With Sony's announcement of the Dual Shock 3 (finally) dated for the US, I noticed a lot of complaints about the price. The honest truth is that I agree that the cost ($55) is a bit much for just a controller, but then I actually looked around and realized what a bargain we were getting. The non-rumble equivalent is $50, as is the wireless 360 controller without the rechargeable battery pack. And lest we forget the wii-remote and nunchuck combo, which clocks in at $60 for us by the time is all said and done. Add this on to $50 or $60 for a game, more if you live overseas. And while it does of course get expensive, it also brings up a magic number. So, how is paying for the most expensive controller on the market, a controller which by itself is more expensive than 99% of all game titles released last generation, totally justified? Just some quick math.
The average movie runs a little under $10 a ticket and runs a little under 2 hours. The average game is between 10 and 15 hours, usually on the lower end. The average DVD will run about $20-$25 and have about double the content of just the movie. So, clearly, what we have here is a situation where we as a people have decided that our entertainment is worth a going rate of $5/hour, give or take a bit for taxes. Now of course, some movies and games run long, while others go sadly short. We also have situations of walking out of movies, and simply not finishing games. In the end, it all pretty much averages out. So, by that means, we expect about 10 hours of use out of a 360 wireless controller, 8 hours out of a Wii-remote by itself and 11 hours out of a Dual Shock 3. The truth is, those are about the numbers each would put up for a single battery drain. Yes, we feel we should be entitled to controllers since they are, ostensibly, the cheapest and most disposable parts of the system. But, I would argue that they're actually the most necessary. Bad controllers can undo more gamers than a bad game; just ask a sore loser at any tournament. And if you consider it from the perspective of the $5/hour thing, then yeah, it sucks a bit to be double paying like that (triple, really, but the system at that $5/hour rate may be the only part of the trifecta that lives up to its value...and we don't have memory cards as a staple anymore), but at the same time, think about how long that one controller served you for. I know people who've had the controller their system launched with all the way through to the end. Whether or not these new Dual Shocks will make it all the way to the end remains to be seen. But the real problem comes in with what that $5/hour actually buys you.
Lets take the PS3, for example. The $600 model. $600/5 is about 120 hours of entertainment that that system owes you. So, since this is supposed to be separate from games and controller use, lets chalk that up to watching movies, or using the system for things that only THAT system can do, whether its download demos from your specific network, making Miis, etc. Think honestly for a second; can you really remember 120 hours of use from your console for stuff OTHER than gaming? If you have anything other than the little white box, I'd say it was possible, especially if you don't have any other DVD/Blu-ray player. Moving on, that $5/hour is supposed to net you around 8-11 hours from just the controller. We'll say 10 just to keep things simple. This is where it gets tricky, because there is NO way to use either the controllers or the games on their own. So what we have to do is tack on these 10 hours AFTER the 120 that the system promised us; not a difficult task since its impossible to use one without the other in most cases. Ok, so combining them, we have a proposed 130 hours of use without having touched a single game that you paid for. Again, this is 130 hours of demos, web surfing, etc on this PS3. It seems like a ludicrous number, but again, if its your primary DVD player, or if you're a big fan of demos, or if you even have any friends that have the same system, there's actually a good chance you could reach this goal. Then, of course, your average $50-$60 game should net you about 10-12 hours of gameplay, and anything above that is gravy. So there you go, a net investment of about $660 should end with you getting a total of 142 hours of entertainment out of the deal. Now, of course, this all comes with a gigantic implied "caveat emptor" (Let the Buyer Beware), and that is this; just like in professional sports, when you buy electronics, you are paying primarily for potential. Having paid for a PS3 allows you the opportunity for 130+ hours of entertainment, but if you play games you don't like, or you don't want the system and end up selling it, you'll be losing money on the investment. Now, when looked at through this light, while gaming still isn't the cheapest habit in the world, it ends up seeming a LOT more reasonable, price wise to pay $55 for a controller. And yes, for those of you that are curious, I probably will end up buying a Dual Shock 3.
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