Playsyde has made available Sony’s first Playstation 3 commercial which is intended for a European audience.

A lower resolution streaming version is available for the impatient You Tubers out there and a 1280×720 high quality downloadeable version is also available for those that want to see some guy punching a bag and jumping around a ring in high definition and then seeing a few short seconds of some lame first person shooter in a quality that’s comparable to what the rich elite of Europe will see on that system sometime in 2007.

The commercial rings in at a ridiculous 3 minutes and 20 seconds with about 12 seconds of actual footage tagged on at the end. Most of it is just some guy training and boxing with a voice over going on about how revolutionary this beast is supposed to be. Unless there’s an ultra realistic boxing training simulation game I haven’t heard about I’m not very impressed.

This is living?

Thanks to TVPro for the heads up.

The impassioned call rang out above all others in a recent Sony investors meeting:

With the company in the red yet again in its most recent quarter, Japanese investors were in an unhappy mood. “I bought shares in mighty Sony,” cried a woman whose holdings had lost nearly two-thirds of their value. “What are you going to do about this?”

Wired Magazine investiages the company’s future with Can the PS3 Save Sony? and comes to the ultimate conclusion that Sony’s various teams and departments are in such dire straights the fate of the entire company rests on whether or not the PlayStation 3 can be a profitable success.

Sadly, the future is not looking any brighter this day. Joystiq reports: European launch of PlayStation 3 delayed until March 2007, and this heartbreaking blow to the fastest growing game market is quicky followed up with North American, Japanese PS3 launch limited to 500,000 units.

Add on the fact that the unit itself still costs $600, and trendsetters like Penny-Arcade have sworn off the launch as “bullshit” and even the editor of Official PlayStation Magazine will be opting for an Xbox 360.

Maybe I’m not seeing the glow of Sony fans right now. Entire sites like This is Waiting mock the future of the PS3, and literally hundreds of posts on digg, youtube, and blogs all across the net collectively laugh at every single mis-step. The detractors aren’t watching Sony fail, they’re actually cheering it on.

There is little doubt Sony will sell through the initial stock quickly. I’m sure they’ll also meet their trimmed goal of 2 million by Spring 2007.
But with Xbox360 poised for its second year and reporting rapid success, and the Wii celebrated at the most talked about console since console wars began 20 years ago… Does Sony even have a shot now? I mean, could this be the end of the road for the biggest company in gaming? A year ago I’d say this was impossible, but now I wonder if a Playstation 4 will even see the light of day.

Retro Gaming with racketboy has graciously decided to share some classic game magazines with those of us who missed them or just want to remember good times.
PDF: Sega Visions Magazine – Summer 1991
PDF: Nintendo Power #1 – Jul-Aug 1988
PDF: Playstation Magazine #1 – September 1997

Update: While we all thought the magazines would be a fun read, who knew they would yeild this kind of pertinent info–
Kotaku: Sony Pulls Rumble… from the Playstation! Apparently, Sony announced they were going to not included rumble in their original Playstation Dual Analog pad because of a patent dispute with Immersion Technologies. Sony went ahead with the DualShock anyway, the rest is history.
Joystiq: CliffyB, the retro gaming god. A sharp reader spotted the name Cliff Blezinski as the having the top score in Super Mario Bros on NES, and one email later confirmed that it is in fact Cliff Bleszinski aka “Cliffy B” now of Epic Games and lead for Microsoft’s winter tentpole, Gears Of War!

Today we saw the first Blu-Ray discs hit store shelves. On a trip to Best Buy I saw a number of them for sale at prices that weren’t totally unreasonable. The boxes looked cool which is pretty much all anyone would be able to tell you right now. Poked around looking for the players… which were nowhere to be found. I don’t think there are any in Canada. Why are we selling unplayable discs again?

Sony and Pioneer, the major supporters of Blu-Ray technology, have decided to postpone releasing their players. Sony’s Blu-Ray player is currently slated to be sold on October 25th 2006 according to their BDP-S1 product page. I wouldn’t be surprised if that date was pushed back again by the way things are going for them. Pioneer has also delayed the release of their BDP-HD1 player until September according to this article though no date could be uncovered on Pioneer’s website by this reporter. Having the 2 major supporters delay their own players within weeks of the pending release is not the best way to support a format consumers are already apprehensive to get on board with.

Samsung’s BD-P1000 is now available and retails for a shocking 1000$ US. With Pioneer’s player currently slated to sell for an astronomical price of 1500$ US and coming out only a month before the already expensive 600$ PlayStation 3 not to mention 2 months after Samsung’s 1000$ player the logic in this move is not obvious. Sony’s player will be selling at 1000$ and will be released, assuming all products follow their current release schedule, at the same time as the 600$ Blu-Ray compatible PlayStation 3. Why would anyone with an ounce of sense invest in their bare bones player? If we are to believe that this player will be in any way superior to a game system by the same company wouldn’t that just give people another reason not to invest in what is already considered by most to be a far too expensive game system?

I guess these guys just won’t be happy unless Blu-Ray really does go the way of Beta as everyone seems to be worried about.

After all this is said and done HD-DVD players have been available for over 2 months now and are selling at half the price of the competition at a mere 500$. This can be considered cheap only in the same way that the X-Box 360 is considered cheap when it’s price is compared to the price of the PlayStation 3. Of course people aren’t buying either player. I know I for one would get on board with this kind of technology if there were only one available but I just can’t afford to take a risk at such a price point and I think most HDTV owners share this sentiment. I’m fearfull that with everyone waiting there will be no clear winner in the format wars and that both will die leaving us with sub par 480p DVDs. It already happened with laser disc and there wasn’t even any competition for them.

Is there something these guys aren’t telling us? Is this all an elaborate ploy to avoid selling players at a loss while making fat cash off disc sales? Don’t they realise this makes everyone uncertain about the future of this technology? That when they can’t even put 100% behind their product no right minded consumer is going to be able to?

Maybe they’re just not trying anymore or maybe Sony’s trying to make sure the PS3 isn’t their worst mistake of 2006. That will be a tough one to top.

Sony Pictures has a press release stating that Apple Trailers will be hosting the first Teaser Trailer to Spider-man 3 at 2:30 PM EST today. It seems as though it has already been leaked onto YouTube, but I couldn’t find the exact one because of so many fan-made trailers. I can’t seem to find a link to this mysterious press release at the moment either, but when I do, I’ll update this post.

I also came across some more pictures from the set here.

See the trailer now here.

Peter Moore hit the nail on the head. Over 30 Thousand Joystiq readers voted on what consoles they’ll likley end up buying and the vast majority plan on getting a Wii and 360. Wii on its own scored very strongly as well.
This is hardly a scientific poll, but I’d say the PS3 has a real upward battle against the competition.
Link: Poll results: (Reevaluated) next-gen combo platters

Put the pitchforks down, fanboys.
Sony refuted claims they’ll lock out pre-owned games back in November 2005. Which really should’ve been the end of it.
Then, Games Radar hopped along a couple days ago a re-reported this old rumor, giving all sorts of gullible fans (and bloggers) something to cry about.
Now, as expected, Sony is making a fresh statement today dispelling this horrendously stupid claim.
I feel like I’m the only person saying this is a totally untrue rumour [1,2] over the past few days, and it feels good to be right. Now, stop jumping to conclusions.

Our friend Sparkstalker has been suspicious of the PS3 box since it was revealed a year ago, pointing out the lack of fans, and the power supply being housed in box. I’ll let his words take over:

Looking at this image again. I’ve got to wonder how “final” this really is. It still has a 120V input. Which means all power conversion would still have to happen inside the unit. Which would double the amount of heat that the PS3 will have to dissipate. And while they’ve increased the size and added vents, to me, it still doesn’t look like enough to dissipate the heat that will be generated by the system and power supply. We’ve seen the issues with the 360, and that’s with “loud fans” and a “monsterous” power brick…

It just doesn’t add up.

Also thanks to him for pointing out how many of those inputs disappeared in the last 12 months.

Incidentally, Sony pitchman Phil Harrison (who’s mere image frightens me, to be honest) is saying they’d been developing the tilt control since 1994. Nice try.  We all know where you ripped the Dual Shake off of.
File under “in case you missed this…”

DDR hits the TV screen and the Mobile phone.

Nokia NGage still kicking, despite all efforts to ignore it.

Frankie at Bungie deflects fanboy reactions to the Halo 3 trailer.

Superman Returns… please don’t let it be teh suck.

Close up look at Will Wright’s Spore.

Super Mario Galaxy Boss Battle.

And surprisingly, Hideo Kojima would like to ditch Metal Gear Solid 4 production to work on Wii. I mean, it doesn’t surprise me he wants to develop for Wii, just surprises me he’d consider ditching the PS3 only real killer-app to do it.
And now the doors to the biggest video game show of the year officially closed, its time to declare a winner. Tell us what looked best, what looked worst, what confused you, what was most unexpected, etc. Register and post your thoughts to our forums.