2006 at 8:12 amI think the reason they pulled the rumble off the controller was because they got sued. Much like the whole blackberry fiasco some small company came out and enforced a patent no one knew existed.
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Danny Says:
May 9th, 2006 at 11:07 amI think I have that night free. The question remains, do I have an extra 6 bills laying around? It’s a hefty price, but considering that stand alone BluRay players will come out at a similar price it’s not too bad. Some features got dropped, but the important ones are still there.
Oh, and thanks for the pic of the chili cheese fries. I was planning on having a nice healthy lunch, but now…
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joe Says:
May 9th, 2006 at 5:10 pmYeah, Gordon, that rumor may be true. Microsoft got sued for the same thing, but they settled out of court. I’m not sure I’ll miss the rumble, it wasn’t something that made a game great or anything. I guess a bright side would be that it would drain the battery faster if it had it, and we’d probably end up turning it off anyway to prolong battery life in the new wireless controllers, eh?
I think I’m actually going to be able to go to e3 this year. Thursday will be the day if I go. I’ll keep you all posted.
And Danny, yeah! Start saving and we’ll camp out!
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Jon Says:
May 16th, 2006 at 11:22 amThe official word is that the rumble would mess up the motion detecting features incorporated into the new controllers (apparently there’s some Wii-like gesturing you can do)… and also the battery life. But, no doubt, the lawsuit had to have been reason #3 on their list.
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joe Says:
May 16th, 2006 at 12:10 pmThe Nintendo crowd is calling “rip-off” when it comes to that motion sensing technology and everyone knows it was a last mintue addition to make the controller reclaim some of what it lost with the rumble. But after playing with the controller at e3, it was pretty nice, even though the mostion thing was an afterthought.
This will surely be an interesting fall. Rumor has it the Xbox 360 will be dropping their price this holiday season sometime to undercut the PS3 even more, and the Wii will be sold for around $250. Total speculation, of course, but this will be something to watch.
If the 360 drops it’s price to $350 for their top of the line model, I wonder if it’d be a good idea to pick up one of those this holiday season and then wait on the PS3’s next price drop to jump on that train? There were some Xbox360 games at the convention that were downright amazing, they’ve truly benefited from their head-start and should recover from a horrible launch with solid software.
I gotta commend Nintendo on their “out of the box” thinking again. They really have something completely unique and for the right price, that system will sell like crazy. I’m not sold on the crazy control scheme, but it could grow on me.