Yantelope

People refuse to learn the imperial system too... how many quarts are in a gallon?

NES: two controllers, one game: $130 1986 SNES: two controllers, one game: $200 1991 N64: two controllers, one game $290 1996 GC: two controllers, one game one memory card $330 2001 Wii: two controllers, one game $310 2006 PS1: one controller one memory card: $330 1995 PS2: one controller one memory card: $330 2000 PS3: one controller with HDD: $500 2006 Xbox: one controller and HDD $300 2001 Xbox 360: one controller and HDD $400 2005 This is more a more fair linear progression of like costs of investment than master dex's post IMO. If someone wants to inflation adjust this that'd be fine by me.

1&3. But masterdex and every other argument about cost going down have been based on MSRPs so nothing was resolved by MasterDex's post. I've poked about 10 holes in it. 2. Saying that a console based on 5 year old hardware and another based on current tech are in the same "generation" because they went on sale at the same time is silly and makes the term "generation" arbitrary. 4. PS4 is delayed in the sense that the standard console cycle has been broken for the first time in 5 generations.

No, the Vita is not amazingly priced. The iPhone is overpriced. and to have "on-par guts" you have to compare the 3G version of the Vita which is $300. And I guess you also need to compare the iPhone 4S that comes with rear touchpad, dual analogs, expandable memory. But oh wait their isn't one. The Vita is also launching the same price as the 3DS, of which the guts don't match at all. You're currently the only person to think it's price isn't amazing, especially compared to what's on the market and what the expected price was. Anyway since you're still struggling with my hints here it is in Admin red for that more distinctive tone required: This is the PS4 thread. Your next post will be about the PS4. Not the Vita, Not the iPhone. The PS4. Want to talk Vita? There's a Vita thread. Comprende? Arguing with you guys is like trying to lead a horse to water. You chase down different roads trying to say I'm wrong and when I respond I'm "off topic". I already pointed back to the part of why I brought up the Vita in the first place but nobody wants to address so many of the issues I bring up. Let me restate them. MSRP is not equal to cost Not all consoles are equal so comparing them strictly by an arbitrary "generation" title is still arbitrary. Cost of graphics are going up. PS4 got delayed probably due to the costs of hardware. Same for Xbox. Anyone want to respond to any of this? No you just want to chase rabbits rather than ever admit you're wrong about anything. Sigh.....

Right, which is why Sony wouldn't be getting much profit off of their Vita but $650 off an iPhone 4GS would be profitable. Profit for Sony comes from a $100 required memory card. Dean, You said: No, the Vita is not amazingly priced. The iPhone is overpriced. and to have "on-par guts" you have to compare the 3G version of the Vita which is $300.

So much this.

Sorry, added that bit in so you might not have seen it. "Component costs for Apple's entry-level iPhones have typically come in between $170 and $190, offering the company a hefty margin when the $199 purchase price and extensive carrier subsidies are accounted for."

Why? Unless you're going to find me an iPhone that is priced with a ~5 year mobile subscription built in too. btw your first article is from 4 years ago. It's still worth repeating (for third time now?) that the iPod touch is a crappy version of an iPhone 4, a near 2 year old piece of tech supported by sales in the tens of millions. Even the iPhone 4S, only just launched, still lags behind the Vita in hardware. Also why we now talking Vita? Is it so hard to stay on topic? But the current article from yesterday on the 4GS doesn't matter to you? Brought up Vita to talk about how MSRP's aren't always a great indication of true cost of adoption:

Oh, right, sorry, yeah, not everyone will be skewed. Agreed.

http://www.businessw...1217_113525.htm cost isn't drastically different from components in the touch. Manufacturing costs should be similar too. 4S here: http://www.macrumors...n-at-about-188/ Oh, and if you want to compare a Vita to an iPhone then you have to compare the $300 3G model.

I think I agree with your opinion about the game: I didn't care much for GTAIV, myself. But Johnny above me here loved it. I can accept that my opinion simply differs, and reviewers didn't feel beholden to rate a name rather than a game. Think about it: there are 86 reviews listed on MC for the 360 version of GTAIV. You're suggesting that not one reviewer amongst them was bold enough to break out of the massive conspiracy to rate GTA games highly and give it the 7 or 7.5 it deserved. The lowest score is an 80. That suggests, to me, that I'm just in the minority in my opinion, and others found a lot to love. I'm okay with that. (we're going down another thread here, probably more apt to put this in metacritic). Dan Hsu (Shoe) wrote a nice long article about all the dirty things that go on with review scores so yeah, I do think some people would be scared to give a game less than an 80. I'd link to it if I could find it.

That's not true. The cost is actually quite high for smartphones to be manufactured. Unless you have some source on that I'm not aware of? http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/10/apples_cdma_iphone_4_components_cost_171_16_cheaper_than_gsm_phone.html

Eh what? The Vita is amazingly priced. iPhone 4S, which has on-par guts, retails for $650 and the Vita will only be $250. Well, iPhones retailing at $650 is kind of hard to call a true price point since it's priced high to pressure you to buy a cellphone contract. Maybe it'd be easier to compare to an iPod Touch which starts at $200 with 8GB of storage built in. Clearly Sony decided to pick $250 as their price point, which is a good one, and they probably cut internal storage and went with memory cards as a way to pretend like they're hitting that price point. The fact is you need a memory card and it's going to cost you as much as $150. To me the cost of a Vita is $350 because I'd want 16GB of storage. It's all about wrangling numbers because the only number people want to compare is the MSRP of the console itself, not the total cost of initial investment to consumers. Also, you're right, Sony's investment in Blu-ray makes it likely that PS4 will still have a disc drive. Microsoft probably will not want to license Blu-ray and will probably go DD. This: http://www.joystiq.com/2011/10/21/report-these-are-the-vita-games-that-require-a-memory-card/

@P4, I think GTA IV is a prime example of a game getting reviews far better than it should have because reviewers were rating the name more than the game.

Yeah, it just seems like reviewers are afraid to give the big franchises bad scores at the risk of alienating the fanbase.

Agreed on the power and temperature thing. I don't see how you can say that cost wont be a struggle considering how huge of an issue it was with the PS3 and to a lesser extent the Xbox. You see it now currently with the Vita. Yeah, but how are they going to keep it out of the $500 range? Certainly blu-ray drives are cheaper and that will really help. Low to mid range HDD's remain mostly static so that probably wont change. Maybe they won't put in cutting edge graphics and CPUs and that can retain some of the cost down. I personally think they're going to cut out the optical drives and go digital now because it'll save money on the console and they'll make tons of money on the digital sales. Anyway, You can't cram a GTX 580 and a Core i7 into a PS3 for $300 or probably even $400 and even if you tried it'd be huge and have a nice big power brick to go with it.

I'm so skeptical of certain franchises that aren't allowed to receive bad scores. Other franchises would include Halo, COD, GTA etc. I take reviews on games like Zelda pretty lightly from sources I don't fully trust.

It didnt' have an internal HDD like the Xbox, that was a cost that MS had to eat. also, the GC was released a year after the PS2 and the PS2 price dropped to $200 shortly after the GC was released so I dunno. How much would a GC had cost if it were released a year earlier?

Well, if we're discussing the cost of relative hardware then I think the hardware of the console certainly is more important than when the actual system hit the shelves. We're not comparing the cost of a PS3 to the cost of a SNES today are we? The Wii is just a slightly beefed up GC which was underpowered when it was released. If it's about EVERY system included in each generation why did you leave out 3DO, NEOGEO, and other expensive systems? I agree, TN, the cost isn't getting overly out of control, but it's creeping up. Also, another thought that occrued to me was the initial investment cost of a console. When you bought an SNES you got two controllers, a game and you didn't need a memory card. A PS2 with an extra controller, a game and a memory card would have cost $420 if I recall correctly. The cost of hardware was going up so they reduced pack-ins so help maintain the perception that costs weren't going up. It's kind of like how the Vita is $250 but comes with no internal storage so that Sony can hit that magical $250 number. Oh, and one final note: I don't believe that Nintendo or Sega ever sold their initial systems at a loss the way that Sony and MS do so the actual cost of hardware is not equal to the MSRP on a console at launch.

that 7th generation number is highly dubious. The Xbox 360, core version was useless without a $40 memory card and only a very small % of people bought it. The PS3 $500 model was discontinued after the initial shipment and I don't know anyone who would consider the Wii a 7th generation console, at least in terms of hardware. A more real number would be $400 for the Xbox and $600 for the PS3 and that'd leave you with an average of $500. Also, it's a bit strange to discount the Saturn from gen 5 but then include the DC with gen 6. If you didn't do that you'd go Gen 5: $390 Gen 6: $304 And also, if you really really wan to nitpick you could clearly make a GC was lacking features of other consoles and brought the cost down a little.

So, there's an argument to be made for inflation adjustment and I get that. I don't know what numbers to use for Voodoo 2 cards launched for a max of about $300 and Geforce 2 Cards launched at a max of about $350. There didn't used to be a $500 card like the GTX580. So if you inflation adjust that maybe it's comprable. If you want to compare console launch points we could talk about how the PS2 dropped in price from $300 down to $150 after a couple of year but the PS3 only just now hit $250 after 5 years on the market. I'm not saying it's a huge price differential but cards certainly aren't getting any cheaper. You get more performance out of today's cards but I"m just saying that if you're comparing mid range then to mid range now or high end then to high end now everything is getting more expensive. The fact about power consumption also remains so you have to factor in the huge power supplies that go with the ridiculous graphics cards now too. If you thought the power brick on the 360 was bad just you wait. So yeah, was never trying to argue that you can't get more flops for your buck these days, was only pointing out that if you're comparing what high end cards cost or even mid range cards cost across years those prices are creeping up not down. Certainly console prices have gone way up. $600 PS3 launch anyone? Sony's not keen to make that mistake again.

A Radeon 9800 went for $499 back in 2003 and benchmarks about 300 in G3D . A Radeon HD 6970 goes for about $350 and benchmarks about 3100 in the same test. FWIW You're comparing fastest card on the market then to a fast card today. GTX 580 ran over $500 at launch and your dual GPU fastest cards on the market are closer to $700-800 so I don't think you're making a true apples to apples there. Additionally I remember the Radeon 9800 fetching quite a premium because it was "the" card for Half-Life 2, it's why I bought mine.

I make a detailed post and talk about how graphics cards are more expensive. I even posted pretty pictures in color. You then make a blanket statement. "Graphics cards are getting cheaper". You don't respond, You don't reason or anything. You just make a stupid blank comment. Then you go stupider and accuse me of not responding with details or reasoning completely missing the irony. Wake up, get over yourself calm down have a milkshake and relax. It's just graphics cards we're talking here.

Johnny, you made a stupid statement and then backed it up with all of nothing. Why don't you bother trying to make a point rather than just blindly disagreeing with me like you always do? Yeah, but you've got to make concessions. You can do somethings in one game but not in another because you're dedicating resources to one thing or another. Better tech means being able to take what a bunch of different games to well and compile them into even bigger better games. It's kind of like what Mass Effect has done this generation that wasn't possible last generation. Also, Ray tracing and voxels are probably not going to be helpful in the near future from what I've read.

What are you talking about? Hardware is getting cheaper, not more expensive. What are you talking about? Also, as shown in the video I posted earlier, graphical enhancements will be more than simple textures and AA. Bokeh depth of field, tessellation, Ambient occlusion, real-time local reflections, parallax occlusion mapping advanced AA hardware techniques and a lot of other hardware effects which are unavailable right now. Also, I don't know if consoles will ever do 60fps at 1080p with 4xAA on all games. Games are about tradeoffs and they could run games at 1080p 60fps 4xAA right now but they choose not to in favor of using the processing power on other things. I don't know why the next gen would necessarily change that.