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"PS2, is it all it's cracked up to be? Or are we being ripped off?"

On the 24th November, 2000, SCEE officially released the PS2. There was a mad rush to get your hands on one of these £400 machines, a few of these £50 games, £30 each on three of these controllers, £35 on one of these multi-taps, £30 each on two memory-cards.
Internet will be available soon on the PS2, it would want to be, considering I've already forked out £670, but wait, there's another £200 to be paid for a harddrive. That's £870.
I don't know about you, but I'm gonna start savin' my pocket-money!!!

Look at it like this:

You work at £5 per hour. It takes you 60 hours to earn the cash to get a PS2. (about 2 weeks). If you play your PS2 for longer than 60 hours your money has been well invested.

You earn £35 by 7 hours at £5 per hour, (a days work) and get a game. you spend 9 months playing it. (I'm still playing SSX and I got it November release day) How many other things can you get this kind of value from?

Dont you think the rewards justify the costs? Better value than a happy meal. The toy is more fun too!

Nope I don't think I've been ripped off. I paid £349.99 for a PS2 pack from Woolworths back in January. I got Ridge Racer V ( which I love despite some bad reviews ) the PS2, official vertical stand, an official memory card and the PS2 itself. Since then I've bought 9 games ranging in price from £29.99 - £36.00.

From this lot I've had some of the best gaming fun in years ! Never once, not even when my first PS2 became faulty after 2 days, did I ever think I'd been ripped off. Okay so it is a lot of money to play games/watch DVDs but it beats anything the PC can do. With PC games many developers seem to have forgotten to include FUN ! Games like SSX and Sky Oddessy don't exist, I like being able to play a game for a quick 15 minutes or so.

Back in August last year I spent £1500 on a new PC for games to replace my old P2 233 and yes, the graphics are good but thats all. Red Alert 2 was heralded as a supposedly brillaint game but its not, seeing as any mission revolves around making a mass army which is so big it cannot be stopped. B17, another supposed 'game' , is a graphical marvel but is it fun to play ? Yeah sure if you love staring at open sky for long periods between occasional gun fights...... Operation Flashpoint,well again its graphically excellent, but not exactly 60fps ! Its kinda fun for a bit but I still don't find it all that good as reviews say. I feel I was ripped off with the PC because the games are just not there anymore - which is why I bought the PS2 in the first place.

With online gaming and the promised HD expansion pack for the PS2 coing later in the year and in 2002 I just hope the PS2 online gaming experience can be better than that the PC offers i.e hopefully more friendly and not taken quite so seriously. These expansions will cost more money but again I think it will not be a rip off.

At the end of the day nobody forces you to buy a PS2 or to pay a certain price. If you are unhappy then don't buy it ! Even with the recent price drops I think we all still got value for money, at least those who paid the RRP did anyway :) I think that Sony's slightly delayed "next-Gen" games like MGS2, GT3 and forthcoming RE: Code Veronica, Time Crisis 2 e.t.c will allay any fears we've been ripped off. Me...well I'm starting to save because it looks like being one hell of a year for games from July 20th.

So the verdict is what?

Mr. Topic starter is clearly being ripped off, paying £4oo for the machine and £50 a game. But the rest of us who shop at regular stores (and not ones with "Massive increase on all products" signs hanging in the window) are not being ripped off?

It would seem that the issue has been somewhat dodged here. The over the top prices that have been quoted in the original post have been focused on. The actual prices have been mentioned but not discussed.

So...


Does anyone who is paying the regular prices feel they are being 'ripped off', or are you happy with your purchases?

The hard drive, as Sony stated will be released at $150-200, which means the same but in pounds for us, although they are expecting to release two smaller versions at reduced prices!!

where did you get those prices?

PS2
2 Controllers
Memory Card

£300


The mot expensive price I've seen is SSX for £45 but they start at £15 and all are about £35

The hard Drive will be about £100


worth it though!!!!!!

Sony would be stupid to not bring the platinum range to the PS2, after its success on the PS1.

Loads of people got their back-catelogues together when Ridge 1 and Tekken 1 was a tenner, and with early sales of the PS2 being limited to stock, the games on the shelves will be superceded by the tiome the mass market has the machine.

In Official PS2 mag #7 on page 139, someone asked about the PS2 Platinum range. Here's the reply that SCEE gave ;

"As for Platinum, there are a number of different criteria that a title must fulfill to be ablt to launch in the Platinum range, one of them being that a title has to sell a specific number of copies in 12 months. Therefore it would be at least 12 months into the life of PS2 before we'd be in a position to set up a similar range"

So my take on that is that we've all got to wait a few more months at least.

Where did you buy your PS2 stuff from berzo ? Sounds like you were seriously ripped off ! Official RRP for PS2 was £299.99 and £50 a game ? Yikes !

You do have a point, and it is true, we always get ripped off. But, I forgot to mention this, why is it Sony didn't just put four slots onto the PS2, there's space! I hope they do release a platinum range, and they still might: the way PSX platinum worked was 1: after 'x' amount of a game was sold, it became platinum or 2: after 'x' amout of days/weeks/months after the release date it became platinum, and it is very possible that none of these standards have been met yet, considering people might be a little skint after the £400 bulge disapeared from their pocket!

Like everything toady, it costs money ( unless you steal but then you go to jail). You have to work to get the cash to afford the new games. What I want to know is do sony plan to have a "platinum" range for the PS2 as it was a great idea for the PS1 and would be appreciated by its owners.

If the PS2 wasn't good then people wouldn't buy them or they would sell it to buy something better, maybe we are being ripped off but in the UK we get ripped of with everything.

On the 24th November, 2000, SCEE officially released the PS2. There was a mad rush to get your hands on one of these £400 machines, a few of these £50 games, £30 each on three of these controllers, £35 on one of these multi-taps, £30 each on two memory-cards.
Internet will be available soon on the PS2, it would want to be, considering I've already forked out £670, but wait, there's another £200 to be paid for a harddrive. That's £870.
I don't know about you, but I'm gonna start savin' my pocket-money!!!