General
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Written by Daniel
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Thursday, 05 June 2008 12:45 |
The revolution will not be televised, it will be downloaded an update at a time
By Ben Kuchera | Published: June 04, 2008 - 11:30PM CT
Back in the crazy days before the current generation of gaming consoles, the console you bought at retail was the console you had for the life of the hardware. My SNES acts exactly the same now as it did when it was first released, and outside of the addition of Xbox Live, the first Xbox system remained largely unchanged throughout the hardware's life cycle. Those days are long over, and now which version of Sony's PlayStation 3 that you bought is only one part of the equation: welcome to the firmware wars.
No console system has changed so dramatically in the time since its launch as the PlayStation 3. We rather notoriously gave the 60GB model a six when it was first released, and we stand by that rating—the system just felt undercooked. What player of high-definition media can't display content in 720p? Also, the lack of background downloading felt like a drag when we tried to use the online store. And the games were mostly terrible; there wasn't anything that looked as good as the titles on the then-mature Xbox 360, much less any evidence that the PS3 was as powerful as Sony had promised. Remember, this was the system that had been hyped from here to eternity, so it was easy to feel let down by Sony's anemic launch offerings. The PS3 never became hard to find, the price cuts began sooner than expected, and the system has been trailing both the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii almost every month since it has been released.
It may sound a bit dire when you sum it up like that, but something has been happening with the PlayStation 3 since launch. The firmware has received update after update. The Blu-ray capability has become much stronger, and it may in fact be the most affordable and fully-featured high definition disc player on the market. The price has come down to a much more palatable $400 for the 40GB model, and the game selection continues to improve, with strong multiplatform support and a wide selection of exclusive games. Finally, the Sixaxis has been discontinued, and in its place now sits the Dual Shock 3: a controller with both motion-sensing capabilities and rumble. [Ars Technica...] [Comments...] |