Wednesday, January 03, 2007

PS3: The long-term plan

iTWire ran a story about a UK Research firm's prediction that in the long-term the PS3 would win the console wars. The story went on to say how many sites and polls of consumers contradicted that and said that the Wii would come out ahead.

While the Wii is clearly ahead in the short-term, I do think this story will end up being correct, provided people continue to switch over to HDTVs at an increasing rate. Upcoming PS3 games, whose graphic potential is only being hinted at by the outstanding Gran Turismo HD demo, will be very compelling. People will want to see things that take advantage of their new HDTVs, and once you've seen high def cable and DVDs, the graphics of the Wii are going to pale in comparison. The motion-sensitive remote is fun, but I think having games with gorgeous sound and graphics (some of which will no doubt have strong gameplay too) will be hard to resist once most people have TVs that can show them off to their full potential.

As long as the PS3 can hang in there for the next couple years until more people get their shiny new TVs and want new content to run on them, I think it will pick up the pace and do well. Only time will tell, but in the meantime I can play on both systems.... It'll be interesting to see where I end up spending more game time in the coming year. (Maybe my PC, the darkhorse of the race, will win out over all the consoles!)

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