I mean, in theory, its supposed to look good. However, lets look at the truth of the matter: -People can barely afford 360 games and it shows (Pretty much all the sales at our shop for multiplatform games are for either the xbox or PS2, and the 360 games sell ok-but-not-great if it is a exclusive). How in the hell does Sony hope to attract people by making the price point 60-80 as rumored? No one besides the ones who have the system exclusively or have the money will buy multiplatform games, and many people will just wait for the prices to go down (Or piracy, whichever comes first). -The system itself is on Neo-Geo price levels. Unless you are a tech geek with cash, or someone with quite a bit of money, it is going to be difficult to buy it without using a credit card. Not to mention westerners and PAL areas can buy the 360 as a cheaper alternative for sports games/casual gamer games, and the Japanese have the Wii for those text based choose your own adventure/dating sim games. -Blu-Ray is a unproven media format that all but those who actualy know the specifics on it will care about. It may look good on paper, but will it actualy see widespread use outside the PS3 games and overcome HD-DVD? Will the market buy something so expensive (the movies) that they can easily get for cheaper on a standard DVD? I know many of you on the assembler message boards are fairly knowledgeable about specifics in hardware and development, but think in a consumer's shoes for a minute.
In short: Sony will most likely be fine. They probably can afford to lose some (or alot) of cash before bringing the system back into the green either with software or hardware sales. In long: I think it depends on how you define "succeed". Will Sony dominate the market instantly as they have been? Maybe not, we shall see. Will they sell enough to keep them afloat and on their way to making a PS4? Most likely, yes. This is not the end of Sony's gaming platforms. Between RPG's and Gran Turismo, they will still have some decent exclusive games. Am I saying it is worth the initial price? Not to me. I'll be waiting for a long time and many price drops for a PS3 unless something wows me out of my wallet sooner. A couple RPG's and Gran Turismo are not worth buying a $600 system (again, not to me, but I'm sure it is for others). There are plenty of people who will buy it, just to have the newest (or most expensive) gaming system on the market. But at the end of the day, to get a majority of those systems off the shelves, you want a good game to play on it. I know a handful of my friends can easily afford a 360 premium system, but haven't gotten one yet because of the lack of great titles. (I'm not saying there are no good games for the 360, just not a lot) But by this time next year, it looks as though there will be plenty of good games, and they will probably all have one. Back to the PS3 - In reponse to people complaining about the price of the PS3 back when it was first announced, someone here responded "This in't gameFAQs, most people here have jobs and can afford this easy." or something like that, as if no one should complain about the price on these boards because we all have a few grand just laying around for the next batch of hardware or that all our paychecks are fat enough to where we won't miss $600+. In my case, regardless of how much money I have available to spend, I'm not going to buy something that is readily available on the public market just to have it sit there and look pretty. I'm going to want some good games, and they'll have to be exclusive or else I'll be getting the 360 copy. Since the 360 will have enough exclusive games that I like for me to buy one of those. I am sure the exact opposite is true for some people. And I said "that is readily available on the public market" because I know I've purchased plenty of things because of their relative rarity and not because I want to use them all the time. I've tried to give my opinion while being open to both sides when responding to this. I hope this thread doesn't become a fanboy flaming war.
Good post, gaming247. In terms of succeed, I mean a domination that was common in the 3D era, and not flat out calling off their entire game branch (Granted, I have weird feelings that there is something going on at Sony that doesn't seem right...). Granted, I think I should clear up my statement a little bit. What I mean by games is this: People buy systems for different reasons. Some buy it for long games (RPGs and adventure games), some buy it for casual reasons (Sports, racing, etc), while others buy it for all around gaming. I get this weird feeling that the reason the Playstation and PS2 did so well was because it provided a medium in both the Japanese and Western market for people to play the games they wanted to play in all areas, at a afordable cost, and with extras (DVD player, backwards compatability). In terms of price, we can all agree that the system itself, for the most part, is expensive but not too bad (Since many people here are used to shelling out large amounts for development kits and such). Its afordable, but the game price is what may kill it in the long run. Anywho, just for the record: I love all three systems and companies all the same. However, I just can't shake this feeling that the market may split when it comes to consoles (360 being the dominant console with mainstream gamers in Western and PAL areas, while the Wii becomes the console for the Japanese market and has a strong showing in western areas).
It's going to be hard for sony NOT to succeed with such an established brandname, and the third-party push they have. If developers make games for the system, then its bound that a good amount of them should be of the good quality. Sales might be slow on a graph , compaed to the previous PS models, but in the long-run the Ps3 is a viable system , and as more and more games will be made, the chances that people might shell out the cash rise. Dont forget that sony could ultimately pack-in a couple of games on the Ps3 or via download , just to make it worth the while for the sceptics. Unlike the Wii's hype and freshnes (that I am afraid will run out of steam eventually in a few years) the PS3 is just another gaming console that should follow the general trend of being a gaming console - even more, carrying the PlayStation brand.
I don't see why PS3 prices are suddenly unacceptable when new PS2 releases cost $60-$70 too. The PS2 launch price was also lot more than we were used to. Actually an Japanese import PS2 also cost $550 in Europe when it was released. See, the PS3 is priced at the same level as the launch PS2. Prices will likely drop over time. However, I would question the build quality before price. I wish Sony would make $800 PS2 models with quality components instead of producing increasingly cheaper models with crap quality components. It will. HD-DVD does not do 1080p. Only in markets where legacy 720p and 1080i resolutions are established, HD-DVD has a chance. In markets where HD is not established (e.g. Europe) there will be mostly 1080p displays on sale over the next few years. BluRay is the only format that can deliver 1080p. They might or might not. I think movie rental plays a big role in this because purchase price is less an issue for rental outlets. Once people can rent BluRay it will be viable because rental is affordable. Even if the BluRay video format fails it's still good media to store game content.
Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are unproven, specifications and technical details will only matter to a marginal portion of the consumers, HD DVD will have a stronger brand appeal because it contains the letters DVD do you know a video format more established than that??? Sony will struggle hugely to get people to accept a new format with a name consumers don't know/don't care. PS3 will definitely help penetration, but as we learned from PSP the media is not the main driver for purchasing a console. The differences between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are marginal we are not in presence of huge gap like it was between VHS and DVD. Sure Blu-Ray stores more data and codec bla bla bla... At the end of the day the movies will be the same with the same extras no studio will spend more money to make Blu-Ray versions better than HD-DVDs 'cause it's a waste of money. Once the market has rationalised both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray camps, a lot of money will have been wasted for nothing. And IMHO the only company left to cry will be Sony. History has proven that the market only accept one medium per channel. Sony is just again banging his head on a wall. No matter how good their marketing department is, the added value of Blu-Ray over HD-DVD is peanuts and they'll have a hard time selling Blu-Ray to people over than technophiles which is not a huge portion of the pie. I like your point :icon_bigg true HD-DVD does not do 1080p, but you forgot to mention that 99% of HDTV currently on the market don't do 1080p either. 1080p is expensive too at the moment, so I doubt everybody will go for it in the next 2 years... I also like you calling 720p legacy it's funny how fast technologies get assimilated and aged. 720p is actually quite good and it seems that is becoming the de-facto standard for broadcasting. My feeling is that HD-DVD has the potential to succeed everywhere, the resolution at which a DVD will run will only matter/be known to a few. I don't spit on 1080p superiority but it is more targeted (at the moment) for an elite rather than a mass market whether Sony likes it or not. Blu-ray is just another Betamax/MiniDisc/UMD/SACD, how many times can you get wrong??? And yeah PS3 is expensive...too bad for MGS4...but I'll stick to my Xbox360. Sabre
Actually, HD-DVD can do 1080p just fine, most (all?) of it's films are encoded this way. I just think the initial *players* only supported 1080i. "The HD DVD format supports a wide variety of resolutions, from low-resolution CIF and SDTV up to HDTV formats such as 720p, 1080i and 1080p.[6] All movie titles released so far have had the feature encoded in 1080p (although the currently available HD DVD players do not have a 1080p output option), with supplements in 480i or 480p." from wikipedia
It seems that Sony has had a lot more misses than hits over the past few years... TVs, portable music players, the PSX, etc. I read an article yesterday about their new Mylo: http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/3355. The title? The Top 5 Reasons Why The Mylo is Doomed to Fail. It seems to show a trend of Sony being out of touch with their customers. Here's a similar article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/07/29/national/a113006D31.DTL And has anyone seen their new mini-PC? The one that you hold with both hands? It's literally impossible to use. And I'm the kind of guy who loves that crap. I actually had a lot of faith in Sony for the PS3. The had home runs for the PS1 and PS2 so I thought I'd give them the benefit of the doubt for the PS3. But looking over their trends in new products I've kind of lost my confidence. Also, expensive media systems have always failed...doesn't do as much as a PC, and costs too much for just games. They're going against the grain in my opinion. Everything that we've heard about the PS3 seems to be in line with their recent failures. But, still, they're Sony, the've put out some amazing products, so I'll wait and see what happens.
This is one thing I've never managed to wrap my mind around; how does a huge company like Sony overlook their obvious failures? I mean, you can ask any average guy what they think about Sony's overall plan for the PS3 and they'll say, almost without fail, "it's retarded" or something to that effect. I'd say the vast majority of people who are interested believe that. If anybody in the masses can see that, how exactly can a huge company --which certainly has more than enough resources to sample the public opinion to that effect-- completely miss the point?
Seriously. Because of Sony's current marketshare and dedicated userbase I'm sure the PS3 will do just fine. They are just getting bad press, but press nonetheless. Actually I should say publicity. There is no such thing as bad publicity and that is what they are getting.
How can Sony not realise how retarded it is? You can talk about facts, polls and what not, but enough people inside Sony feel that it's the right thing to do in thier hearts and gut without regard to evidence, logic, or intellectual examination. Sony is positive everything they've decided to do with the PS3 is the word of God despite all the cold facts to the contrary.
Interesting topic... All that I can say for sure is that Sony being the top dog will not last forever. Its the business cycle and all companies go through it. They become the market leader but then they eventually tumble. In time, the leaders in almost all industries bow down to a newcomer and the cycle just repeats itself. I think that this next series of console wars will definitely be an interesting one...
The one thing that I must concede about the PS3 is that if you can afford it, it will be really cool. On the other hand, if not many people buy it then third party game developers won't support it and then you won't have any good games to play on it. I'm sure you can expect a certain ammount of third party support because lots of developers have already made obligations, but it's possible those obligations won't last. Look at the Gamecube for an example. Remember when Capcom made a deal with Nintendo saying that Killer 7, PN09, Viewtiful Joe, and Resident Evil 4 were all going to be Gamecube exclusive?
The ps3 won't fail, but it won't do as well as the ps2 and psx. It's hard to fail with a brand so well-known. The brand isn't as strong anymore, and they won't be in first place again.
In any case, MS and nintendo must act swiftly and with a proper marketing strategy AND quality games at a decent rate to push SONY into the corner. Nintendo has played cards well until now, but as they re nintendo, they suddenly find a magical way to fuck up.
In all honesty i feel ps3 will be like sonys version of nintendo 64 as far as marketshare will go. It wont be a huge failure, but it wont do as well as previous generations. With its high price there will probably be fewer games produced as well. You have to understand that this is a company that thinks very highly of itself and was considered in the 90's one of japans biggest companies(their histroy is quite rich actually). However they are similar like apple, which is they want you using only their products and their acessories alone. This way of buisness has hurt sony in the long run. They are now outdone in tvs due to companies like panasonic and samsung making hd sets of better and cheaper quality. Plus it doesnt help that the ipod has killed them in the portable market, which use to be a big part of their company. So this whole blu ray deal thing is sorta their way of trying another effort to dominate a part of the consumer eltronic market again. I myself will be sticking with 360 as well. But honestly as its been said before, ps3 will have its group of people who will suport it no matter what. So i think it will survive enough to get by in the worse possible scenario.
" However they are similar like apple, which is they want you using only their products and their acessories alone. " -> the PS3 has an assload of USB ports just to be "universaly" compatible with off-the-shelf accessories this time around Sayin999, but you re right on this point regarding Ps1 and Ps2. on the no-matter-what support point..well nintendo has always had and always will have a no-matter-what support piece of the pie, more fanatic than the sony side for sure, but that hasn't helped them to be market leaders in the past two generations - just to stay afloat with the cube actualy.
Compred to the nintendo 64, the cube is a huge a failure no question. But the usb thing could be improperly used, if the ps3 is anything like the psp, its going to be extremely picky about what formats it will and will not accept. Plus just like the 360, some functions of the console do not support all usb devices. However i could easily be wrong and the system fully with ease supports any type of format. I wonder if the bar gui will be easier to grasp the 360 gui when you first use it.
Sony are suffering from corporate arrogance at the moment. Seems to be a natural occurence for businesses that are top dog for too long. That said, with the amount of guaranteed sales they've got over the coming years, they could release just about anything and people would buy it. It may start off slow but it'll pick up once good games get made.
It will do just fine, I am sure. Why? Franchises. GTA 4 on the Xbox360 won't do them any favours though.
