Everywhere you turn on the internet now days you have news sites, bloggers, analysts, game publishing house CEOs ect. crying for a PS3 price cut and it's getting tiresome. Why is it so important that the PS3 have a price cut anyway? When you look at the value you get with the PS3 you should realize that the price is quite fair. The PS3 comes with a built in Blu-Ray player, wi-fi, HDMI output, 80GB HDD, free online mutiplayer service and wireless Bluetooth controllers with a play and charge cable all standard features with every PS3 sold. Compare this with Xbox 360...
Xbox 360 Elite: Same Price as the PS3 ($399.99), comes with a 120GB HDD It doesn't play Blu-Ray movies, the wii-fi adapter ($99.99) is sold separately, the rechargeable battery pack and charging cable ($19.99) is sold separately.
Xbox 360 Pro: ($299.99) 60GB HDD It doesn't play Blu-Ray movies, and the wii-fi adapter ($99.99) and rechargeable battery with cable ($19.99) sold separately.
Xbox 360 Arcade: ($199.99) Doesn't play Blu-Ray movies, HDD ($99.99), wi-fi adapter ($99.99), rechargeable battery and cable ($19.99) all sold separately.
Other costs to consider with the Xbox 360 include $50 a year for Xbox Live if you want to play games online. Then there's the fact the Xbox 360 can only use expensive proprietary HDDs made by Microsoft. The PS3 on the other hand has free online gaming and is compatible with third party notebook HDDs that are allot cheaper than the first party Xbox 360 HDDs.
Most people just look at the upfront price tags above and they can't get over the fact that there are two Xbox 360 models that are $100 and $200 cheaper than the PS3. However if you do your homework you will realize that these cheaper Xbox 360s will have extra costs down the road if you want a HDD, play and charge kit, wi-fi and online game service which may end up costing you more than if you just bought a PS3 in the first place that has all that standard at no additional costs.
Contrary to popular belief the PS3 is not a doomed system destined to finish in a distant third in the current console war. The PS3 has been on store shelves for about 88 weeks now and if you compare it's worldwide sales to other systems after the same amount of time you would see it's in pretty good shape. According to vgchartz.com the PS3 has sold 14, 271,693 worldwide after 88 weeks, the PS2 after 88 weeks sold 15,150,960 and the X360 sold 10,609,478. So after the same 88 week period the PS3 is a little less than 1 million behind the PS2 and it is 3.5 million ahead of the X360 at the same point in it's life. This is all despite the fact that the PS3 is the most expensive current gen. console.
Looking ahead the future looks very bright for the PS3. Talk to me all you want about the PS3 "losing" FFXIII but exclusive games is what differentiates one console from another and allot of people would agree that the PS3 has the best exclusive game linup in 2008 and early 2009. These games include Resistance 2, Little Big Planet, Motorstorm 2, Killzone 2 and Infamous. With game development costs soring on current gen. consoles third party exclusives are becoming rare. Yes the PS3 has lost some third party exclusives but so has the Xbox 360. For every GTA4 and FFXIII that the PS3 lost as exclusive the X360 lost games like Bioshock and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. It's pretty obvious that no console can live on third party exclusives and this is why Sony is investing more resources into first party content and they have a worldwide network of in house studios like Naughty Dog, Polyphony Digital, Santa Monica Studio and many more. Microft on the other hand has a few in house development studios like Rare and Lionhead and they seem to prefer to throw tons of cash at third party devs for exclusive downloadable content and time exclusive games like Bioshock. So while MS throws truck loads of money at third party developers for downloadable content and timed exclusives or bribe third parties to port a game to their console like FFXIII Sony's worldwide network of developers will be making quality games like Gran Turismo, God Of War and Uncharted that will only be on Sony platforms.
So cheer up PS3 owners the PS3 hasn't been in stores for two years yet and it looks like the best is yet to come as the PS3 hits its stride this year.
This is the only PS3 game that I thought GS drastically under rated. When you take the fact that the average score for R&C Future with most game critics is 89 according to metacritic the GS score smells a little fishy. I wont say Aaron Thomas is an anti-Sony fan-boy maybe he just doesn't like R&C or platform games, either way he probably shouldn't have reviewed this game. I'm playing this game now and I think 7.5 is a very low score as well.
Aaron talks how the game has an identity crisis because of the mini games but I disagree. The core R&C gameplay is there and the mini games only pop up from time to time to break up the monotony. People slam other games for being too repetitive but when Insomniac does a good job of mixing it up a bit while at the same time keeping the core R&C gameplay as the meat and potatoes they get slammed?
Other people say R&C Future isn't revolutionary and it doesn't add a whole lot to the series or the genre. Lets be honest here you can say that about most games coming out today and that didn't stop people from giving games like Halo 3, Ninja Gaiden sigma, Bioshock, etc , etc, etc a high score nor should it.
