I agree re: developers: for them a Sony or MS victory seems better than Nintendo's return to the top; even if Nintendo plays nicer with 3rd parties these days, they're too formidable a competitor for software sales.

Third Party software sells good on DS, too. What would happen if Microsoft and Sony would both sell 30 - 50 million consoles and Nintendo would be market leader? The 3rd Parties could make money on Nintendo AND on Sony and Microsoft consoles. Make a game for Wii and one for 360 and PS3 and you get millions of dollars...

600 Euros are 793 dollars. Try it here... Currency Converter

I want to call you on this really quick. Samsung has a 64gb CF card in prototype. However the cheapest you will find anything over 8gb, is about 200$ (infact most 8gb are around 100$) Follow the 'triple' price for data plan. 8gb = 50 16gb = 150 32gb = 450 64gb = 1350 price halves every year. I will go with the 64gb because that is the 'first' to surpass BluRay. 2008 - 675 2009 - 336 2010 - 168 2011 - 84 (getting there) 2012 - 42 (still not quite cheap enough to put on a 50$ game) 2013 - 21 (almost there) 2014 - 11.50 (finally within reason. I think we already have 'prototype' flash memory that rivals BluRay. We do have 200gb prototype BluRay media tho. Basically it will be over a year before we see 64gb flash media. And it will be well over 5 years before we see it cheap enough for mainstream. I have a high intrest in Flash Media. I have a *need* and I mean a professional need for it. Let's just say I have a 2gb Card, and it lasts me about 30 minutes. (I need at least 4 hours) I assure you. We wont be seeing mainstream Flash media passing BluRay in the near future. As TDK is gonna be launching a new line of BluRay burners in a year or two, and along with those burners, they will launch the new 200gb BD-R. And then that will put a chokehold on mass media storage.

To push a point: "Rein takes on PS3's critics Epic Games VP Mark Rein has taken on Sony's critics, saying that he believes the strength of the PlayStation brand and the company's ongoing strategy will ensure PS3 is a success. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz in an interview at GDC last week, Rein said, "Sony has a very, very strong brand, so in my opinion, they're still the one to beat. "The Wii is an impressive piece of hardware, but as you get the visually more impressive games coming out for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, as the marketing dollars get turned up to support the larger quantities of machines, with potential price drops and titles like Singstar which appeal to the larger market... Those machines will ignite, they'll take off, and they'll sell just fine." Rein's comments came after Phil Harrison's GDC keynote speech, during which the Sony Worldwide Studios boss unveiled PlayStation Home and exclusive title LittleBigPlanet. "It looks like they've got some pretty cool stuff coming," Rein said. "As the big titles come out, they're going to sell a bunch of machines. When PlayStation Home comes out, they'll sell a bunch of machines... Yeah, it's a high price, because it's a new, high-end piece of equipment, but history shows that price will come down. They'll sell lots of them, it'll be fine." Rein questioned some of the criticisms which have been levelled at Sony in recent months, particularly with regard to the amount of PS3 stock currently available in US stores. "So wait, if they don't have enough machines in stores, that's a bad thing? If they do have enough machines, that's a bad thing? Pick one! "People just seem to want to take a smack at [Sony], and I can't figure it out. They're the leader, so I guess they have a target on their back." He also had strong words for those who have accused Sony of following in others' footsteps. "I read on a developer forum, one of the guys who worked on PlayStation Home said they started designing it in 2004. So when people say things like, 'Oh, they announced this new piece of software! They just copied so-and-so!'. What, you think they just made it last week in their basement?" According to Rein, there can be a tendency amongst industry professionals to take an insular perspective, and fail to recognise the attitudes of the typical consumer. "The gamers out there, they aspire to buy a new PlayStation," he concluded." http://gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=23503 I guess I am not the only one to see it this way.

Thanks! Well that is even worse than I expected... so then... imagine you would have to pay 800 Dollars for a PS3... (that explains a lot... so we are not that conservative as I thought here in europe... I just had the wrong numbers... )

Well you're assuming that you would have 1 flash memory chip inside of your "memory cartridge" format and that means that you have the most expensive chip at any given time... Consider that you can (currently) get cheap 2GB flash cards for about $20 so a 32 GB "cartridge" would cost at most $320 currently; it is likely that you would see cost savings from manufacturing a multi-chip solution and (in bulk) a company could probably get a massive discount ... As a rough guestimate I would expect it would cost Nintendo $120-$160 to make one of these cartridges Using your "half per year" estimate 2007 $120-$160 2008 $60-$80 2009 $30-$40 2010 $15-$20 2011 $8-$10 Now, certainly it would be likely that you wouldn't publish all of your games on a cartridge this size (you'd probably have 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB cartridges) but it is a massive ammount of data ... Anyways My point was that in the N64 days you would have a 1MB cartridge vs. a 600MB CD ... In 5 years you will (likely) have a 8GB or 16GB cartridge vs a 25GB-50GB optical format ... Regardless on what you may think, many (if not most) developers would probably choose the flash format as compared to the optical format

it' more accurate, for me, to consider the wii more like n64......than ps3! ps3 is the best: in europe and everywhere.

piratikkio, do you plan to back up your statement "PS3 is the best everywhere" with any evidence, or are you just going to make it easier for us to disregard you as a delusional fanboy.

We won't have a decent idea to how the PS3 will do in Europe for about 2 months, first month of course being launch, then the beginning of the "actual sales" transition in the second month. So let's wait 'till mid-may before evaluating just how well the PS3 is doing in Europe.