Archived from groups: alt.games.video.sony-playstation2 (
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Jay J <jay___j@hotmail.com.nospam> wrote:
> You can pretty much rest assured that when the PS3, and for that matter the
> XBOX2 come out, that the price of the current generation of consoles, games
> and accessories will drop.
Agreed.
> And... It's pretty certain that development/support for those consoles will
> come to an end shortly thereafter as well.
Not so sure...
PS3 will be backwards compatible with the PS2, just as the PS2 is
backwards compatible with the PS1. You could still buy PS1's for a long
time after the PS2 was released, and due to the backwards compatibility
thing, people were still buying PS1 titles long after the PS2 launched. I
can only assume that the same thing will happen when the PS3 launches.
The PS2 will drop under $100, maybe even to $50 like the PS1 did, and the
software will begin dropping in price as well. However, it takes time for
a console to build up a decent sized library.
Now XBox2 is a different story. Details are still sketchy and we'll have
to wait until E3 in May to get the official word from Microsoft. I don't
think XBox2 will be backwards compatible with Xbox1. Even so, it's not
like Xbox1 will suddenly disappear from the market the day XBox2 hits the
shelves. And while most development will have moved over to the new
platform, I'm sure that we'll see a few new releases for Xbox trickle out
post-Xbox2 launch.
> The question I have is will Sony or hopefully MS re-release this
> generation's version of the PS2 and XBOX in a more compact or portable
> model?
> It's doubtful for Sony as they just re-released the PS/2 in a 1/3 smaller
> package, but what I'd like to see is the XBOX released as a "perphial card"
> that you could buy and plug into your home PC, like you do a video or sound
> card!
> It could use your existing video, sound, dvd and hard drives!
> How cool would that be!!!!
I doubt Sony will re-do the PS2 for the reasons you point out.
Don't know what Microsoft will do with Xbox. I would have thought that if
they *could* have produced a slimline model, they *would* have already.
However, given that Microsoft doesn't own/control the hardware inside the
Xbox, it's unlikely they'll get Intel and nVidia to create smaller
versions of their chipsets.
As for 'Xbox-on-a-card', it would be neat, but isn't feasible. There was a
console called the 3DO which was eventually acquired by Creative (yes, the
sound card folks) and they were going to come out with a 3DO-on-a-card for
your PC. Problem was, it required you to use a Creative soundcard and
Creative CD drive, and cost about $400 I believe, which was more than the
3DO cost by itself(?) As you might expect, it didn't sell well at all...
I really don't think we'll see Xbox-on-a-card because it'll cost too much
(why spend more for this card when you could buy a normal XBox for less
money?) and while there are folks working on XBox emulators, I suspect by
the time there's sufficient hardware power available to run these
emulators, the Xbox will have already faded from the market.