Console Wars: Backwards Compatibility?
September 17, 2010
Oh man, I have to say I'm quite impressed with the folks over at sony. Their new advertising campaign selling the Move as a new Hi-Def family friendly gaming experience is genius! Genius because they never once mention how much it's all going to cost. Well here's how much it's going to cost!
For now let's assume you already own a PS3, in order to play a basic move game you'll need a Playstation Eye Camera, $39.99. A Playstation Move Controller, 49.99. And of course a Playstation Move compatible game, varies from $29.99 to $59.99 each. They also have a Move bundle that comes with a game, camera and controller priced at $99.99 and if you don't own a PS3 there is an additional bundle that comes with everything mention in the last bundle along with an 320 GB PS3 for $399.99.
However, I said that was for a basic Move game didn't I? That's because in addition to the normal $49.99 controller certain games require a $29.99 Move Navigator Controller. Furthermore certain games will also require you to use two of the $49.99 controllers to play, and this is just for a single player. So after eveything is said and done in order for a new family to purchase and get the most out of Move, and allow for at least two players they'll be spending well over $600. Enough money to buy three complete Wii systems, or four of Microsoft's Kinect cameras, which in itself is way over priced.
All I have to say for Sony is they better educate the people selling the Move, otherwise lots of people are going to take their Moves home, only to find out they need a hundred dollars worth of extra controllers to play it.
However this was just a pre-rant. the actual comic is about another shifty sounding PS3 add-on Sony has made. In order to overcome the PS3's lack of backward compatibility they have patented a new adapter. What is amounts to is a seperate drive that has it's own DVD decoder as well as it's own sound and graphic processors, completely seperate from the PS3's. Now don't get me wrong, but isn't that called a PS2? Right now this "adapter" has just been announced, so not that much about it is known, but unless this thing uses the PS3's internal hard drive to save game files on, as opposed to memory cards, than yeah. Its just a fucking PS2!