Blast From the Past: Salon Says PS2 Overpriced. Sound Familiar?
By Ron on Sunday, May 6th, 2007 at 8:17 AM PST In Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Sony
With all the industry analysts extolling the reasons you should not buy a PS3, I thought it might be interesting to take a look back at what the pundits thought of the PS2.
It took a little searching, but I found this. Basically, Salon cites some reasons that there’s no reason to buy a PS2. If you’ve been following the news around the PS3 lately, this should sound familiar. Just to list a few…
- The PS2, although powerful, is not revolutionary.
- The PS2 games are not impressive, in fact, the Dreamcast games are better.
- The PS2 is too hard to develop for compared to other systems, and as such, will always lack games.
- Including a DVD player is overkill.
- The N64 and XBox are right around the corner, and both more promising.
Doesn’t all that sound familiar? In fact, it’s all the same reasons I’m being given for not buying a PS3. We all see how the PS2 turned out, as it’s STILL the best selling console on the market. What are the chances that history will repeat itself.
“What are the chances that history will repeat itself.”
Low. You seem to have forgotten the PS2 was not the highest priced console on the market. Nor was it anywhere near as technically complex as the Gamecube and Xbox.
“The PS2, although powerful, is not revolutionary.”
Oh come on. The PS2 was nowhere near as powerful as the competition. Yet it slaughtered them in the market. None of the other systems were paticularly “revolutionary” either.
“The PS2 games are not impressive, in fact, the Dreamcast games are better.”
This is an opinion based on conjecture.
“The PS2 is too hard to develop for compared to other systems, and as such, will always lack games”
You do realize this logic merely helps the Wii. Right?
“Including a DVD player is overkill.”
I don’t recall ever seeing this claim made by other detractors. In fact the XBox was largely criticized by the community for not having a working DVD player out of the box.
“The N64 and XBox are right around the corner, and both more promising.”
This makes no sense at all. The PS2 and N64 came from different generations. I assume you’re talking about the Gamecube. In which case, everyone noted from the start that the Gamecube had poor support from the community. And if it wasn’t for Halo, the XBox wouldn’t have lasted more than a year. Lo and behold, it was also the most expensive of the consoles. Yet its success hasn’t been anywhere near the level of the PS2’s.
Unlike the PS3, the PS2 was a competant system. The PS3 is the result of a delusional and grandios design scheme that works about as well as communism.
The PS2 was priced the same as the PSX was at its release. The PS3 is priced at double that. Big difference.
However, the PS2’s success came for a number of reasons, largely taking advantage of the way the market worked at the time. The PS2 took a cue from the GameBoy and capitalized on the success of the PSX by offering backward compatibility while big-name games for that platform, such as FF9, were still being released. Many people were in the market for a DVD player at the time. So for the same price tag as you’d normally pay for a video game console, you got to kill two birds with one stone, and continue to be able to play the games from the last phenomenally-successful console.
The PS3, however, is nearly DOUBLE the price of what the PS2 was at launch, a price mostly inflated by Blu-ray, a technology that is NOT neccessary for games at the moment, and that is NOT a technology that mainstream consumers are interested in. Sony won with the PS2 by providing exactly what consumers wanted, starting from launch, at a competitive price. With the PS3, they’re doing the exact opposite, and they will lose this round because of it.