"Welcome to Earth!"
That's easily my favorite line from the movie "Independence Day." It's a cheesy summer sci-fi flick, but that's exactly why it's so close to my heart. I've seen it far too many times.
With a hotly anticipated three-day-weekend upon us, it seems like the perfect time to pop out the recently released Blu-ray version of "Independence Day" and the video game adaptation released by now-defunct publisher Fox Interactive.
Yes, I actually paid money to buy this 11-year-old original PlayStation game.
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Tired of mandatory hard drive installs on PlayStation 3? Blame Blu-ray and DVD.
Capcom took a public stoning last month when "Devil May Cry 4" was released on PS3 with a mandatory 20-minute installation not necessary on Xbox 360.
Since then, Capcom VP of business development and strategic planning Christian Svennsson told me his company didn't realize the issue would "blow up." He says the company will take the response into account for future releases.
Figuring out why some games require these installs has been like pulling teeth. Publishers don't want to talk about it, and Sony won't come clean for them. I contacted multiple parties -- chiefly Capcom, Sony, and Ubisoft -- while researching this story and hit stone walls at almost every turn.
Nonetheless, we've been getting close to an answer, and everything comes back to a developer spending enough time to understand the unique characteristics of Blu-ray. It's Blu-ray's "fault," but not because it's slow tech. It's just different tech.
This is what I've learned:
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Today Sony announced perhaps the least shocking news of the year: the PlayStation 3 price drop.
Starting November 2 in North America, a new, cheaper 40GB model of the PS3 will be available in stores bundled with a "Spider-Man 3" Blu-ray disc for $399. Unlike the current line of 40GB PS3s, which are priced at $499 each, the new model doesn't offer backwards compatibility for PS2 titles. Jack Tretton, president of Sony Computer Entertainment America, told Reuters:
"We're choosing to focus on the PlayStation 2 consumer with the PlayStation 2, which remains incredibly relevant, and focus on the PlayStation 3 consumer with the new 40-gigabyte model and the great software coming out... Backward compatibility is a nice secondary consideration, but it's far from the number-one priority."
The company also dropped the price of the existing 80GB PS3 (which has limited backwards compatibility). Effective immediately, it is now $499, which is $100 less than the original launch price.
What do you think? Do you think shaving $100 off the PS3's price tag will make you more likely to pick one up? If you already have one, what do you think of today's price cut? Does the lack of PS2 backwards compatibility matter to anyone?
