Sure, a decent PlayStation 3 is going to set you back $600, or about $200 more than a comparable Xbox 360, but Sony has an excuse: It's future-proof. (You know, because no electronics are ever immediately outdated.) "The Price of the PlayStation 3 is high, but you're paying for potential," Sony CEO Howard Stringer said. "Obviously, it's a higher-risk strategy—as all new inventions are—but if the PlayStation 3 lives up to its total potential, I don't think anyone will be worried about Nintendo or Xbox's cheaper price." Anyone but the gamers, that is. But Xbox 360 fans who were hoping for a nice price reduction timed with the PlayStation 3 launch should stop saving their pennies: Microsoft says no price drop is coming. "There are currently no plans for a price drop this fall," Microsoft group manager John Porcaro said.
Register
Even XBox 360 made this mistake by making the harddrive an option.
Nintendo had a similar hardware variation on Nintendo 64 with the Video Memory Upgrade. But notice this is still a limited number of hardware configurations. Not the "Future-Proof" possible number of variations I imagine based on what they have released.
Take this a step further and look at what WinCE allowed in the early days. Different devices had different processors, not just in speed but in architecture! Then there was the feature of screen resolution. WinCE could support anything from about 320x320 upto 640x480 (and higher in some cases). The developer can't even depend on if the screen is square or rectangular.
From what I have seen WinCE devices didn't catch on until (1) the device hardware became more consistent and (2) the Compact edition of the .NET framework which removes the processor architecture issue.
Developers can always write code to use any and all of these features to the best of benefit but each configuration needs to be tested, every variation needs to physically be built and available for testing.
I think that Sony has made many mistakes with the PS3 and this is just one more.
James W. June 29, 2006