Is there anything Best Buy won’t do to screw its customers?
Greetings Readers!
Anybody who has ever dealt with Best Buy likely has their own horror stories about the giant, myself included and now they have a new tactic. Best Buy is now charging $130 to set up your Playstaion 3.
What do you get for your $130? You will get your PS3 plugged in, have its firmware updated, have your user accounts created and have the parental controls set up. Basically, stuff you shouldn't even need to look at the manual to figure out how to do. Why does Best Buy insist on ripping its customers like this? I am also curious who is dumb enough to pay $130 for this?
Here is the picture in case you need to see this ripoff to believe it.
Best Buy rips off Playstation 3 customers. Credit: Kotaku
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Expect Playstation 3 shortages this Christmas season
Greetings Readers!
If you are hoping to pick up a Playstation 3 for the 2009 holiday season for yourself or somebody else, you better do it while you still can because shortages are being predicted.
Thanks to the record pace that the PS3 has been selling at since the price drop to $300 and the release of the PS3 Slim, Sony Executive Jack Tretton says that if sales continue at their current pace, there will be shortages of the PS3 sales this holiday season because demand is outpacing supply.
It is baffling that Sony didn't expect such a surge in sales when a new unit was released and the price was dropped. Considering everybody had been hoping for a price drop for the past year, they should know that it was going to make for a huge boost in sales so they would have made production great enough to meet demand through the holiday season.
There is no news on when the shortage will happen but I know why Sony is planning it, free publicity. Whenever a major consumer product has a shortage, it gets a writeup on all of the major sites which is good for the company and the product. This is the only reason I can think of that Sony would pull something like this. By creating a shortage, you give the appearance that the hottest item of the Christmas season is going to be the Playstation 3, even when it might not be true. Despite the fact that I understand this practice, I still find it horrible because come Christmas time, some kid isn't going to have the PS3 he was expecting because Sony wasn't willing to ramp up production for the holiday season.
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Sony sets the PSP Go up for failure
Greetings Readers!
As many of you know, I am a longtime fan of Sony's PSP and I was initially looking forward to its sequel which turned out to be the PSP Go, but unfortunately it appears that Sony has set the portable gaming device up for failure. There are three primary ways that Sony is setting the PSP Go up for failure which are the focus of this post.
First, the biggest problem facing the PSP Go is the price. Considering the PSP Go plays the same content as the original PSP, there is no reason that Sony should be selling it at $250 when the original PSP which will continue to be sold, sells for under $170. While the original PSP was $250 when it shipped, those were very different economic times than what we are in now and the general rule I go by is that if a portable gaming device is more expensive than the most popular gaming console, it is overpriced. While it is great not having to deal with UMD disks that are constantly breaking, I don't think that justifies the cost when you realize that the screen is also smaller and and despite your expectations that the battery life would be better since there is no disk drive, they are actually about the same as the normal PSP. Oh, and the battery is not removable which is another strike against the Go.
Of course the price point of the system is only one big factor in the overall price of the device. The fact that you will need all new accessories is going to be another major expense tied to the device. If that wasn't bad enough, it looks like the games will cost more to download than they do in UMD format for the original PSP. Are you kidding me? I am going to have to pay more for downloadable games than for games with considerable production costs? I should be saving money because I am not in need of boxes, instructions, disks and whatever else, not spending more to get less! I am tired of paying more and getting less. Speaking of paying more and getting less...
Did you think I was finished talking about how much more you are going to have to pay to own the PSP Go? If you thought so, you would be wrong. In the ultimate slap in the face to everybody who already has the original PSP, the UMD conversion plan that Sony had once announced has been cancled for "legal and technical reasons." PSP owners, myself included, had thought that the price to migrate would be fairly cheap since we could convert all of our PSP game collection to digital versions for the PSP Go. Instead, the greedy fools at Sony now expect us to pay for our games all over again. I guess they figured that if people bought all of their music again when they migrated from cassette to CD that we would be willing to do it when we "upgraded" from a PSP to a PSP Go. They would be wrong in that assumption.
I had a lot of hope for the PSP Go when it first was announced but I think that hope is pretty much gone. With the launch of the PSP Go later this week (Oct. 1st), Sony has set the system up to fail miserably. It certainly isn't any competition for the lower priced DSi or even the iPhone. I had planned on getting the PSP Go on launch day just as I did with the PSP, but considering the overall cost of the device, games and accessories, I now have no plans on purchasing the device. If you can't sell you system to somebody like me that collects game systems regardless of whether I play them or not, you have real problems. Get ready for all of the PSP Go is a complete flop stories.
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Hulu stops working on the PS3
CrunchGear is reporting that Hulu no longer works with the Sony Playstation 3. I have heard numerous accounts of this so far although there seems to be no definite answer as to what is going on just yet. I have heard several reports speculating that this could have been broken in the latest firmware update (2.8). I have also heard reports saying that they have dugg deaper and found that the PS3 is being specifically blocked by Hulu. When you try to watch a video on Hulu, you get this message: "Unfortunately, this video is not available on your platform. We apologize for any inconveinence."
Personally, I have only used Hulu on my PS3 a couple of times because it is not a very good experience on the PS3. As fas as I am concerned, it isn't a great loss but I am sure there are a few people out there that liked to use the PS3 to watch Hulu content. I have not verified this myself but I will when I get home from work and then report back on tonight's recording of the Global Geek News Podcast.
Of the stories I have read, nobody has been able to get a comment from either Sony or Hulu on this issue yet.
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-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
Is the PSP Go’s digital direction the right direction?
Greetings Readers!
Yesterday, I talked a bit about the PSP Go and the fact that you will have to buy your accessories all over again. Today, I want to address Sony's new digital direction with the PSP Go.
Like I stated yesterday, I have two PSP-1000 units and love them greatly. While I love them and am often attached to the hip with them thanks to my carry case with a belt loop, the curse of them is the UMD disks. Honestly, I don't care the least bit about how much weight or size that the drive adds to the PSP. I don't even care how much more battery it uses by running compared to a digital version of a game, but what I do care about are having working disks. If you have had a PSP for any length of time, you are probably well aware of the UMD breaking issues. For those that don't know, the clear plastic on the front of the disk has the tendancy to partially break causing the disk to be out of place and only play a small percentage of the time. This is extremely annoying when you spend $40 or whatever on a new game. The fact that this has happened to nearly my entire UMD collection is the sole reason that I only pirate games on the system now (I freely admit to being cheap but it has no relevance here as I have always enjoyed paying for games compared to other forms of entertainment).
I am not alone in this as many people have taken to the haven of piracy to be able to play their games when they want. This is obvious when you look at the PSP piracy numbers. Luckily, I think that Sony has partially solved this problem with the PSP Go and its lack of a UMD drive. Personally, it takes away my reason for pirating games because the UMD problem will no longer exist except on my old PSPs which I will continue to play thanks to the wonders of homebrew. Sony's decision to go digital only is a great way of combatting the UMD issue and piracy at the same time. Of course when it comes to piracy and hacking, this will likely mean very little. If you have followed the hacking and homebrew scene as much as I have since the first days of the PSP, you will know that often within days, if not hours of a new firmware release on the PSP, the hackers have not only bypassed the new security measures, but they are adding the new features into their own custom firmware. While I expect it to take a while for the hackers to break the PSP Go, I have complete faith in them that they will be running thier own code on the device within a month (this is my official prediction).
Unfortunately, the move to digital presents a new problem, storage. UMD disks are capable of storing 1.7GB worth of information. While not all games use that much space, when you consider the fact that the PSP Go has a 16GB internal drive, you are going to run out of space very quickly. With Sony's announcement that you will also be able to download movies and tv shows to the PSP, that internal drive is looking even smaller. I believe this is going to be the main problem point for the PSP. Sure, you will still have the Memory Stick Pro Duos that you can put in the device, but any pirate will tell you that having your content on them is a major pain. Speaking for experience, having to put games on Memory Sticks will end up with you having a small pile of memory sticks with little knowledge of what content is on which stick. If this wasn't bad enough, the sticks still aren't that cheap for larger capacities. I will admit that they have come down considerably since the time of the PSP launch when you were lucky if you could get a 1GB stick off of ebay for $150 (same when the 2GB came out and so on), but it still adds a large chunch to the overall cost of the device. If you only have a few games, this isn't really an issue, but if you want to use the device for gaming like it is intended, this could be a real hassle.
Ultimately, I think this is a good strategy despite its flaws if for no other reason than it fixes the UMD issue. While I will admit that details are still a little scarce, I think this is the direction that they must head but if they don't do it right, it will screw the customer severely as well as themselves. Here is to hoping that they do what is best for the consumer instead of their bottom line!
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-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
The pain of the PSP Go, the necessity of new accessories
Greetings Readers!
Over the years, I have managed to collect more gaming platforms than I can keep track of. With only a couple of exceptions, I have owned or still own every major gaming platform to be released. Some of them, I have multiple of, especially Gameboys which I seem to collect for some strange reason. With the thousands of dollars that I have spent over the years on new consoles and handhelds, there is one thing I always dread the most, having to buy new accessories. In this case, I want to talk specifically about the PSP and the PSP Go. This applies to pretty much every system with a few exceptions but I am going to focus on these two for now.
Like every year, I pay extremely close attention to the E3 coverage. I have even been known to take most of a week off of work just so I can sit and watch the wall to wall coverage that all of the major gaming sites have of the annual event. While I didn't take any time off of work this year, I still watched nearly all of my usual coverage thanks to being alone at work. I will write another post or two about my complete thoughts from the event but right now I want to focus on the PSP Go. Much has been discussed about the PSP Go going completely digital with its content, something I will discuss further in another blog post and on the next podcast, but it seems that the main thing people are talking about is the price. People seem to be complaining that $250 is too much, but clearly they need a little history lesson, so here it is.
The PSP launched on March 24, 2005. When it launched, it was priced at $250, the same is what the PSP Go is going to sell for. Despite this price point that people now claim is too high, that morning it still had people lined up at early openings of stores. I know this because I stood in line and was the second person in town to get my hands on one. Not long after, I purchased a second one slightly used although not noticeable for a number of reasons, but price was never a huge factor for me. If it was over $300, I would have complained, but for what you got at the time, it was a decent price point and it still is. The reason it is still a great price is because of all of the new features and the power of the device compared to the Nintendo DS or DSi. From a technical aspect, the PSP can run circles around the DS. Between being able to play better looking games to being able to play movies, music and even stream audio over the web, it not only justifies the price difference but it laughs at the DS while doing so. The PSP Go vs the DSi is no different. I will admit the DSi has some nice new features including the cameras, but it still can't compete in terms of value with what you get in the PSP Go. The PSP Go is not only as capable as its predecessor but it now it has 16GB of internal storage and bluetooth in a device a fraction of the size and weight of the original PSP. While the DSi added some nice features like the cameras, the technical specs weren't boosted to allow it to compete with the PSP. For some reason, Nintendo doesn't seem to mind inferior hardware as proven with the Wii and GameCube and if you really want to go back, we can put many of the Gameboy systems in that category as well considering the Sega GameGear was superior in nearly every aspect but size and battery life. Anyway, it should be clear that I think it is worth every penny of the $250, especially when you compare it to the handhelds that Nintendo offers.
The most annoying thing about it for me is the fact that you are going to need all new accessories for your PSP Go since the ones from your PSP won't work with it. While I certainly understand the need of new cases since the Go is considerably smaller, I don't understand while the miniUSB that was used in the original was taken out of the Go in favor of some kind of multi-use port. The new port will still plug into your computers USB port, from the pictures I have seen, it looks identical to the plug in the Zune. I don't see any reason to change it other than to make people buy all new accessories which really pisses me off. I am a loyal enough customer to purchase a bunch of accessories over the years in the first place, I should not be punished by having to buy all of them again just because you want more money so you change the hardware to force me to buy something new. Accessories aren't that cheap and if you already have people complaining about the price, just how mad do you think they will be when you make them purchase all of their accessories all over again? If you want to catch up to the DS which has outsold the PSP 2:1, this is not the way to do it.
All manufactures need to heed this message. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. If it is not a necessary change, don't make it for the sake of making money. Either use it to add value make no change so that the barrier of entry for a new device is as small as possible to increase the adoption of your device. Anyway, enough of my rant. Tomorrow, I will talk about the PSP Go's digital download move followed by my thoughts on E3 with a few other posts splattered in between.
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-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
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