Price cut by 20% for the cheaper 20gb one and now it will come with HDMI

http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/22/p...udes-hdmi-1-3/

£283 in Japan

Cheers

Dan

 

Sony, worried? you betcha!

 

Won't affect us though because we aren't getting the 20GB bundle! its just rubbing salt into the gapping wound in Europe!

 

Import one ?

Cheers

Dan

 

since when?

 

Since they announced it (but that doesn't mean they won't change their minds).
But it is the TGS this weekend so some firm details should be released.

 

so Sony screw the Uk over again? Why do people let them shaft then like this? Late release, highest price and only one version. they care not one jot about Uk customers yet people cant wait to hand over their hard earned.

 

Knowing Sony they will be region coded.

 

Personally i'm more interested in the Wii.
Game selling it for £180 (console and the amusingly titled Wii sports).

 

AFAIK they aren't, thought it was just the Wii that was region locked.

Cheers

Dan

 

Has any manufacturer of a console ever made a non regionalised console?
You may get some games that are region free but Sony won't want to miss out on making money from forcing people to wait for games (just like all the console manufacturers)

 

How do you make money by waiting longer to get it ? the problem in the past of having to do a pal/ntsc version (which required altering assets/changing.optimizing code) should be gone now that everything is designed to run at 60hz HD.

Because of the network platform model its going to make sense to not region lock stuff.

Cheers

Dan

 

I very much doubt that they will be region free, the reasons are more to do with market locking than of code.

 

It stops grey imports. It means that users in a region have to pay the price that the region is charging rather than importing it, getting a good exchange rate, and paying half the price.

That's never really been a problem anyway. All it needs is some good timing code in the game.

Not sure what you are getting at here?

For bought (disc) games, the region code only controls what disc can be run in the machine. Once the game is running, it makes no difference what region it is in. The 360 is region locked, yet I have no problems playing network games with people in the USA for example. It's only the initial check of the disc that this affects.

For downloaded games, it makes no difference. In that case you purchase the game from your regional online store, and so you have to pay the charges for that region, (you don't have the option to buy from the USA / Japan).

 

The extra money is normally taken by the shops and governments

Good timing code it's always been my experience that we've had to remove features or re optimize (reducing the number of particles/scaling the odd texture) it works out at about a 10% difference in performance/time available between the 2 formats.

The NP is something that aspires to free us from regions

Cheers

Dan

 

Very true. All the more incentive for Sony to region lock stuff then. They don't want to alienate the local distributers by allowing consumers to get cheap imports instead.

My tongue was firmly in cheek when I said that

 

Why would they want to keep local distributers happy ? they take 50% of the money for doing next to none of the work while taking very little risk they also get 100% of the re-sale profits from second hand games.


Good, I've had many a late night trying to get an NTSC build not to frame out

Cheers

Dan

 

True, but if they are alienated, they may decide to no longer promote the games for that platform (or even stop selling them - unlikely I know but it has happened before). I imagine this would make the Sony marketing folks more than a little nervous...

 

It would be preferable not to sell anything through them, the mark up is extortionate.

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=67921


Cheers

Dan

 

So you are advocating that the only place you should be able to buy software / games is online?

That's ok for us clued up IT people, but most people are not like us. I know a large number of people who wouldn't even consider buying stuff over the internet, (because of misplaced security concerns). Where would granny go to buy a game for little Johnny for xmas?

I personally think game companies would see a serious drop in revenue if you dropped the high street stores, (despite their markup).

 

She would buy a voucher

Short term loss probably, but long term...

Cheers

Dan