It's Hardware Time!

I've been asking you guys to vote in the sidebar poll on whether you think the PS3 price cut will be a game-changer for the console war. If you want to know what the pro analysts think in terms of market effects and options for Sony's rivals, I've gathered up their perspectives over at Gamasutra today -- give it a look if you like that kind of thing.

The standout there is that they all seem to think it's Nintendo who has the most to fear from current market pricing trends. Guess we'll see, huh?

Following the announcement, I talked to Sony yesterday, too, about why 30 percent is the big number for the PS3 Slim in more ways than one. And now, up today is the portion of my interview in which the company denies it's angling for iPhone marketshare with the PSP Go's planned 'Mini' titles.

If you're skeptical of that, I am too [s'like, come on!] -- however, one can hardly blame Sony for wanting to avoid giving the impression it's publicly squaring off against the explosive iPhone. And there are, as the company says, plenty of alternate aims for the device that are not within the iPhone's jurisdiction.

I'm a pretty heavy iPhone user, though only a dabbler in iPhone gaming. I'm very excited about the PSP Go, actually -- I hated UMDs from the get-go, found the PSP too heavy and not portable enough even in the slimmed version, and only rarely found something in its software library worth giving the system regular use over.

But ever since I got my hands on the PSP Go at E3, I concede my sentiments are approaching outright gadget-lust -- that I've come to rely so heavily on iPhone as a lifestyle product seems to mean a device like PSP Go fits into my life better, and that correlation, at least, is something Sony is consciously capitalizing on. How do you feel about it?

The past 24 hours have been The Sony Channel for most media outlets, thanks to this long-anticipated and pretty big pricing news. Given that, it seems like bad timing for me to call attention to some Game Informer stats making the rounds -- the mag did a survey and calculated that an unsettling 54.2 percent of Xbox 360 owners have had a Red Ring. Does that stat sound plausible to you? With all due respect to Game Informer staff, I'll just go ahead and quote one of my Twitter friends -- it's "hardly Consumer Reports," after all.

So to keep it all nice and balanced-like, I'd like to direct your attention to a really fun interview late last week I got to do with former Microsoft VP of game publishing Ed Fries. He talks about his time overseeing the games division's transition from basically nothing but PC flight sims into the full-scale hardware/software house we know and love today, and it's a fascinating story.

My favorite parts of the interview are where Fries explains how the console got its name, the revelation that Microsoft never thought Halo was going to be particularly big nor iconic for the platform, and how candid he is about the amount of stress involved in working on the high-stakes front lines of the platform wars. Please do give it a read!

Bonus material!!!111 Get sexy PSP-tan wallpaper here. Get adorable PSP-tan wallpaper here. More console-tans than you can shake a stick at here.