Recently, I defeated my arch nemesis, the $US250 briefcase-bound Casetation 2. It took a $US99 PS2 (super power: price cuts), duffel bag, and connecting to any TV, because they’re everywhere. $US151 left over. Flawless Victory.
Oh Sony, you fooled the internet! Everyone thought (and still hopes) that you were going to announce something big and important today. Instead, the PS2 will officially drop to $US100 starting tomorrow. [PlayStation Blog]
In response to rumours today that the PS3′s price could get dropped (along with the PS2′s, down to $US99), Sony officially confirmed to Joystiq that they’re not budging on the PS3 pricetag:
There have been plenty of murmurs regarding a PS2 price drop as part of Sony announcements tomorrow, and now Kotaku looks to have confirmed it with some Kmart SKU data. But Sony, we said we wanted a PSTHREEEEE price drop, not two. [Kotaku]
Can’t afford Mad Catz’s ridiculous Tournament Edition SFIV FightStick? Just build your own out of cheap fake Tupperware. Plus, it’ll tote a sammich over to your friend’s house, though I’d avoid tuna salad. [TechEBlog]
Remember that crazy, bulbous PS3 motion controller spotted in a Sony patent app? Well a newly uncovered Sony application is slightly less Requiem for a Dream and slightly more Captain Planet.
Audiovox will be releasing custom PS2 consoles for cars. Apparently Sony has handed over PS2 hardware to Audiovox (surely through some sort of co-beneficial licensing agreement), who has then re-cased the hardware and added their own tweaks like wireless outputs (allowing the whole car to share one system). Available in 6 months for a $US200 premium over existing in-car entertainment systems, there will be a front overheard pop-out version of the system (left) as well as backseat units (right). It’s sort of like the soccer mum version of pimping one’s ride.
Sometimes it’s easy to lose perspective amidst marketing. Case in point: Nielsen measured that gamers, on whole, spent 31% of their time on the PS2 in 2008 (more than the Xbox 360 and Wii combined).
Designing a game for consoles is much tougher than PCs, if only for the costly certification testing process that can be daunting to development studios who are accustomed to grabbing extra ketchup packets at lunch just to make soup for dinner. But Sony Europe has completely removed the PS2 certification process in their region, effectively making the PS2 an open platform in much of the world. With 131.3 million PS2s sold worldwide, that’s gotta be awfully exciting to at least a few startup studios. As for you, expect the deluge of shovelware from Russia and India any day now. [GameDaily via Kotaku]
