PUBLIC MARKS from mrongos with tags 360 & "PS3 Rumors"

Don’t ask why we were surfing the 360 forums. It’s a long, painful story. Even more painful is the sorry reason that Microsoft has decided to hop onto the legal train and sue Sony (besides the fear instilled upon Microsoft by the PS3… or so we’d like to believe). Now, many of us have probably seen the “controversial” list we’ve got at the top of the page. Is it misleading? If you’re ignorant. Here’s why.

If anything were going to drive sales up in the Japanese market for Microsoft’s XBox360, Gears of War would have been a good bet. So, where is it? Oh, that’s right, it’s too graphic so Microsoft wasn’t allowed

How does “whenever you feel like it and can afford to drop the necessary amount of money on it” sound? No? Damn, C-net, what do you think, then? Isn’t it our choice to decide when it’s “safe” to buy a console? No? Damn. Fine, why don’t you twist the news and alter the minds of your readers? Let’s go…

We all know that it is highly likely that the PS3 will come bundled with some Blu-Ray movie love. Afterall, what better way to get all 6 people that own 1080p TVs hooked on the superiority of Sony’s latest format? When word broke at TGS that the XBox 360HD-DVD player would come bundled with King Kong, the guessing game for the PS3’s pack-in reached its peek.

First, Crytek wanted people for it’s PS3 version of Crysis. Then, they said the consoles can’t handle their oh-so-perfect game. Now they say that they can easily port the game to consoles? Now, just as a personal moral standpoint, one may feel this game should be ignored since the creators obviously can’t decide what they want to do with their creation, but let’s give them another chance. Lead artist Michael Khaimzon said this tidbit: “I don’t think there would be any problem to convert anything we work on to the next-gen consoles if we decided to…We have enough power here, with programmers and artists, to be able to do such a thing. It’s just a matter of making the decision.” So it could be done, there just hasn’t been an official word on it yet. Sort of. The wanting PS3 programmers is fairly… well, it’s something to think about. We’ll keep you posted if any more “official” announcements are made.

This time, we’re hearing from analyst P.J. McNealy who claims the PS3 is in the final stages of production and will be able to ship 2 million units by the end of the year. Chew on this hefty quote McNealy uses to back his thoughts: “It is our opinion that given the 13 weeks or so of production time, SNE can still come close to its forecast of 2MM units worldwide by the end of December. We believe this likely means a split of 60/40 (1.2MM/800k) for North America/Japan for shipments, which are counted when invoiced off the SNE factory floor. Our research indicates that typically 10-20% of the unit shipment forecast will likely still be in the channel (en route) at the end of December and not installed in homes yet. The low end of that range is more likely simply because SNE will likely still be air-freighting and not tanker-shipping PS3s at that point.” Is it safe to say the 10-20% spread en route will be more focused on North America? Even if Japan has production in other Asian countries, Japan is still closer. Whatever. Math. The article at GameDaily also mentions the (rolling eyes whilst typing) overheating PS3 units, but we all know that’s a bunch of biased media crap. Go ahead — turn off your air conditioning and put your 360, GameCube, or PS2 into an unventilated plastic box and let it run a game for two days. If nothing happens, congratulations. Your system has no soul… and neither do you, for doing such a thing to it. Does it follow then, that Sony has no soul? Sure, because Sony is a legal entity, but not an actual one. It doesn’t need to have a soul.