Sorry- here is a pile of articles for you to read through to maybe why the PS3 is an option you in these hard times.
Sony will temporally fix out of warranty PS3's without any costs
46 PS3-Sense writes "A few weeks ago the Dutch program called Radar has run a special about the PS3, and claimed that after a year, the Blu-ray drive of the system just stops working. Their evidence for this claim is that they have received 300 reports of this from PS3 owners in the Netherlands.
Now, a few weeks later Sony Computer Entertainment Benelux announced that because of the special in the dutch tv program, they will temporally fix PS3's, which don't have warranty anymore, with broken Blu-ray drives without any extra costs. They also claimed that they won't expand the warranty from one year to two years in the Benelux."
http://www.n4g.com/ps3/News-263098.aspx
I recall reading a letter where microsoft wont fix a bug that poepla re experaince for free....
OK I know this next artilce is mroe of an attack but honestly he does bring up a good point....
News by Rob Purchese
Today 14:15
Sony Computer Entertainment boss Kaz Hirai has dismissed Microsoft and Nintendo as competitors because he sees PlayStation as the "official" industry leader.
"This is not meant in terms of numbers, or who's got the biggest install base, or who's selling most in any particular week or month, but I'd like to think that we continue official leadership in this industry," Hirai told Official PlayStation Magazine.
"It's difficult to talk about Nintendo, because we don't look at their console as being a competitor. They're a different world, and we operate in our world - that's the kind of way I look at things.
"And with the Xbox - again, I can't come up with one word to fit. You need a word that describes something that lacks longevity," he added with a laugh.
Brandishing Sony's commitment to The Ten Year Plan, Hirai said he wants customers to feel confident their PlayStation console will not "fall by the wayside in five years" - a milestone Microsoft has yet to overcome, he pointed out.
"And," offered Hirai, "unless things go really bad, there's no way that at the end of a life cycle our competition is going have a higher install base."
Hirai also addressed the complex architecture of the PS3, which developers have openly struggled to get to grips with.
"We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?" explained Hirai.
He picked God of War to show gameplay changing during long life of the PS2, and said that sort of learning curve will be the same with PS3.
"So it's a kind of - I wouldn't say a double-edged sword - but it's hard to program for, and a lot of people see the negatives of it, but if you flip that around, it means the hardware has a lot more to offer," he said.
Wrapping things up, Hirai said the PlayStation 3 "won't radically change" over the next few years in the same way the New Xbox Experience revamped the competition.
He hopes PlayStation Home will help there, by growing to a point where one type of consumer buys the PS3 solely for the virtual world, before discovering that there are are some games on the games console.
"We want to expand the demographics from just a videogaming audience to something that's a little bit more massive," Hirai concluded.
You can read the full interview in the February issue of Official PlayStation Magazine
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/hirai-were-the-official-industry-leader
Sony’s plan to support the PS3 for ten years is a smart objective, and something which all platform holders ultimately aspire to.
That’s according to Ed Barton, Games Analyst for Screen Digest. Barton’s comments follow SCE chairman Kazuo Hirai’s suggestions that the PS3’s long lifecycle will ultimately see the console win a majority market share.
While Barton didn’t suggest that the PS3’s projected ten-year lifecycle would inevitably mean it will outsell its competitors, he did bring up the subject of Sony’s encouraging track record.
“When Sony talks about the PS3’s lifecycle, they’re not simply referring to how long the console stays on the market, but also how long Sony’s internal development teams are producing reasons for people to carry on buying it,” he said.
“Seven years into the PS2’s lifecycle and Sony dropped a little-known game called God of War 2 on the Western market. That game, in my opinion, stands up pretty well to a lot of current generation games. Thinking about the level of investment games like God of War 2 required, and looking at how well Sony has supported the PS2 in the latter years of its lifecycle, I think the company has a pretty good record in that sense.”
And while Hirai’s inflammatory remarks on the Xbox 360’s lifecycle quickly saw a backlash in comment sections and forum posts across the net, Barton asks why anyone would want to criticize Sony’s plan to support a console for ten years.
“A hardware transition is a very expensive and traumatic experience for the entire industry and its consumers,” he said. “I don’t see why people wouldn’t like the idea of any of the console manufacturers supporting a platform for ten years.”
“We’ve heard anecdotally from some of the big console manufacturers that the cost of launching a console is in the region of $3-5 billion,” he adds. “I don’t see any enthusiasm right now from any of the console manufacturers to go through through with that any time soon.”
Hardware transitions are also particularly painful for software publishers, Barton adds. “You’re going from an addressable audience of tens of millions to an addressable market of nought. We’ve seen a pattern where publishers’ earnings margins are at their best when the addressable market for a console is at its largest. Those same figures are obviously at their lowest during a console transitional period.”
A ten year strategy for a console should be applauded, Barton says, “as long as platform holders are supporting their consoles in a meaningful way. Which means strong first-party software, a vibrant and constantly-evolving online service, as well as a really interesting and constantly-updated variety of digital media to download.”
“I think if you spoke to Microsoft, they would say a similar thing. I think the reason that Hirai’s comments have been leapt on today is, obviously, there is a lot of sensitivity in the market share debate.”
http://www.edge-online.com/news/analyst-ps3%E2%80%99s-10-year-plan-makes-sense
Just throwing this out there. Does anyone like donuts? I do. Maybe some coffee too.
