The Downside

If you haven’t already seen Microsoft’s so-called ‘Project Natal’ in action, check it out here.  The original Xbox and the 360 were essentially me-too products that thrived due to an easy-to-learn development platform and a solid online component, but with Project Natal MS is actually pushing technology, gaming, and even user interface forward.  If the final product works as well as it does in the video (which frankly is a little hard to believe), they’re really on to something.

Here’s the tally:

• Launch delayed
• $500 price point at launch (while Xbox 360s will likely be going for $350 by then)
• 400,000 units for US Launch, 100,000 for Japanese launch due to difficulties in producing BluRay drives
• BluRay games will load slower than HD-DVD (Source: A cross-platform game developer)
• And perhaps worst of all, Sony can’t produce BluRay discs fast enough, so the launch titles will all have very low shipping volumes - even the top-tier licenses will only have 50,000 to 100,000 copies available this year. That’s right, even if you do want to spend $500 on the PS3, you may not be able to find games for it. When you consider that most of the sales for any console game happen within the first two months, any developer slated to release a PS3 launch title is in bad shape right now, and they’re certainly not happy with Sony. (Source: cross-platform game developer at an A-level publisher.)

Now, I do wish Sony the best, but I really don’t know how this launch could be shaping up to be any worse…

If you’re into the gaming world at all, and you have at least the slightest grasp of World War II history, you’ll like this hilarious take on “If WWII was an MMORPG.” If you didn’t understand the acronyms in the title of this post, don’t bother reading it because it’s all geekspeak.