It's called capitalism. Why should they decrease the price? If you feel it is too much, then you can wait for a price drop, or just choose to *gasp* not purchase it at all. If they wanted to sell the games for $80 or even $100 nothing is stopping them except the fact that very few people would purchase it. They feel that these prices will net them the most profit, which is, if I recall correctly, what all companies strive to maximize. Oops, I forgot we live in a fantasy world where companies love to throw money at consumers.

I seriously doubt that Microsoft will drop the price this holiday season. The PS3 is going to be released at $200 over the price of the XBox360. I don't think Microsoft really sees them as a major threat. The only people who are going to buy a PS3 at release are hardcore Sony fans. Everyone else will pick up an XBox360 for $200 less. Basically, there is no need for a price drop. The reality is that Microsoft is a business. They have already lost $4 billion on the XBox to get into the market. They are looking to make some money this round (and I think they will).

From what I've read, the Local Memory from the Inquirer slide is the RSX memory and is taken from the GPU section of the PS3 technical presentation. The Cell processor would have NO reason to read from this memory except maybe for taking a screenshot as Drew said. I believe the Cell has 25GB of bandwidth to the main system memory which is the memory it uses. There are 256MB of memory each for the RSX and main system memory. Whoever wrote that article completely misinterpretted the data.

Please everyone, this is the Inquirer we are talking about. That alone should be enough to take the article with a million grains of salt.

DanielD, although in the US we aren't great about power conservation, this study was done about the UK.

ZeroCorpse, by your same logic, people PAID for their gas guzzling SUV and therefore have the right to use their gas guzzling SUV. They pay for the extra gas so why shouldn't they use it the way they want to? Besides, is a cold boots 5 extra seconds really that bad?

Jaded, as Rocky said, a transformer used to convert power from AC to DC will waste a lot of electricity. Just about every electric device has poor energy efficiency (same can be said about everything though).

Eric, that is a very limited way of thinking. The "I'm just one person what can I do?" mentality is killing the US. It has created tons of apathy and selfishness. People complain about President Bush but of the people who vote, he won. Who knows how it would have turned out if everyone who COULD vote DID vote.

A little about power generation. A typical power generator burns something to generate heat (nuclear, coal, natural gas). So their are heat loses due to heat escaping to the surrounding area. Then its used to heat water which turns to steam and runs a turbine. Efficiency wise, I would say the whole steam cycle is maybe 40% efficient, probably less. So that means that less than half the energy produced by burning is being converted to electricity. Then they transform the electricity to high voltage low amps signals and send them over the huge power transmission towers. From here, its fed to each neighborhood/city. There are power losses associated with sending the power. Then it comes to your house as alternating current. Most electronic devices use direct current hence the need for the large power "bricks" such as on the XBox360. If you have ever felt one of them, they get warm/almost hot because they aren't efficient at turning power from AC to DC. Then it finally gets into your electronic device where even there there is power loss. So it's not a simple matter of "oh, my device only uses a small amount of power" because to generate that power, a ton of very inefficient things are going on.

Um, it's Final Fantasy. Isn't everything they ever show basically CG? I mean seriously, they very rarely release gameplay trailers when it comes to RPGs in general. It's all about the story line and the CG.

This game looks nothing like the "core" R6. It has the cover system that every game seems to include nowadays (PDZ and GOW come to immediate mind). And it seems like every newer iteration of R6 includes fewer and fewer teammates. I mean, the original allowed for 8 operatives to be split into 4 teams. Ravenshield allowed 8 in 3 teams. Lockdown had 1 4man team. And now this has a 3 man team. I really hope they do go back to the core of the franchise, but from the looks of it, things are getting further and further away. No tactical map or planning, seemingly faster paced action. The original required planning and slow tactical movement. I really wish someone would remake Rogue Spear (the best R6 imho) and the original GR with improved AI, graphics and physics.

I believe HDMI only recently got a 1080p standard with HDMI v1.3. DVI already had a 1080p standard. I am not sure about component, but I think that it can also display 1080p. So the loss of HDMI on the cheaper PS3 does not mean it won't be able to display 1080p images.

jaemz, AoE, is this why when people go to CPL or the WCG, they bust out their gamepads for a round of CS or Quake? There is a reason why the top players play K&M. Same goes for fighting games. Everyone who plays at tournaments uses an arcade stick, very few people play with a gamepad. The reason? It is just simply the better controller.

I have a gamepad hooked up to my PC too. I've played HL2 and Serious Sam with it. But there is no way in hell I would play on my favorite ranked CS:S server with a gamepad. Try playing CS:S with a gamepad and then tell me that it's a feasible controller (as long as your oponents are decent, I've seen some pretty crappy K&M players). I enjoy using a gamepad and I used to regularly beat my buddies and strangers (online) in Halo 1/2 by a large margin. Same with Golden-eye. But when you get good with a K&M, I can't help but think why anyone would think a gamepad is the better controller. Maybe more comfortable, but definitely not the better controller.

Here's why. A joystick has a limited turn speed. When you move your joystick, you are telling the game to move in this direction at this rate. And you will always be limited by that rate no matter how high you have the sensitivity. When you move a mouse, it is an absolute movement. I point there and boom, I'm looking there. Anyways, it looks like we won't be changing each others opinions anytime soon, so let's just wait for Huxley to come out :-p.

AoE, console games in general are MUCH slower than PC games. Halo 1/2 feel like you are moving in molasses compared to Counter-strike. There is no way someone with a gamepad would even compare to someone with a keyboard and mouse player, unless the K&M player sucked and the gamepad player was good. K&M players will absolutely destroy XBox360 players unless they add in a degree of autoaim like every other console FPS has. You have also evidently never seen anyone good play Counterstrike with an awp or UT2k4 in Instagib. With a fast moving game as this is supposed to be, there is little chance of a gamepad player being anywhere near the top players.

jk, the service samson was talking about WAS unified. IIRC, the Prodigy service allowed you to do basically everything XBox Live allowed you to do. I never had it so I don't know for sure, but back then, I sure as hell wanted it. You could play games, chat, e-mail, shop and do all that good stuff with the Prodigy service. It was not an ISP in the beginning, it was it's own network, like XBox Live is.

Anyways, I personally believe the Wii remote is the bigger innovation. XBox Live took a lot of what a PC could do, and streamlined and unified it. It is a great service, but you really have to be a fanboy to think it is more innovative than the Wii remote.

The Wii remote is a complete change of how to play a game. It offers 6 DOF (XYZ, yaw, pitch, roll), all from one hand. While games have been 3-D for a while, controls are still very much based on 2-D systems, and the Wii remote changes it to a true 3-D system. Will it work? Who knows (except for people who have tried it)? But one thing I am sure of is that it is definitely more innovative than XBox Live.