Michael Koby

It appears as though Fox News is prepping a news satire show in the vein of The Daily Show with Jon Stewert. Their idea stems from the fact that the Daily Show skews the political right. So Fox News feels that to be fair and balaced they need to produce a show that skews the political left.

Here is what the political right does not get about the Daily Show. First and formost, The republicans have been in power of the White House for 6 years now and they have had control of the House and Senate for probably somewhere around 8 years. What this means is that the republicans have been in the political front for that long. They are in power and therefore they are an easy target. I expect this to change in January when the Democrats offically take over the House and Senate and begin their new sessions. Secondly, The Daily Show goes after everyone. The point of the show is that no one is off limits.

The Daily Show does not “pick on” the political right in fact Jon Stewert and company have no real love for either side and pick on both sides pretty equally when they can. When you have a ton of scandals on one side for a month or two, well guess what, that’s the first thing to get used for target practice.

I think the idea of creating a “right wing” version of the Daily Show is a bad idea and only serves to have both sides seperate more. While I agree that we need a two or three party system, I also believe that by causing giant rifts between the factions makes it incredibly difficult to get things accomplish for either side.

[Technorati Tag: Commentary]
[Technorati Tag: Television]
[Technorati Tag: Politics]

The Playstation 3 from Sony is here. There has been a lot of news over the past year surrounding the PS3. It was going to be released at one time (March 2006) then kept getting pushed back. Then there were debates over its actual capabilities. To make a long story short, Sony consistently shot themselves in the foot when it came to the Playstation 3 and I think that it is going to cost them in the long run.
I hold this opinion for several reasons. The first is that they consistently changed the release date. This is generally bad for business when you keep pushing a release back. It has been proven several times in the past that continually pushing a products release back causes a decline in desire for said product. With so many push backs, I personally have not really cared about the Playstation 3 since May or so.
Next on the list is price, $600 for a game system is a little pricey. Even though you are getting a fully functioning Blu-Ray player, the device is still primarilly a gaming system and I believe that charging six hundred dollars for the system people are actually going to want to buy is just ridiculous. Six hundred dollars is pretty pricey when you consider that you can an xBox 360 with wireless for 500. The price is just too high to attract the general public. Also, the general public will not understand for a little while that you can play high definition movies on the Playstation 3 as well as play next generation games. The term “Playstation” is engraved in the genreal public’s mind as a gaming system so your basic mom and pop are not going to understand that you can buy it to play high definition movies on. Besides, later down the road, a stand alone high definition player will probably cost a person less than the cost of a PS3, even after price drops.

Finally, the Blu-Ray format. While I prefer the Blu-Ray format over HD-DVD, Sony has pretty much based their future on Blu-Ray and that could be a huge downfall. The Blu-Ray format is more expensive to produce than HD-DVD, leaving game makers a higher cost to produce the game for the system. Sony is notorious for this kind of thing. They come out with a format that is technically superior but will not license the format out, which would in turn cause the price on the format to come down. They did this with BetaMax, MiniDisc, and Universal Media Discs (UMDs). The UMD format was killer, you could fit an entire DVD quality movie and even a few extras on what was basically a MiniDisc but it was not marketed correctly. The high definition formats have been at war for what has probably been 2 years now and we are no closer to a definite winder in that war. Blu-Ray is the better format but at the moment, Sony is the only one utilizing it. Not to mention the Playstation 3 will probably be the only Blu-Ray player out before the end of this year.

I do think that the Playstation 3 will experiance some level of immediate success. With hundreds of thousands of people lining up last Friday to purchase one you can easily see that. But the people that stood in line and waited over 48 hours to purchase a Playstation 3 were going to buy one no matter what. They are the faithful, the early adopters, and the sometimes even the insane. Where I think that the Playstation 3 will fail is in the long term. The XBox 360 has already gotten a foothold on the general public and the Wii has already gotten better reviews than the 360 or the PS3 for its games. Time is going to be the true test of the Playstation 3’s hold on the public.

I do not want this article to be all doom and gloom, I do think that Sony has done some things right with the PS3. Including WiFi in at least one version of the console and making their online gaming solution free are two very important things that are going to help them. The fact that the Playstation 3 is a Blu-Ray player is going to help somewhat, when you consider the cheapest HD-DVD player available right now is around $450. I also think that the PS3 will have some killer games and that’s really what it all comes down to, is the games. Though only time is going to tell just how well the Playstation 3 does in a next generation world.

[Technorati Tag: Commentary]
[Technorati Tag: Video Games]
[Technorati Tag: Playstation 3]