$599 for a PS3?!

Wow. $599. That’s a lot. I didn’t even buy my PS1 until the price came down to $199. And here I was thinking the XBox 360 was overpriced at $200 less. All I can say is that this better be one hell of a gaming console, and have some really spectacular games.

Lately I’ve been playing Neverwinter Nights on my Mac instead of the PS2 (or at least I was until I accidentally returned Disc 2 to Blockbuster instead of Doctor Who Lost in Time – The Patrick Troughton Years). Neverwinter Nights is mildly amusing, though still not up to the level of Summoner. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is probably better, but I can’t see buying a PC powerful enough to support it just for one game.

Besides dropping the price, what would the PS3 have to do to convince me to buy one? I can think of a few things:

1. Much better human rendering: I’d like all characters to look as good as Samanosuke does in Onimusha Warlords. I want full real-time rendering that’s good enough to make the humans looks like humans, not block figures.
2. No loading and unloading. I should be able to move smoothly from one scene to the next.
3. Fully spoken dialog, preferably including any customized text
4. Smarter enemies and NPCs. I’ve lost count of the number of games where I clear out a roomful of guards by luring them out into the hallway one at a time, or closing a door to lock half of them on the other side. Why is every random monster dumber than the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal?
5. Better combat: the interactions should be smooth and realistic: not merely swiping at air in front of each other. Something on the level of Dead or Alive 4.
6. Games with more plot, freedom, and characters

I don’t think I’m asking for anything I haven’t seen on the PS2 or earlier platforms. I just want the best parts of all the various games I’ve seen at the same time. For instance, my guess is that Capcom could only make the human characters look as good as they did in Onimusha Warlords on the PS2 by:

1. Severely restricting the number of human characters. I don’t think there were ever more than two or three on the screen at once, and usually only one
2. Covering up most of their bodies in clothes and armor
3. Locking the camera in each scene so the backgrounds could be prerendered.

I don’t want developers to have to make tradeoffs like this. I want it to be possible to have fully human characters that talk and think while allowing me full freedom of movement and vision. I want the playable parts of the games to look as good as the cut scenes. I am not going to be impressed by slightly more realistic trees and gibs. I want the people and the stories to improve.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 9th, 2006 at 7:37 AM and is filed under Videogames. You can follow any responses to this entry through the Atom feed. You can make a comment, Digg this story, or trackback from your own site.