I told Jason about this article a while back. Very interesting if you are a sony afficianado or PS2 or 3 owner.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/sony.html

Some Major Points:

Sixty years after its founding in the ashes of postwar Tokyo, the company that gave us the transistor radio and the Walkman portable music player is deeply wounded. Only once in the past five years has Sony's all-important electronics division posted a profit; during that same period, the company's share price has fallen by nearly half. Its hit products of the '90s – Handycams, WEGA TVs, VAIO computers – were succeeded by stillborn wonders like the AirBoard, a $1,000 videoscreen that could be carried around like a laptop, and the Net MD Walkman, a too-little-too-late attempt to challenge Apple's iPod. Neither this latter-day Walkman nor Sony Connect, the online music store The New York Times once called "Sony Disconnect," would have anything to do with MP3 files – only Sony's cumbersome and proprietary Atrac3 format would do. Now, having ceded to Apple the portable-music-player market, Sony desperately needs to stay on top in videogames. It's not just that Sony needs a win; PS3 is critical to its entire strategy.

Sony has always been at its best as a personal hardware company, coming up with nifty gadgets that delight consumers. In recent decades, though, it's become oddly fixated on imposing its own standards – Betamax for VCRs, the Mini-Disc for digital music players, the Universal Media Disc for PlayStation Portable, the Memory Stick for anything you can think of – despite the world's unwavering rejection of those standards. And Sony has never displayed an aptitude for software or had great success with networking, the key feature Microsoft has built into the Xbox. Yet Sony has to face Microsoft not just in videogames but across the entire panoply of home electronics, which Microsoft is determined to control through software. And Sony has to do this with cash reserves of $6 billion – compared to Microsoft's $38 billion hoard – while losing hundreds of dollars in manufacturing costs alone for every PS3 sold. Eventually, Sony's costs will come down. But in the meantime, Goldman Sachs projects, Sony will lose nearly $2 billion on the PS3 by the end of this fiscal year in March.

Sony lovers – and they are legion – have been watching all of this with awe and trepidation. It's not every day that a $64 billion-a-year corporation puts its future on the line. "It's very un-Japanese," observes Rishad Tobaccowala, who tracks the entertainment business as a future-of-media specialist at the global ad giant Publicis. "It's betting the company. If this thing bombs, there is no second coming. Everything else about Sony is a sideshow. This is the show."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=agjq_UwjQNiI

Sony PS3 will not properly play PS or PS2 games, thus another thing holding back the PS3, to go along with its high price and low stock.

So many problems for a system that was already delayed a yr. I'm thinking I might be getting the 360 instead of PS3. Especially now that Xbox has released an add on to play HD DVD movies. So that combined with the 360 being more readily available might make my decision easier.

I will really miss the Gran Turismo series. I was so looking foward to it.

A lot of people apparently still want PS3 though, judging by lines and the fact that it is selling for $1,500+ every time on ebay right now. (just the presell slips, which means they still have to pay the rest of the PS3 cost also).

Even the Wii is selling for $500 online. I sure hope I am able to get one Sunday morning.

Not only do you need a system, you need to get Zelda as well. I'm sure that will be the first game sold with each Wii sold.

Yeah, but at least I preordered it from toys r us. So I guess I will have games, but no system.

PS3 actually on shelves in some stores while the Wiis are still being snatched up.

In Arizona someone said that he saw 6 PS3s sit for 2 days in a mall before they were bought up. Still no Wiis to be found there.

Walked into Best Buy the thursday before xmas and bought a wii for my niece.