Last modified: Friday, October 31, 2008 at 9:25 PM.
game-time-watch 
I'd be lying if I told you that video games weren't a factor in my willingness to start my Uncabled project. E3 this year proved to be a fantastic battle and a recent article on Next Gen's site points out something that's been bugging us all about the Playstation 3's unveiled specs...
[Kouji Okada] says the biggest surprise of E3 was "definitely the price of the PS3. As a Blu-Ray player it's cheap; as a game console, it's expensive. You might enjoy the games you get, though really. Is it a 'game machine' or an 'entertainment machine'?
The PS3 is too high-end an entertainment device for right now. As a gamer (albeit not as hard core as you lot out there), my time is very distinctly split between watching content and gaming. Only a minority of buyers out there are so gung-ho as to want both a hard-core movie system and a hard-core gaming system in one unit. Personally, I see the majority of home theater fanatics having only a modest interest in gaming, and the majority of gaming fanatics bittorrenting telecine transfers of movies.
Sony looks to be following a raw "Platform" strategy with the PS3 -- it's why they tout the longevity of the device because they're playing the long game where they get the true fans to buy at an initial high price, and hope that audience grows and price drops as time goes on, and that the machine specs are powerful enough to fuel interest throughout all of those changes. But unless Blu-ray takes off -- and that's been the number 1 concern of those analyzing Sony's moves -- this all falls apart. Unless people get behind the movie format, movie releases will just be seen as annoyances for an overpricing game console. And we're already seeing this play out somewhat on the PSP. UMD movies have continually muddled the game experience and come across as "the releases that should have been games."
Basically, a multiple medium device that's bound to content like a PSP or the PS3 fights with itself first and foremost. The Platform strategy looks as devices like these as places where more content can be sold. But it ignores the Experience strategy -- what the device means to its buyers -- and that's something Nintendo is gunning for full-steam with the Wii. It pits the Sony movie studio against the Sony games studio for the user's attention in the space of the living room. Is this really a great idea?
I think this is why Okada is noted to have wondered if "maybe portable games really are the future." He seemed to be focused on the confusion that will arise as developers try to work in the motion detection the PS3 and the Wii will provide, but I think it covers this whole "entertainment convergence" in general. All of it can just be seen as gimmicks. Mobile/portable games will be simple, focused and familiar, and will keep people busy enough.