It's time for another episode of Sony Says! I've been sparing you the latest glimpses into Sony's hilarious remarks concerning the gaming industry, but I think it's time to show you how much of an idiot they still are!

Phil Harrison flat out lies!

We have shown more playable games than ever before, so the signs are good, and right now there are more than 100 Blu-ray movies available today, in the US. More than 100 games are in development, and all the major third-party publishers have pledged their strategic support for the platform.

...this time, we can prove he's wrong! There are only 24 movies availible on Blu-Ray right now. But I could see how someone could easily mistake 24 titles for over 100. I mean... yeah. Common mistake. But it makes you wonder how many "mistakes" Harrison's made in other interviews, hmm. Oh, maybe like the one where he said Playstation 3 is on the assembly line now? Heheheh.

Another one of Harrison's wonderful quotes:

I'd be amazed if the PlayStation 4 has a physical disc drive.

Bwahahahaha! Priceless. Here the PS3 hasn't even been sold yet, and he's making plans for the PS4? Seems they already have a name picked out, too. Wow, real imagination there, Phil. So, what this means is that he doesn't expect games to be purchasable at stores like Walmart or Amazon or EBGames anymore. You will buy them online and download them. This assumes that everyone will have internet access fast enough to do that, that harddrives will be large enough to hold the many, many games that people buy, and that people will even want to store $80 games on a harddrive's magnetic field that slowly decays over time and could develop errors. Smart move! I can see why you're number 1... wait, are you number 1? Hmm.

That's all I could find for now, but I'll keep my eyes peeled for my Sony goodness.

Ahh, it's beginning.

You know how it goes. Two similar devices come out... Intel vs AMD, Nintendo vs Sony, etc and so forth. You start comparing! "Well, Intel is faster than AMD!" ... "No! AMD is faster than Intel!" Nobody had any problem when AMD was faster than Intel... everyone would pull benchmarks out their hind-end to "prove" it, too. But when Intel woke up and said "oh, hey... AMD's getting competitive... we need to get to work" and made a processor faster than AMD, suddenly, all the AMD fanboys were crying "apples and oranges! apples and oranges! you can't compare Intel to AMD!"

Right... hypocrasy at it's finest.

Anyway, to the point. People have JUST now, after how many months, started to say "you know, you really can't compare the Nintendo Wii to the Playstation 3"... and I'm like, errrrr, why not? You've been doing just that since before E3!!

It's like Intel vs AMD. Nintendo was the first powerhouse of videogames. They kind of slipped back into the sidelines and let the other companies take over. Not really on purpose, but maybe just because they got smug and lazy and didn't think anyone could compete with them. Nintendo Gamecube was heralded as a failure (even though Nintendo make massive profits off the console alone) and the Playstation was king of the hill. Everyone said Playstation was better than the 64 and the Gamecube. What's that? Oh, yeah... that's comparing!

Nintendo wakes up, like Intel, and makes a killer console. Publicity skyrockets... everyone wants one. PS3 has horrible public relations... there's problems with assembly... there's problems with Blu-Ray. Nintendo is at an all-time high... NES era, as a matter of fact. Nintendo is setting themselves up to be king of the hill again. What do the Sony fanboys say? "apples and oranges! apples and oranges! you can't compare Nintendo to Sony!"

Why not? Because Nintendo is winning? Right... hypocrasy at it's finest.

This happened with Microsoft, too. The great Interer Browser Wars! Internet Explorer was the browser to use at one time, believe it or not. Then Netscape came up while Microsoft was napping and took a fair share of users. Then Microsoft woke up and said "aah! there's someone competitive here!" and proceeded to bury Netscape Navigator with newer and better versions of Internet Explorer.

Yes, I know, IE isn't so hot now... but it's happening again. IE6 was pretty bad. But then Mozilla Firefox comes out and says "hi, everyone! look here! we can do it better!" and they did. Everyone starts heading to Firefox. Microsoft wakes up and says "uh-oh, more competition!" and then they set around to making IE7, which is still in beta. We all know history loves to repeat itself... did Microsoft recognize the competition and make IE7 to kill Firefox? Maybe. Maybe not. But they did wake up and they ARE fixing bugs that people have complained about for years.

We shall see...

In the meantime, feel free to compare Nintendo to Sony all you want.

We know Wii'll win.

Hopefully this works! I'm trying to figure out how to embed YouTube videos in Wordpress. Apparently, according a development blog post, it has to be put in your posts with a special command, since they don't "allow you to paste in arbitrary code" for security reasons. Not sure I agree with that, but, oh well.

Anyway, here is the Sony E3 Conference summed up in about 60 seconds!

A big article from Electronic News carries an interview (Digg) with a IBM's Vice-President of Semiconductor and Technology Services (Wow, almost as bad as Sony Entertainment's VP title...) about a few things. One thing that stands out, though, is how he talks about the Cell processor. You know... big honkin' CPU that's supposed to be the heart of the PS3? The one that's incredibly difficult to program for? Well, apparently, it's incredibly difficult to even build. To quote the article:

Electronic News: What’s the defining factor that makes some chips better than others?
Reeves: Defects. It becomes a bigger problem the bigger the chip is. With chips that are one-by-one and silicon germanium, we can get yields of 95 percent. With a chip like the Cell processor, you’re lucky to get 10 or 20 percent. If you put logic redundancy on it, you can double that. It’s a great strategy, and I’m not sure anyone other than IBM is doing that with logic. Everybody does it with DRAM. There are always extra bits in there for memory. People have not yet moved to logic block redundancy, though.

Reeves, the VP, says most chips get 95% yield. That means, out of 100 chips made, 5 will be thrown out due to various circuit failure. The Cell processor has a 10 to 20 percent yield. Out of 100 chips built, 80 to 90 are thrown out! Sony is putting, in their "industry killing machine", untested-in-the-field chips that are far from reaching mass production due to flaws in the creation process.

You can read the article for yourself, but the VP goes on to say that they design the Cell processor with eight "mini-cores" (so to speak), and that the PS3 will only ever use seven cores. This seems to be good for Playstation owners, because if one of the seven cores fails after you've purchased it, then the spare eighth core will kick on and take it's place. (Giving you the illusion that your system is fine.) It's a nice touch to include a sort of self-healing chip, and it would be an awesome idea if it didn't seem like they'd be using the spare core right out of the box!

IMDB, Kotaku, DigiTimes (Digg), as well as other places, are carrying summaries of an article from China's Commercial Times which talks about how Blu-Ray player will be delayed (again) due to the fact that there aren't enough laser assemblies. Those things that slide back and forth inside the disc drive to read the data off the disc. Actually, see, it's technically the little laser diode itself that's in shortage, so they can't even make assemblies. The little glass-looking thing that MAKES the laser. Anyway, they say that not only will this delay Blu-Ray players, but it could also affect production of the PS3. (But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out, since Sony has been blaring the fact that the PS3 uses Blu-Ray from the very beginning.)

See, Sony? This is why using expensive, cutting-edge technology is a horrible idea. It's expensive for you, it's expensive for the customer, it doesn't work and everyone loses money. Have you learned your lesson, yet? I would say "better luck next time", but I really don't see a next time for your gaming department. In fact, I don't see how this will bode well for the rest of the corporation. The entire company was in some trouble before this... they're in serious trouble now.

Let me close with an article translated from a Japanese entertainment magazine. You know Famitsu, right? Well, it appears that they've polled their readers on which system looks more attractive to them.

Gamers: 73.6% for Wii, 16.7% for PS3
Retailers: 65.9% for Wii, 18.8% for PS3
Developers: 69.7% for Wii, 27.3% for PS3

The article says analysts say Sony will win wth their names and available games. (What? Sony still has either one?) The magazine also polled female users. (Prime example of non-gamers, heheh.) Results?

Students: 37.5% for PS3, 12.5% for Wii
(not surprising... Playstation is somehow "cool" in a teen's eyes)

Business: 36.4% for Wii, 33.3% for PS3
(aha, a little better! Nintendo's targeted older audience, too)

Housewives: 42.9% for Wii, 9.5% for PS3
(...and the icing on the cake!)

Nintendo is effectively reaching their goal of catering to non-gamers. Bye-bye, Sony!

While on a break from cleaning my room, and waiting for lunch to finish, I've decided to gather up a few more of Sony's remarkable blunders during the past week. I wonder how much farther they can sink before they actually hit bottom.

First off, here's an example of how analyists are starting to take all of Sony's stupidities into account and are starting to think twice about the old predictions that PS3 would be the best console this generation, followed by the Xbox 360, and finally, the Wii. After predicting myself that the Wii would blow away the opposition (because real gamers like change), the "official" reports are finally agreeing.

From IGN, a translated article from a Japanese magazine is circulating the internet. It claims to have run a poll of sorts with all the developers in Japan, asking them what they think about the Playstation 3. One of the questions, naturally, was the price. What does Japan think? A whopping 90% of the developers in Sony's home country say the PS3 is far too expensive. (Article quotes someone saying it's higher than his rent!) 56% say that having two systems was a bad idea, 55% say the PS3 will not sell with the current software lineup. 32% were let down by E3, while 48% were unchanged. A whole 3% were encouraged by the E3 announcements. 62% say the PS3 will not sell Sony's goal of 6 million units by March. Your main developers are looking pretty distraught, Sony.

In another article, Sony CEO Howard Stringer admits that the PS3 price is a giant gamble for Sony (as if nobody's been saying that from the beginning), but then, naturally goes on to attempt to justify the massive price tag by saying it's future-proof (I reported that earlier) and that it has Blu-Ray. Guess what, Sony? Nobody cares!

Oh, look! Everyone's favorite publisher, Ubisoft, has entered the fray saying that the PS3 price must drop in 2007. Wow. I guess it's official folks! The PS3 is going to drop in price in 2007. Ubisoft said so. (As if consoles don't drop in price after a year, anyway.) What? Me not like Ubi? How'd you guess...

Once again, Sony takes a page out of Nintendo's playbook and gives their equipment a very bizarre name. Their new, "revolutionary", five-year-old controller style is now named... PooS. The two Os are actually an infinity sign, but how are you going to say it? P-infinity-Ess? People all over the internet are saying they accidentally added an O to the name, but, uhm... I won't go there! But, needless to say, it's rediculous. Not sure what they were trying here, but it sure seems like an attempt at free publicity. (Even if it's not, people are quick to assume it is... that just goes to show Sony's image.)

I've learned by a comment on Digg that Sony had to borrow the equivalent of about 700 million dollars to help aid the cost of production on the PS3. This is amazing... If the PS3 fails, Sony's going to be in seriously serious trouble.

I'll close with a slight positive for Nintendo. We have a picture of the AC adapter for the Wii now. In this day and age, with the gargantuan Xbox 360 power brick, and the massive PS3, you have to watch sizes. The Wii is roughly the dimensions of two full-size DVD books stacked face-to-face. It's really small. Anyway, the AC adapter is external, and seems to be what was used for the Gamecube. Small for you, cheap for them... which translates directly to savings for you!

Also, Sports Illustrated for Kids has printed a release date for the Wii. No word from Nintendo, but it's interesting, nevertheless! The projected date is November 6th. Not quite a month earlier than the PS3, scheduled for late November.

That is all for now!

I got bored this morning... so I decided to resurrect my old NationStates country "Lupantis". I let it go into archival mode a very long time ago, and, apparently, they let you reactivate old accounts. Some things reverted to default, like my flag (which I found the image of on my harddrive, which was good) and the region I'm a part of, but everything else is exactly how it was when I left... that's pretty cool, y0. Don't know if anyone else plays anymore, but I felt like experimenting with governments.

...what post of mine these days would be complete without some dirt on Sony? Heeheehee. First, it seems Sony's messed up on taxes (Digg) related to the Playstation, in general. Apparently, they owe 243 million US dollars, and Sony's going to attempt to fight it. I just find it ironic that Sony's being plagued by such things after all the craziness in the recent past. (PS3 contradictions, competition accusations, rootkit fiasco, etc...)

Remember when people were making fun of the first Xbox when it was released? How absolutely gargantuan it was? Well, people are starting to notice the same thing with the Playstation 3. Of course, Sony fanboys are now saying that it's big because it does so much. Oh well, they can think that if they want. All the smart people are starting to compare the Nintendo Wii to the Sony Playstation 3 (Digg) in a different way... size. (They're asking how something so small and so cheap can be so fun, and why nobody else can do that, too.)

On a completely different note, Blizzard has finally unveiled Paid Character Transfers (Digg) for World of Warcraft. At first I was overjoyed. Finally, I could move my character from a boring Normal realm to an RP-PVP realm! No more wasted max level character, right? WRONG! You can't move from non-PVP realms to PVP realms... I don't know why I couldn't have figured this out for myself. They don't want people leveling up on easy realms and then just copying over to a PVP realm to kick everyone's butt. I'm disappointed, but it's my own fault. I guess I'll just have to keep leveling up my PVP character.

There's an article on the internet that gives a quick interview with Sony Computer Entertainment America's (what a mouthful... try saying this out loud compared to Nintendo of America) Kaz Hirai talking about Playstation 3 software prices... Can you see where this is headed? Putting games on brand new, untested-in-the-field Blu Ray discs will cost you a lot. Maybe a whole lot. He starts off saying that, over the past twelve years or so, there has been a consumer expectation that games are maybe $59 on the high end to $39 on the low end. I can agree with that. He then says that "it would be a bit of a stretch" to suddenly sell PS3 games for $100.

He then goes on to say that customers won't be expecting or wanting a sudden double in the price of games, and drops a quick line that they want to make this as cheap and affordable as possible. (Too late for that.) He closes by saying, "if the price is over $59, don't ding me, but I don't expect it to be $100." (Emphasis mine.)

What he's said here basically says that PS3 games WILL be more expensive than any other console game out there, but it'll still be less than double the price, so you don't need to worry. At least, that's what I get out of it. Anyone else thinking 89.99 dollar PS3 games? Right in the foot, Sony... right in the foot. Do you have much of one left by now?

Then, of course, we have a hilarious article (Sony, naturally) with good ol' Kaz Hirai, once again. In this article, he takes to slamming Microsoft, and accusing them of copying everything that Sony does. Just listen:

Every time we go down a path, we look behind and they're right there - we just can't shake these guys. I wish that they would come up with some strategies of their own, but they seem to be going down the path of everything we do. If you look at their strategy in other business areas as well, they tend to do that.

...the other thing is, you take a look at, for example, the fact that we incorporate the Blu-ray drive from day one. You're not going to be asking me, 'So, talk to me about this Blu-ray add-on that you have. Does it work for games? Is it just for movies?' That's exactly the kind of pitfall you fall into if you launch something that's too early, too premature.

(Quick note, the last paragraph? He's talking about Microsoft's optional HD-DVD add-on and how it's a pitfall if you launch something like that too early. (Apparently, he thinks people will start asking if it's for games or just movies, as if people aren't asking that about the PS3, hahaha!) He's NOT saying the Blu-Ray drive they built into the PS3 is premature. Oh, no, not Sony.)

I think he's trying to make a point here, but, as you can see, I've highlighted the points of interest. Namely, the things that Sony themselves are guilty of doing. Everyone (who's not a fanboy) knows that Sony copies everything in the console department. "Revolutionary" motion-senstive controller that's actually over 5 years old, Sony's version of Xbox Live (complete with similar looking "Dashboard"), just to name the recent, pivotal ones. I think Hirai was trying to chew out Microsoft for including HD-DVD, saying it was premature... that's arrogance beyond the console area, my friend. Blu-Ray isn't exactly widely accepted, yet, either... and you made it REQUIRED to play games.

Oh, but there's more! (There always is!) Joystiq is reporting about an article that says a small company named Track7Games has cancelled production for a PS3 game due to the high costs of producing on the PS3 platform. After which, Track7Games posted on their site that the article was inaccurate:

PS3land.com wrote an erroneous article on June 29, 2006 regarding track7games and our upcoming game, "Theseis". track7games would like to clarify that we never cancelled something that did not exist in the first place. We plan to develop "Theseis" for PC and Xbox360 in the near future. As for the PS3, we simply made a strategic decision to not move ahead because we deemed it not probable at this time.

So, I don't know about you, but they didn't deny that the PS3 was too expensive to develop for, but that the game was never even started for the PS3. So it wasn't cancelled, it just never started. Sounds like the same principal to me. There are some comments blabbing about how Track7Games is a small company with barely any games in their portfolio, and are probably a group of 4 people, and to pretty much just ignore the fact that they can't make things for Sony since they're so small. I'm sure of those comments are overreactions, but they're still just sealing the deal.

If small companies can't develop for the PS3, then third party games are going to plummet. Just think about if Cyan had to develop Myst the first time for the PS3? That's what the point of the article is... Sony seems to be locking out the little guys in preference for the big developers, who, I might add, have also complained about how difficult it is to code for the PS3. Of course, Sony has said they don't need third party games, so what do we know, huh?

In closing, might I direct you to a site that tells of a hardware coded Easter Egg for the Nintendo Gamecube. As the page suggests, it seems that Nintendo "laughed in the face of all who call it a kiddie system before it was even released". I love Nintendo. This reminded me of an article that talked about the DS Lite press box. Be sure to click the video link at the end, it's so cool!