PlayStation 3 Production Costs Slashed

I reckon that they'll be looking to get production costs below $300 before we'll see a £199 PS3. The £250 PS3 may be on the horizon though.

Great that Sony have finally managed to cut the production costs. I have a 60Gb PS3 so I can play my PS2 games and have ports for external Memory Sticks. However, the 40Gb is still a great bargain.

Making it the cheapest blu-ray player on the market.

Now lets talk about games....err....

Sorry, no time to talk - I'm too busy clearing my schedule ready for Burnout Paradise in 11 days time.

Burnout Paradise? *throws up* now if it was more like the original Burnout then yes.

I cant wait for DMC4! Its only £29.99 for the collectors edition on the Xbox 360! £10 more on the PS3...as usual.

Oh and I found a way Sony would save more money...Take out the 2 USB ports on the 40gb, reduce the hard drive to 20gb :-D

If they took off the 2 USB ports that are left how would you recharge your wireless controller as you can't change the batteries like on the 360.

As someone who has played every Burnout to death, I can say with confidence that Paradise is going to be the best one yet. The Demo is awesome, but having explored it comprehensively, I cannot wait to see all of Paradise City.

What aspects of the original are not included in, and improved upon, in Burnout Paradise?

The Mario Kart ones

Something I didn't get in the demo, (and I may be missing something obvious,) but you know if you fail a race; is there a quick way of retrying it. Because it seems stupid having to drive all the way back to the start just to try again?

Nope, there is no way to return to the start of a race without driving to the start of the race. The dev team decided to do this so there would be no loading screens after the initial one.

From the Criterion Website

So hard-core man! Cutting a option from the seventies (or earlier) to cut back on loading times! It's like Nintendo but better!

Thanks for that. This has ruined the demo for me (maybe I've not given it enough time), but I've just missed out on first place in a race by a milliseconds quite a few times, to, then subsequently have to drive all the way back to the start is a royal pain in the arse. It seems like a backward step to me. I love Burnout but this is making me not love it. Imagine a FPS that if you got killed, you had to walk all the way back to your save position!

This new Burnout is nothing like the original ones infact its worse than the previous one, you can no recharge your boost and do free roam...oh sounds like NFS but wait the latest NFS is also f**ked up *rolls eyes*

Each to their own, I love it and, Like DoctorDee, have played every Burnout so far and loved them too. Although the "follow the pick-ups for a good score" crash mode in 3 was a disappointment and the "golf swing" launch meter in the crash mode in 4 in PS2 was a severe mistake, in general the basic mechanic is excellent and the impression of speed is second to none.

Paradise is an evolution of Burnout into the sandbox arena and I found it an excellent experience in the demo. As I said in my review of the demo the ability to freeride to discover the short cuts and jumps is a good addition, you can also practice the race without starting it.

Admittedly, having to drive back to the start of a race in order to retry it may grate after a while, but if it eliminates loading screens I'm willing to take that chance.

To be honest, I never really thought about this because I won the race in the demo the first time I tried it. Thing is, once all of Paradise City is open (in the full game) I'm sure there will be plenty of objectives between where you are and the start of the race. I'm totally looking forward to the open-free roaming aspect of the game. I have ADD, so I hate load times, and I hate doing the same thing over and over again. So the new Burnout looks like Paradise to me!

My experience was trying to win the first race 4 times and failing then spending 20 minutes in the option screen trying to find the restart or jump to button. I feel it's a massive omission that once you progress further in the full game will become a major annoyance. Imagine you've say completed say 70% of the tasks, so there all fairly spread out. Then having to race over half the map for a race to then crash near the end then have to drive half the way back just to retry it.
Once the initial novelty of the free roaming environment has worn off, it could be suggested that the whole map is nothing but a glorified option screen.