Category Archives: PlayStation

The Saga Continues…

I swear the ongoing saga of the PS3 launch gets more and more interesting every day. The latest update comes as financial analysts Merrill Lynch predicted that the PS3 won’t make a spring launch (shock!), and that the manufacturing cost will hit $800. This slightly uninspiring news was quickly followed by a statement from Sony which claims that it’s all rubbish and it’ll be out in the spring. Still uninspiring, but things get more interesting when Sony apparently also told the BBC in this report that hardware issues could force a delay.

Thinking about this, the spring begins in early March which is a couple of weeks away. From that time they have until late May – a period of three months – to make that launch window. It’s not going to happen. This is why:

  • We don’t have a solid release date.
  • We don’t have a solid price.

Those two are pretty essential for a major hardware launch, don’t you think? Or are people going to walk into Akihabara one day and find the PS3 in stock with price available on application? Not to mention these other important facts that need to be considered:

  • The hardware design and controller haven’t been finalised.
  • The final hardware features that it’ll be able to do out of the box haven’t been released.
  • They haven’t even shown in-game footage of any games whatsoever. Some of the demos are apparently real time, but that doesn’t mean that there’s a corresponding game that looks like that.
  • Nobody outside Sony and a handful of developers has even played the thing.
  • There isn’t a major show at which to announce the details of it until E3 in May.

Considering all that there’s no way in hell that we’ll see it anywhere in the next three months. I’d like Sony to prove me wrong there but it was a pretty impressive turnaround for Microsoft to go from finally unveiling the details of the 360 to release in six months and look how that went. I’m sure I speak for everyone here when I say that we just want them to come out and let us know what’s going on. Come on, Sony!

When Pigs Fly

Apparently Sony are now saying that the PS3 is not yet ready for market, without actually telling us when it will be. That’s what you think. The quote is actually telling us exactly when the PS3 will be coming out:

“Our No. 1 competition is not other companies but counterfeiters. We want to work with governments to stop this.”

So it’s coming out when they manage to stop piracy. I can only assume that it means, therefore, that the PS3 is never coming out. The Xbox 360 has won before the first shot has been fired, and Sony are teh d00med. It’s all in their secret code, I tell you.

PAL Colossus

The PAL version of Shadow of the Colossus is finally released tomorrow (today if you know people who don’t mind slipping you a copy) and it’s quite a nice release, even if you own the US version like I do. Like they did for the original PAL release of Ico they’ve packaged it in a cardboard case which folds out with artwork from the game, and it has a small collection of art cards with it as well. In addition to that, the main menu now has bonus features – a “making of”, an art gallery, and a trailer for Ico.

This is where I’d usually post some pictures, but I bought mine as a collectible which I won’t open since only the first batch are limited edition. My crappy NTSC version is for playing, and this one is for ogling.

They also re-released Ico today for £19.99 which is well worth it if you don’t have it. It’s not the special edition one so you can still expect to pay through the nose for that on eBay, but thankfully they didn’t put it in an ugly Platinum case. I picked up a copy of this as well since I didn’t already have it and I’ll be playing it since for some reason I never went and finished it.

Staying on the subject of the Ico universe, take a look at this interview with the team. It’s a good read.

PAL Katamari Madness

We Love Katamari

I made all the obvious jokes when it was announced that none other than EA was going to distribute We Love Katamari in the UK but noted that they could at least give it some exposure. Ha!

The release has been and gone, and although they did a much nicer job with the box art than the horrible “art” that the US version got (the US cover for Me and My Katamari is even worse), you wouldn’t have known it. The first mistake – I’m disregarding the fact that they release it here months after everywhere else – is that what was a $29.95 (£17) budget release in the US has come out here for £40. As good a game as it is, nobody who doesn’t already know about it will buy it for that much.

The other mistake is that it’s almost impossible to find. GAME aren’t usually credited with an overabundance of knowledge of games (I got hate mail last time I said that, but a couple of weeks ago when I asked about a PS2 component lead they tried to sell me a “super SCART” cable because it was “miles better”) and sure enough it seems that most branches got two copies in at absolute best. One person on the NTSC-uk forums got told by a GAME employee that it looked “shit”, which doesn’t do much to sell it to the customers.

Eynon’s shop got in quite a few because they have a lot of regulars who are interested in Japanese quirkiness and he’s sold most of them both to people who’ve wanted it for a while and even to “normal” people. Although there’s been essentially no advertising for it, it’s been running in the shop since it came out and a lot of people have shown interest when they’ve played or seen it, and I’ve seen more than one buy it on their recommendation.

Nonetheless it’s a depressing situation and surely means that this stuff will be even less likely to come out in Blighty, and that the hardcore who buy a lot of games will import instead, and so the British games industry will implode. We’re surely doomed.