Nintendo Wii

Nintendo Wii

When is the Nintendo Wii set to be released? Are stores taking pre-orders for it yet?

Im gonna buy one for Xmas for my son. I really want PS3, but Ill wait until next year to get that.

Yeah, read that it was going to be 250...I thought it was going to be under 200. Guess they couldnt meet that goal. Still not a bad price for a new console.

Im going to buy it because my son would enjoy it....and Im fascinated by the new control. It comes with Nintendo Sports, which will have Tennis. I think it will be cool to be jumping around my family room playing tennis with the screen.

Plus it will have more games geared towards children......

Ill get PS3 next year after the 1st shipment is weeded out of its bugs

The base price of 600 for the PS3 isnt too bad...check out the new Game Informer....it has listed all of the consoles, their original price, and the inflated price. Youd be surprised.

250 bucks in the early 1980s for a game console? Thats a good amount of money back then for a game system.
And when youre paying over 1k for a HD DVD player.....paying 600 for a game system with the same DVD format isnt too bad.

Jerry, why do you think HD DVD is superior to Blu Ray?

Oh:

Quote, originally posted by CNN »
New DVD could end format war
POSTED: 1554 GMT (2354 HKT), September 26, 2006
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) -- The format war around next generation DVDs may be over before it has begun, thanks to a breakthrough from a British media technology company.

Britain-based New Medium Enterprises (NME) said on Tuesday it had solved a technical production problem that makes it possible to produce a cheap multiple-layer DVD disk containing one film in different, competing formats.

"Current technologies to create multiple layer disks mostly don't work. We've created a technology for mass production of multiple layers that does not suffer from the well known problem of low yields," said NME Chief Technology Officer Eugene Levich.

A low yield means that many DVDs coming off the manufacturing lines are not working and have to be discarded.

The production costs of a multi-layer DVD using the new NME technology are estimated to be around 9 cents, compared with the 6 cents for a standard single-layer play-back DVD, according to Dutch company ODMS, one of the world's leading makers of production lines for optical disks.

This 50 percent cost increase compares favorably with the current generation of multi-layer recordable DVD disks which cost 3 to 5 times as much to produce than a single layer disk, due to low yields.

The technological breakthrough comes one week after three employees at movie studio Warner Bros. filed a patent for the application of multiple formats on a single DVD disc.

"There's no collision between Warner and us. They patent the application, we are patenting the technology. These are complementary patents. I'm glad it's happened. Warner opened our eyes, because it shows they really want to do this and create multi-format, multi-layer disks," Levich said.

Time Warner is the world's largest media company and owns Warner Bros. Former Warner Home Video President James Cardwell joined NME as a board member last month.
Nipped in the bud?

Multiple format DVD disks can solve the emerging war between the two new high capacity DVD formats: Blu-Ray, which is backed by Sony Corp., and Toshiba-supported HD-DVD.

High capacity DVD disks are needed to store high definition movies on a single disk. Movies stored in high definition provide five to six times more picture detail than standard definition which is used in normal DVDs.

Hollywood studios have been choosing sides in the DVD format war, each supporting one of the two formats. Some have said they will produce films in both, in addition to the standard DVD format.

By putting the same film on a single disk in the two competing formats, movie studios can save money and consumers do not have to worry if they are buying the right disk for their player.

The technological breakthrough by NME was confirmed by ODMS.

"I can confirm this. We were very skeptical when NME approached us. We have experience with producing dual layer recordable DVD discs and the yield is below 50 percent. But their technology gives a much higher yield and also brings other cost savings," said ODMS Chief Executive Jadranko Dovic.

ODMS said it will have the first prototype production line using NME's technology running by early 2007.

NME said it had also created new technology for the machines which have to read and write the disk, which is another bottleneck with multi-layer disks. The current generation of DVD players can read up to two layers.

NME has created DVD disks with up to 10 different layers that were still readable. It has created its own player, but it is willing to license the technology to mainstream consumer electronics companies, Levich said.

Movies on a DVD are stored at different depths depending on the technology. Blu-Ray discs store information only 0.1 millimeter from the surface while HD-DVD discs store it at 0.6 millimeters.

Movies longer than two hours would need to be stored on two layers of the same format very close to each other.

Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Sony still pissed me off permanently with the PS2. lol

However, for what i wanted to do and how i wanted to set things up in my house, the PS3 was not a viable option... 600 bucks for something that didn't do the stuff i wanted it to do was a waste to me. Not true for all people, namely you Eric. PS3 just didnt integrate into my home network the way i wanted. *shrug* all good. it'll be interesting to see how well they do with it. sadly, sony's losing their ass selling it at the price they are with the cost of the components in it. it'll be interesting to see what that does to their playstation division in the future.

Damn man, the past tense on what you wrote is freaking me out...is it November and I missed a month somewhere? lol

This is in the newest Game Informer - Oct 06 on page 18
Basically factor in inflation - this is what you really paid for these consoles in today's dollars

Odyssey - $487
Atari VCS - 672
Mattel Intellivision - 838
NES - 376 with ROB - 471
Sega Master System - 369
Sega Genesis - 328
SNES - 297
Neo Geo - 1012
3DO - 986
Sega Saturn - 533
Playstation - 399
N64 - 258
Dreamcast - 244
PS2 - 353
GameCube - 228
Xbox - 343

haha sorry about that... its past tense to me because the decision wsa in the past. lol :ninjastea