The fact is those were the words of MS themselves about how they manipulate the perceptions of their competitors and the industry. NO elaborate conspiracy theory required…your attempts to paint it as one is the more difficult part to believe given the testimony at the trials. Legal depositions and evidence and all that. I’m not the conspiracy theorist but you are being an MS apologist .. instead creating convoluted explanations in exchange for the black and white trial evidence of how they stack the media. Add-in their convictions for multiple monopoly abuses and their ongoing abuse of the ISO process in regards to OOXML. It’s called a pattern of behavior…not a conspiracy theory. Nice try though

Your gaming store analogy statement doesn’t ring true either because the same situation applies of more games available in Europe…so if what you said is true we would see the same results everywhere. And we don’t. The one BIG difference is MS has significantly more connections and influence with the American media and retail sector than with European ones simply based on it being their home ground. And that’s were they put the most money and resources for influence. Back to the trial documents.

The “all good but not great” comment about those PS3 games in particular is evidence of YOUR pro MS loyalty that you claim is my domain.

I didn’t pick or not pick any console out of loyalty to anybody. I picked it based on our needs and what was best for us. Everything I posted about that type of MS behavior I knew about last time when I bought an Xbox – so much for loyalties.

Your the one with the conspiracy theory about me because your loyal to MS and want to discredit anyone that doesn’t chant their party line. You can’t believe people make choices based on objective evaluations and not based on “loyalty” to any corporation. Learning and dealing with multiple systems that are increasing in complexity is why it’s only one console this time around. Plus the PS3 does so much more than games that the 360 is moot in terms of time availability.

After objective evaluation the PS3 was simply better. Blu-ray movies, Blu-ray games, 7.1 sound, lossless sound, blu-tooth, wi-fi, memory card slots, HDMI, free PSN for EVERY member of our family, HDD laptop re-use, more on-line players, dedicated servers, content sharing on multiple consoles. That was my loyalty – the best product that innovated and pushed ahead and gave us the most choices. It’s doubly funny because given the lead the Xbox had over the PS2 I really expected the 360 to be closer to the PS3 than the PS2 would be able to jump. The PS3 turned out in the end to be the visionary product instead and the 360 which is a rehash of the Xbox with the FUD tactics laid out in those court documents as it’s crutch. Hey they could have just built a better product instead and then the PS3 would have actually been in trouble. And I would have bought it .. but a lousy product combined with their deceptions (HDMI, etc) = no trust/faith in delivering what they say.

Maybe next time they won’t dump an untested, high failure rate product on the market that’s an incremental improvement over what I have. Maybe you can pass on the message if you know anyone there.

Now people are beginning to see what was obvious to those that did their homework initially – not because of any loyalty to anyone – simply because it was actually a next gen product. Your missing the big picture – it’s about more than games now .. this isn’t the last generation game that MS is still playing. And Blu-ray movies + HDTV will be the decisive turning point to make that clear to everyone. Hopefully MS learns the right lessons instead of the wrong lessons they took away from the Xbox. They can’t afford to get it wrong again and get even further behind.

But I wanted to add to the list of industry pundit complaints… my mom just sent me a link today. It was to an MSNBC article that was titled something like “Thinking of buying Blu-Ray? Hit the pause button”. One of the points they tried to make in the article was that “most” Blu-Ray players wouldn’t work in the future as they weren’t upgradeable and were stuck at the now out-dated profile 1.0. They do mention the PS3 has a network connection, but they really seem to imply if you can’t update your player it will be worthless in a years time.

I’m definitely disagree with you on a few things, but it would be in bad taste to debate them right now. Keep up the great posts.

As for liar’s comments… I don’t even know where to begin. When people don’t support the console of your choice it’s so easy to believe there’s an elaborate conspiracy against it. There’s been plenty of negative spin from both companies and it’s part of their jobs… I don’t see why that’s a surprise. What does surprise me is why consumers confuse a product with something they feel the need to be loyal to. I’ll grant you that Sony isn’t usually portrayed very nicely in the press… but that’s usually because they haven’t had the best start so far. This isn’t to do with any people planted by MS who have somehow managed to spin the issue to convince the general public against their will. For the most part this is a simple and honest observation that the console that beat the XBox so handily last time around is struggling to keep up. I can understand your frustration but keep in mind it doesn’t do any good to try and pretend the negativity only goes one way. As an owner of all the consoles I’m constantly at odds with a majority of what anyone says. At this site, I’m usually backed into the 360′s corner to balance out a lot of negative spin… on 360 sites I’m backing the PS3. I read just as many horrible things about the 360 as I do the PS3. The difference is that most people move on from the 360s faults to some of the great games on the system. I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again… you can blame the PS3 troubles on secret MS “moles” planted to spin the public… or you can go to Best Buy as see the gaming selection and realize that the PS3 isn’t as popular because they need a wider selection of games. In the first year I’ve only seen a few really good games come my way (Resistance, Heavenly Sword, Drakes Fortune and Ratchet… all good but not great) but I haven’t seen anything that would constitute a system seller. Once Sony gets more exclusive good games and even one or two really great ones then I have no doubt they’ll be passing up the 360 in sales.

“add moderators of key forums squashing one side of the discussions to sway opinions.”

This is one of the sad things that will do lasting damage on the enthusiast community for years to come. Once AVS cuddled up to Amir, refused any experts to dispute his FUD and BS and dealt heavy moderation on negative HD-DVD and Pro BD threads it went from one of the most respected sites to a joke over the summer. I know other sites did the same thing but AVS for me was a regular stop that I now avoid.

Nearly all of them were gung-ho on HD-DVD being more widely accepted due to DVD being in their name a few years ago. Once Blu-Ray became marketed enough that people associated it with Hi-Def they switched to interactivity. Once BD started to catch up they switched to ‘completed spec’ argument. Since BD outsold HD-DVD over the holidays and snagged warner it became Digital Download. If you see a pattern here it’s ‘anything but Blu-Ray’. Follow the money and you can see who these guys really champion. Not consumers, that’s for sure.

From a sane prospective Digital Downloads will for several years be a niche market whose main competition will be rentals. With ISPs implementing soft caps on downloads, high compression rates where most Downloads in HD have less detail then upscaled DVDs and needing to buy a set top box that costs nearly as much as a Blu-Ray player it’s not something that mainstream will be willing deal with.

With most consumers unable to set their own clocks on VCRs back in the day you really think buying a AppleTV, setting up WiFi, leaving your PC on to stream the movies and not being able to loan them out or watch them on any other device then the ones set up on the accounts are consumer friendly? And don’t forget that AppleTV (while not the only one but probably the best chance at getting acceptance) has been out for 8 months and flopped hard core, the new HD gimmick aspect is just throwing a band aide and fresh coat of paint on a failed product. Only now they are trying to sell it to a smaller market then it’s first round that failed.

The only people that will listen to the Digital Download drum beat are the ones that bought into other failed products, and lucky for us their isn’t enough of them to make a difference.

I try to ignore the ugly politics and mud slinging most of the time, but for occasions like this, where there is some widespread BS, something really needed to be said.