Gaming & Culture —

Breaking PS3 news: It will play games. Maybe

Do people even care that the PS3 is a video game console?

In terms of a system launch I've never really seen anything quite like what the PS3 is going through in the press. Most of the coverage given to the console has been talking about the price, or the specifics of the technology inside. We're all worried about the Blu-Ray drive, and what it may mean for movies and how much it will affect the fight between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. We talk about the Cell and if it's too complicated for it's own good. Because of this system I now have the word Octopiler in my vocabulary. People publish reports using other reports.

I can't go through my list of links every day without bumping into a new story about the technology of the system, looking at the nuts and bolts of how it'll be put together. It's interesting, I guess. But none of it affects me. I don't put systems together, I don't design them. I play games.

I don't know why all the emphasis, and I do mean all of it, has been about the tech. No one is talking about the games. Everyone is out there reading page after page of technical information, and the arguments on forums now look like they're written by engineers. This isn't making us better gamers, in fact it's doing the opposite. I think this is going to be something Sony is going to have to attack.

They simply have to start talking about games. Right now people are talking about the PS3 as a movie player and a technological widget, not as a videogame console. This is supposed to be the primary task, and I don't think consumers are being given that impression by anyone in the press or even from Sony themselves. We have to keep in mind that the vast majority of gamers will be playing the PS3 on a regular definition CRT, without ever hooking it up to the internet. Most people are interested in playing games on it.

I think that's why it's hard for me to get excited about the PS3. I want to sit in front of one, with a controller in my hand, and play a game. I want to see some gameplay footage of what the games will actually look like. I want to know what games on it are going to keep me interested. This is designed to play games, and that's what most people will primarily use it for. Unfortunately no one is talking about it.

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Channel Ars Technica