Well, the higher the HW base before Xmas and FF launch too, the better, so meanwhile everything helps. And it looks like MGS4 is helping perhaps less than the most diehard fanboys hoped, but certainly more than even Sony did. Yea, yea, I know it's too early to talk, but if the Japanese showed more interest than they previously did for PS3 it's a good sign.

The only thing I regret is the low quantity of system RAM and the adoption of a version of Cell with only one PPC core in PS3, if it didn't take-off as an alternative home teatre PC, unespectedly pardoning MS' OS' and apps for x86 based ones, it's only because PS3's RAM is good for games, that even demanding, are optimized and are a single task application, but for a general purpose PC, with potentially unoptimized apps and also big files to open with them, multitasking, etc, so little RAM and a single general purpose core prevented PS3 from becoming the most complete low cost (in this field, as opposed to the console market one, it would have been one of the cheapest and perhaps the best with regard to (quality+equipment)/price ratio) home theatre and family PC.

somehow i don't think that anything that would make the PS3 more expensive would have been a good idea at all for Sony. If anything they should have taken stuff out.

Solid snake looks like he's about to take kojima out

256MB more RAM  costed very little even in 2006, the second PPC core should have been built instead of one of the many special purpose cores.

there was at my gamestop.... but i was a bit dissapointed at the turn out,,,, i came there at about 12:20 and there were only 4 peaople and they were all wearing matching rainbow coulored tiedies and shorts (EDIT: and hats...i forgot the hats...) XD   it was really creepy actually :/

 shams no like optimistic PS3 owners! SHAMS SMASH! SHAMS SMASH!

 (PS3 fans morale that is)

But If someone said the PS3 would sell 100k in Japan alone they are smoking something. Between 20-40k hopefully, but having an exclusive game worthy of purchasing a PS3 for the first time should keep the legs longer on this game. Thats different from the past of having a decent game that sorta justifies buying a PS3 and playing that game while waiting for AAA titles.

Im calling the PS3 to remain at atleast 18,000 for the rest of the year in Japan. Not amazing, but a hell of a lot better than 8,000 a week.

Shinobi mentioned MGS4 sales impression from another blog.

http://ameblo.jp/omisedayori/entry-10105693995.html

In that guy's shop (launch day),

- 100% sell-thru for normal version, 90% for special version
- Complete sell-out for steel-colored special hardware bundles, 2 left for Sony's own hardware bundles
- Not too outstanding normal PS3 pushes compared with the sales of hardware bundles
- The total sales of MGS4 in the launch day alone already exceeded the LTDs of MNG5, DMC4 and RGG3, and just a little bit behind the LTD of Musou 5, the best-selling PS3 game in his shop.

Higher user base doesn't necessarily mean more units sold. MGS 3 sold less than mgs2 despite having about 80mil PS2 s sold when it launched. Competition (between games) also plays a part. Many people bought mgs2 who weren't real fans of the series (otherwise they would have bought part 3 as well considering how engrossing the mgs story is) because there weren't that many good games on ps2 at that time.

This is why I bought COD4 for my PS3 when I had never bought an FPS in my life previously (i.e because it was a good game and there weren't really any other PS3 games that were of matching quality when it released)

This line of reasoning is also why I think MGS4 will sell more than all the previous titles in the series (i.e PS3 owners won't have much else to play if they skip it so they may as well try it out after all the hype)

 Interesting.

MontanaHatchet said: Gobias said: MontanaHatchet said: Is that Kojima? He looks pretty tan... Kojima has never even come close to a smile in his entire life. And that was from a quick Google search.

 FAKE... these images are obvious photoshops, like the moon landing!