IMPORTANT: I have nothing against the Playstation 3 or Blu-ray. Never having played the PS3 or watched a movie on Blu-ray, I really COULDN'T have anything against them. My statements about the PS3's current sales are based on the numbers as I know them, not my opinions or any data that I can directly and personally confirm. This is purely objective, from an economic standpoint, not from a gaming standpoint.

It certainly looks like Blu-ray is winning the format wars, which is exactly what Sony's Playstation division wanted. Sony has been reasoning all along that the success of Blu-ray would help the PS3, and their reasoning was relatively sound. However, now that both have been around for a while, we see Blu-ray with strong success and the PS3 trailing its competitors. Why?

I believe Sony was hoping Blu-ray and the PS3 would help each other, but it only ended up working one way: the PS3 helped Blu-ray, but Blu-ray didn't help the PS3. I believe Sony's mistake rests in the branding: rather than calling this device the Playstation 3, they should have given it a new name to separate it from its video game-focused predecessors. Why? Well, the only way someone can know that the PS3 plays Blu-ray movies is to seek information about it, but if you're not interested in a video game console, you're probably not going to check out the details. As such, to non-gamers, the PS3 is just a 600 dollar video game console. Advertising certainly helps bring the news to some, but for everyone else, Playstation=video game console.

Can I prove my theory? Of course not; I haven't conducted a mass survey or anything like that. However, price has always been labeled as the biggest factor hurting the PS3. The price is bad for a video game console, but not for a Blu-ray player. That indicates that people are primarily looking at it as a video game console; if they weren't, the price wouldn't turn them off.

It's understandable that Sony wouldn't want to give up the Playstation brand, but if that's the case, they should have left out the Blu-ray. If they did, while Blu-ray would have slightly less support, the PS3 would have much more because it would be cheaper. It seems Sony is beginning to realize that its functionality as a Blu-ray player is not selling the PS3, given that they've released a Blu-ray player that's cheaper than the console. Now they have to find a way to make the console much cheaper. Even analysts who predict the PS3 will win the console wars tend to base that prediction on the system having a massive price cut; if Sony doesn't deliver, it will turn out very differently.

Designing their console in part to sell another product was a mistake, one from which they seem to have learned. Now they have to rectify it in order for the PS3 to be as successful as they want it to be. They can't offer an alternate model without Blu-ray, because games are also on Blu-ray discs, so they'll have to figure out something else.

NOTE: This post is shortened from the original version available at my blog, unknownwarrior33.blogspot.com
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I'm not saying video games never lead to real violence. If you live in such conditions; because of your environment, your age, mental disabilities, etc.; that murder seems like a viable option, video games might just be the driving force that lead you to action. But that's a very different message than the one people like Jack Thompson are sending. These people want us to believe that video games can turn any normal, well-behaved person into a murderer, and they are always the first media target after a young person commits murder or suicide. I've played all the Grand Theft Auto games, Silent Scope, Red Steel, the Mortal Kombat series, Doom (including levels designed by one of the Columbine shooters), Quake, and even Night Trap. However, of all the kids at my high school, I am probably the LEAST likely to ever shoot anyone. You can't look at video games as a universal evil; they only factor into violence in rare, specific cases in which they are not the main culprits anyway.

If Jack Thompson and other "crusaders" want to stop youth violence, they need to stop looking at the easy target of video games and start improving living conditions. If regular citizens want to protect their kids from violence at school, they should teach their kids not to mistreat others. Getting rid of violent video games might help a little bit, but improving people's lives will stop the raw emotions that inspire the violence in the first place.

First of all: my goal in this post is to be 100% neutral and bias-free.  My preferences may come out subconsciously, but this is not a psychology class, so I won't go into that.  Just trust me when I say that I am not trying to push my console preferences.

It happens every time new consoles come out: the console wars heat up and gamers take their choices in consoles very seriously.  It leads to insults (look at the comments of any console wars-related post on QJ), stress, and distraction from the entertainment of gaming.  We are all guilty of it.  You, me; even the people who repeatedly state the same kind of thing I'm saying right now are soldiers in the console wars.  But as a gamer since the 16 bit days, I can tell you that I never first picked the console that would eventually win until the DS (and that war isn't technically over yet), but I've still loved every console I ever had.  The console wars mentality is a problem, and as I hope to explain in this post, meaningless.

Reasoning and explanation after the jump.

Here's another file to add to my Zelda XMB pack: a system_plugin.rfo file with custom sound effects from Ocarina of Time and A Link to the Past.  I replaced all but one or two of the sound effects; the others come from the bogus 1.0 file (don't worry if you don't know what that means; neither do I).  Check it out here:
 http://www.filefactory.com/file/4e9488/

I realize this will only appeal to a very small group of people, but I decided to post it anyway.  As I mentioned in my article about my Master Sword battery indicator, my PSP has a Legend of Zelda theme going.  I know Zelda's a popular series, so I thought others might be interested.  I've put together a Zelda-themed gameboot, opening sound, XMB icon set, font, and the aforementioned battery icon set.  If you want to deck out your PSP Zelda-style, these are the files you need.  A wallpaper is also a must, but there are so many out there that I decided to let you choose; just search Google or something.

Please note that the custom XMB icons do NOT work with 3.10 OE, and you shouldn't use these files unless you know what they're for as well as all the rules of flashing.  Also, I only made the battery indicator and opening sound; the gameboot, icons, and font come from elsewhere.  The font comes from Birdman's font pack, the gameboot comes from shizzy's gameboot pack (keep in mind that I don't know whether Birdman and Shizzy actually made them themselves), and the XMB icons come from a forum thread I found in a Google search devoted to XMB icons.

Anyway, get the pack here: http://www.filefactory.com/file/9d6fe0/
I don't have any pictures right now, but I will update this when I do.