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Analyst Todd Greenwald predicts price cuts for Xbox 360, PS2, and PSP |
Listed in: PS3, Wii, PSP, Xbox 360 Tags: Microsoft, price drop, PS2, Sony
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Of course, the Nollenberger Capital Partners analyst has stated this while tossing two pennies out the door, but it seems apparent that he did make gradual observations of the popular consoles to date before making his opinion known. A report by Games Industry also pegged that he hasn't made any mention of Nintendo's low-priced, popular console.
But seeing as both the Nintendo Wii and DS still continue to sell like hotcakes even while demand continues to grow, Greenwald doesn't expect Nintendo to even think the concept of price cuts. It appears that Greenwald has his money on Microsoft making the first move, seeing as its console has been out a year early.
He expects the Redmond giant to slash US$ 50 right off the retail price of the Xbox 360 by the end of summer. And he believes it will occur over all SKUs, bringing the basic package right on par with the price of a Nintendo Wii, while offering just a US$ 100 heftier option for a Pro package.
Microsoft might be able to pull it off, seeing as hardware costs have already reduced in the 18 months that the Xbox 360 has been out, says Greenwald. He also expects cash cow Halo 3 from Bungie to cover any possible loss, either in sales of the software or a boost in sales of the hardware because of the impact of the software.
If Microsoft does attempt a price drop, Sony will probably be forced to "give in" to the immense pressure brought on by the competition. He eyes a US$ 100 price drop for the PS3, also expecting Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto IV as a catalyst to financially aid the price drop expected this fall.
But he noted that publishing giant Electronic Arts will take the most profit out of the PlayStation 3 price drop. He also expects that the PS2 would drop to a US$ 99 price tag by the holiday season, and predicts that the PSP could also follow another slash in retail price, queued by the rumors of a PSP redesign.
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* Brand-new
- There’re no relationships between the predecessors and the new title (made from scratch, built from the ground up).
- These titles have the capability to use most potential power of the systems (consoles).
- These titles look spectacular and fantastic in the graphics, sound effects, physics, and technology departments.
- Gears of War (UE 3.0), Resident Evil 5 (New Proprietary Engine - NPE), Final Fantasy 13 (White Engine), Haze (NPE), MotorStorm (NPE), Ratchet & Clank Future (NPE), Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (NPE), Crysis (CryEngine 2.0), Grand Theft Auto 4 (Rage Engine), Killzone 2 (NPE)
* Heavily-updated
- Literally, these games were made by updating the former games.
- Can’t overcome technical limitations (restrictions).
- These titles can use only small amount of power of the systems due to many reasons (optimization, efficiency of architecture in terms of hardware and software, et cetera)
- These games can’t impress the gamers.
- Halo 3, Armored Core 4, Tony Hawk Skate series, etc
Unreal Engine 2.5 was used to make Unreal Tournament 2004. UE 2.5 includes Karma Physics engine. Then Epic totally renovated (modified) UE 2.5 to make UE 3.0. Since UE 3.0 is extremely different from UE 2.5, UE 3.0 is classified as a brand-new engine (i.e.: UE 3.0 has Havok Physic 4.5 engine).
Halo 3 is an updated version of Halo 2 which was released in 2004 by using Renderware Engine (by choosing this updating-method, the developers can save huge amount of development time and budget).
In a report, it says Gears of War’s 90% is based on DirectX 9 tech (10% is DX10 tech); based on this factual data, the specialist (writer) assumed that Halo 3’s 98% is based on DX 9 tech. DX10 gameplay means: perfectly breakable buildings and vegetation (shoot at any parts of a building, then those parts must be penetrated realistically like in Crysis), perfectly deformable objects (in Gran Turismo 5, every inch of the car is perfectly deformed), soft shadows, 100% real facial-animation (Bungie never have to worry about this tech since we can’t see Spartans’ faces, LOL), depth-of-field, motion blur, etc. Crapalo 3 doesn’t have any of the above DX10 gameplay elements.
Halo 3’s beta footages look mediocre. There're beta footages of Gears of War and Resistance available online, unless you are blind and illiterate, you must announce the fact that beta builds look 95% same as the final (retail) versions.
Halo 3 (Bungie), Perfect Dark Crap (Rare), and Shadowcrap (FASA’s Shadowrun) have extremely similar graphical qualities and artistic design. I’ll educate you on this matter. The developers of all these games are owned by Microsoft. These developers share all kinds of techs which are used to make X360 games (DX 10 based, not OpenGL 2.x based).
Killzone 2 is being made by Guerrilla which is a subsidiary of Sony; it has 130 employees (programmers and graphics designers). The total budget for KZ2 is $60 million (just for your reference and ignorance, Epic spent $9 M to make Gears of War with 80 devs). Also KZ2 is in Guinness Book 2007 as the most expensive video game in the entire gaming history.
In 2005, Guerrilla hired 50 programmers and designers ONLY from AAA-level companies around the world; these new developers are the CORE-brains behind KZ2.
Killzone 2’s actual gameplay footage (pre-alpha build) was shown to journalists at GDC 2007 expo behind closed doors. These journalists said in news articles ~
- KZ2 is both graphically (lighting, shadows, mind-blowing sky, river) and technologically extremely advanced.
- It was like watching Next-gen Black 2 and Half Life 3 combined together (we now know what kind of shooter KZ2 is). Everything which was hit by bullets and missiles were penetrated.
- The characters (soldiers), indoor and outdoor environments are extremely detailed and gorgeous.
- The sound effects were blowing away the audience (sounds are important, too, guys).
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Can someone write an artical about me?
Of course prices will drop! That's about as difficult as predicting that night will follow day (which I also predicted earlier today - can I get an artical about that too?)
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