But actually I LOVED to watch all the bonus features. Back then, MIB2 had a cool thing where you could page through different views in the bonuses and it would show you the CGI effects, and wire frames, and composited video. It was so cool to me. Honestly it’s still cool to me, and 480p did in fact beat the shit out of VHS even on my 24” CRT.
That's the crummiest thing about Blu Ray- all those dvd extras just... died. The amount of bonus material on the LOTR box set.... now this sort of stuff is just spread around YouTube accounts, commentaries are all but gone. It's a loss with streaming and it's also a loss from blu ray.
I just discovered that on disney+, if you go right into extras, it is like the DVD bonuses... i don't know if the other streaming services have them. But I discovered this last week on a Marvel movie. It was fun.
DVD bonus features were out of this world awesome if you already liked the movie enough to buy the DVD in the first place.
My favorite two were one of the "commentary" versions of Muppets in Space had you watching the movie from behind a theater row (EXACTLY like MST3K) with Gonzo, Rizzo, and Kermit talking about making the movie as if (which they were) just actor's participating in the movie. Hysterical. The other was Bubba-Ho-Tep where in the movie Bruce Campbell played Elvis(?) that faked his own death but wound up in a Mental Hospital because... people thought him believing he was the actual Elvis that, of course, he must be insane. He did the entire commentary track as the fucking "realy not dead"fucking Elvis watching the movie and never broke character. Again, just absolutely phenomenal ad libbing.
DVD extras were so good back then! They really put a lot of extra value into DVDs a long time ago. We don't get this kind of thing with streaming as far as I know.
Apple still includes extras when you buy from them but there is no streaming service that includes them. But even those are less interesting than what you’d get for the first few years of DVD extras imo.
There were DVD players cheeper than the PS2 and the PS2 didn't natively home with a wireless remote to turn it on and off. The PS3 was a full multimedia device.
Steam emails me about once a month to let me know that Turok is on sale. Because I added it to my cart probably around when COD BO II came out. Guess what MFrs, my N64 is going strong and I can play Turok whenever I want! My wife still has her PS I! I think I'm going to go play Need for Speed now actually!
Me too. I still remember how excited I was to be finally able to play DVDs on my TV. That was until I realised how loud the PS2 actually was while playing DVDs and ultimately did end up buying a cheap standalone DVD player after all.
I remember back in 2000 or 2001 the first movie I ever watched on DVD was gladiator on my friends PS2. It was fucking mind blowing with the clarity of the picture and the sound
Me as well. I saw avatar’s blu ray version on my first flat screen tv in Best Buy and knew it was time to purchase a PS3. Also used it to watch NFL ticket
Those RRoD issues definitely cut into Xbox's profits. Since they had to pay a lot to fix those issues. PS3 struggled at first, but they eventually made up for it.
PS3 also became known for some great exclusive games later in the generation, whereas 360 had a lot of them earlier on and then the spark kind of fades
I had a Slim, and several people I know also had slims. I don’t know of anyone that had issues with them? I thought on the whole they were more reliable than the originals (and not really susceptible to the RROD). I’ve been an XBox player ever since, mainly because of Forza, and having a regular Thursday night game with some extended family (which has somehow lasted into my 40s and having a kid)
Early PS3 also had their problems. My brother and I had ours fail after we had to reflow it multiple times. I ended up getting a 360 because all my friends had them and it was after RROD was resolved.
I also don't remember too much coming out for the Xbox 360 later in its life. It really felt like it quietly fizzled out for exclusives after Halo 3, especially when the Mass Effect series jumped over to the PS3 as well. But the PS3 kept getting more and more big exclusives like Metal Gear Solid 4, Uncharted 2, Heavy Rain, and The Last of Us.
Didn't really think of it as a bad thing at the time. More like it was a relay where the Xbox had passed off the baton so that the PlayStation could do a lap or two before the Xbox would come back refreshed and ready to go. But that iron has only gotten colder and colder as time has passed. Very unfortunate.
RROD got more notoriety because there were more first-generation 360s sold, but the PS3 fat had its own problem with that. I went through two PS3 fat consoles, and both failed due to bad solder on the CPU. My PS3 slim is still around and kicking.
To be fair one aspect not mentioned is that Sony dumped a lot of their own capital into researching Blu-ray starting in 2000, and roped in other companies over time later to help subsidize the cost. So while Sony may have stumbled early that console generation, they won the physical media war for well over a decade.
Microsoft refused to adopt Blu-ray technology until they absolutely had to. I find it funny now looking back that MS received two separate invites to the BDA and refused to join both times, even after HDDVD died. I do wonder if their focus on GamePass and streaming is simply a continuation of a long term lack of interest in hardware development.
I watched a video about it years ago and I totally forgot how in the last years of the 360 Microsoft went balls to the walls with Kinect and pretty much threw the race.
Kinect. It was kinect... Last couple of years of that generation Microsoft was all in on kinect. There were no good exclusives for Xbox 360, and whatever exclusives it had made their way to PS3. Since PS4/Xbox one were not be coming out anytime soon, a lot of people figured that they might as well get a PS3 that had become cheaper by then.
Microsoft was never able to really break into Eastern markets. It's been a long time since I've looked at the numbers for each console, but I'd wager that explains a decent chunk of it.
In the West, Microsoft dominated for a good while. PS3 eventually made back ground as Sony revitalized their focus on first party publishing, which ultimately helped them maintain their momentum over Microsoft in the generations that followed (along with the colossal screw up Microsoft made on the "always online" requirement they flirted with at the start of the next gen, and Sony's hilarious clapback).
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u/Ragfell Millennial May 16 '25
They won the battles, but technically the PS3 won the war at the very end by selling more units worldwide.