Playstation 3 tag

The rumour-mill was running fast until 2kGames squashed it.

Oh wells.

BioShock has been confirmed to be released on another platform… the PlayStation 3. With a tentative release date of Spring (Autumn in NZ) 2008, it was apparently always going to be on the PS3, it was just a matter of waiting for the timed exclusivity to expire.

No word on whether the PS3 version will get anything bonus added onto it with the extra disc space, but gives a chance for those without an Xbox 360 or a powerful enough computer to have a run through this game. But, the “hard core” who have every platform available would’ve already had a good romp through the game.

Sony needs to start getting in first on the timed exclusives, or even just have games exclusive full stop (but then that isn’t in the interest of the developers who wouldn’t want to limit themselves to getting money from a single platform).

Dropping software backwards compatibility in the new 40GB Playstation 3 is a bit dubious. They aren’t actually saving any money as I suspect they’ll probably still improve the backwards compatibility on the older systems for a little while longer. So, what’s a few extra megs to go towards backwards compatibility?

GamerNode reports that the real reason why BC was dropped was simple – to get people buying games, Playstation 3 games in fact. Their research has shown people actually don’t care that much about BC… when other research does.

As I hinted at in my last post about this topic, people will migrate eventually… soon the only games being released on the Playstation 2 will be the really bad, crappy, childrens games that no one wants to buy. That’s what happened to the PSone at least. People will still be getting their favourite games, or at least trying them out for now, but eventually they’ll still go out and get the PS3 games. Maybe what Sony needs to do instead is reduce the PS2 games they are publishing and nudge the developers all onto the PS3. It is the console that makes the games, and if they start pushing properties that people enjoy on the new console people will go – look at Singstar and Ratchet and Clank (although I’m sure the latter is the one people are going for).

It has been announced (or, Sony sent me an email saying) that the new Playstation 3 console will be heading to our shores with a price of, wait for it – $799.

The console is the same but instead of 60GB of disk space you only get 40GB, it also doesn’t have flash card readers (who uses those anyway?) but the biggest drawback of the system is it doesn’t have any backwards compatibility – at all.

It’s like getting a free kick in the balls with every purchase. What the hell is the problem with having software-based backwards compatibility? Is it because Sony feels it has to keep updating the PS2/PSone games catalogue? Why not just dump PSone compatibility? When was the last time I even played a PSone game? Ummm, when I had a PS2 with no games. And frankly Sony, you can’t say the PS3 has lots of fantastic games yet, and I’ll be wanting PS2 backwards compatibility with my PS3 with no games.

As a bonus, this will be the only one that is sold in SCEE territories. The current 60GB models will be all sold and they’ll be gone, much like what happened with the PS3 60GB model in America, except the price cut isn’t being hailed as a price cut forever. In fact, SCENZ hasn’t even announced what the price cut is going to be, so I wonder if it will happen.

This comes hot on the heels of Christmas season, which The Warehouse has already thankfully reminded us (Santa costumes anyone?). It isn’t like people will probably even care if there is no PS2 backwards compatibility, well, Mr Joe Smith buying it for his angsty teenage son.

Look out for the new Playstation 3 in stores October 12th.