Phil Harrison: We are under no pressure to drop the price of the PS3

I guess we should rename the title as "We are under no pressure to succeed" they are already number one why bother...

It'll give them a good lesson to be number two or three and bring us a much better PS4...

Looking at the past Sony is not the only one to bring out a disapointing system think PC-FX, 32X, 3DOups... Sega was having a laugh at the time :nod: though they were no number one...

Sony's done a right mess with the PS3, betting too much on Cell and BluRay which is fine if they can deliver, but next time they should rely less on emerging and unproven technologies and deliver what they promise to the market. Arrogance doesn't help either. But I can bet you the mammoth marketing machine that Sony is, will change the fate of the PS3. They manage to make PS2 a great success despite it being a meager upgrade to the PSX with a DVD Player...oh hold on...oh yes it had bilinear filtering this time. Really unimpressed with the PS2 when it came out after playing Dreamcast for a good year...

I think the original PSX is still their best product to date, the rest is rather uninspiring...

Anyway, I think the internet doesn't help either and allows everyone to make a bad opinion on Sony (me included) in the end all videogames company have issues when bringing a new product to market. Being mis-communication, manufacturing issue, supply issues or yield. Sony is well known to manufacture a lot of its parts for its products by itself being console, camera or camcorder while other companies take (almost) off the shelf parts to build their product. Cell is part of a bigger strategy than PS3 but that was a high risk to take and they had the balls to do it, making the assumption that it could do all the graphics...that was wrong. They pride themselves in their state of the art engineering but end up pissing the whole planet. :noooo: Adding to the difficulty to develop on the machine then everybody stops believing in Sony like rats jumping off a sinking ship. Oh hold on Konami and Square are still holding hard...

Nintendo with the Wii had a better approach, no silly number on polygons and megahertz or optical disc they just delivered entertainment. Nobody cares mainstream what's under the hood as long as it is fun and enjoyable. And that's one thing Sony forgot and one Nintendo manage to recapture, games should be about fun not technology, technology is just a tool use it wisely...

Sabre

 

How would you change things though? Enlighten us why don't you? ;-)

 

If you've ever set a Bravia up and done a full comparison with other branded models you'll be as shocked as I am that Sony are getting so many sales at the price they are asking. You can get better performance from less expensive screens, which just about sums Sony up at the moment. They may be cutting their costs left, right & centre but they sure as hell aren't cutting their prices.

The fact that Sony are facing such a huge uphill clamber is fully of their own making. They started the race with the most recognised brand name, with the most readily recognised gaming product. Such a brand name should have been their bread & butter and as such better treated. They clearly thought the name "Playstation" would save them from the series of increasingly incompetent & bizarre management failures. Sadly, no!

 

http://www.mcvuk.com/1000-PS2-titles-to-work-on-PAL-PS3

Possible price cut at launch?

 

The weird thing with that one is that the PSX was a complete departure from Sony's normal area of business. You can't take their success away from them. At one point in the recent past the name Sony genuinely meant you were purchasing a product with good engineering and design behind it. Being involved in sales a decade or so ago, it was Sony's rather superior attitude that has led them to this point. They automatically assumed their customers would continue to follow their technological lead, whilst several failures (leaving many customers out of pocket) turned the core of their buying public to refuse many of their new inventions fearing the same issues.

Sony radios never drifted off tune, could lock onto the most feable of signals and you could swear by their top class stereo amplifiers. Back in the 1970's the produced some stunning stereo equipment and wonderfully responsive recording equipment. They are responsible in the long run for the development of portable technology as they forced us to re-evalutate how, when & where we took advantage of certain technology. Sony laptops were built like brick shit houses. They invented some of the best audio/cd technology for gawd sake, so don't say they've been uninspiring to date as that is just failing to recognise the influence Sony has had as a company. They produced amazingly good DVD units, fairly good audio visual material and damned good TV sets. I still use a Sony portable for testing old consoles. It has been sadly abused for 2 decades and it has never faltered.

Sony has been pumping a huge amount of money into the development of robotics, which in many peoples minds might look cute and like a gimic, but in actually fact could turn out to be Sony's greatest area of engineering, design & profit in the next few decades. If Bill Gates is correct then robotics are at the same stage computers were when he devised Microsoft. He apparently sees a similarity in public / business comprehension to computers and how they could become a home product for instance.

The PS3 is not the cause or the root issue with Sony and it just looks like Sony are ignoring the problem once again. When they bought CBS, then Tri-Star & Columbia in the 80's they went from being the product developers to content providers. I think Sony genuinely thought they could produce the content on new, Sony specific technologies (such as MiniDisk) and the rest of the world would follow suit.

From being an innovative market leader Sony has become a top heavy, all encompassing company with little direction, little cross departmental discussion and poor management.

One area that Sony did excel was in the success of the PSX range. They placed many of their eggs in that basket so to then to treat the brand with such scant regard , well it really is a shame. People have forgotten just how important, influential & innovative Sony have been as a company. Perhaps they have kind of forgotten that themselves?

 

I think that is a bit over the top. It's not like Sony have taken a pocket calculator, tied it to a gameboy and DVD player with a piece of old string and said "So long suckers!". To say they treat the brand with such a scant disregard? The PS3 will make or break Sony and they have invested billions of dollars to try to ensure it is a success. They are also investing heavily in future of games for the format - Sony is now the 3rd biggest software publisher in the world (source: SPOnG http://news.spong.com/article/11947).

To dislike what Sony are doing with the PS3 is understandable, but keep it realistic. I see value in the PS3 design and I think Blu-ray and including the HDD as standard will prove interesting once the ball gets rolling and the cost goes down. Let's not forget that it has been out 4 months.

 

I would love to enlighten you but we all know there are people who lurk in forums just to steel our ideas. I know for a fact that a sony rep was in here mucking about tring to get us to buy ps3's. And that horrible psx

 

Damn you Taucias, you always have clear, concise and valid arguements wherever I post, will I ever be rid of you lol

Of course the PS3 SHOULD succeed. I personally think that if the console had been marketed by anyone other than Sony right now that it would have started off better, several months before it did.

Kevin Jowett's resignation just weeks before the UK launch tends to suggest that even senior staff are a tad dubious.

http://www.mcvuk.com/Sony-sales-boss-quits-ahead-of-PS3-launch

Suffice to say, I am neither over the top or melodramatic by nature so it might just be your interpretation of my comments.

I am prepared to acknowledge that most of the information I read regarding Sony seems rather stark at present. But if you think that Sony have managed their brand well recently and all of the negative press, plus Sony's own announcements have not damaged the Playstation name then I personally think you are mistaken - that is neither over the top or remotely unrealistic.

Sony just have to keep moving the goal posts: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/01/16/sony_passes_2m_mark/

And it still seems that irrespective of how long the unit has been on the shelf, things are rather sour chez Sony
http://money.cnn.com/2006/12/08/technology/personaltech/ps3sales/index.htm?postversion=2006120810

I shall now bow out of the thread before being tarred, feathered and burnt at the stake as a babbling witch lol ;-)

 

Sorry, not my intention to offend you in any way Paris! :110: It is more my irked reaction to the extreme responses I keep reading all over the web towards Sony. I see their stupid PR stunts and comments but it really is a lynch mob these days and I feel like I have to argue their case, which is an odd thing to do after just buying an XB360.

It certainly is a crazy time and I think now what Ken has been moved away and various shake downs have taken place in management we might start noticing more of the positive steps Sony are taking rather than the imbecilic blunders. :banghead:

 

don't be harsh on Ken, he was a visionary and made the company shitloads of cash so far. He also designed the SNES' sound chip, which gives him a happy sticker in my book

 

Will be interesting to see the complete 180 he'll have to do on this subject...

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6166644.html?part=rss&tag=gs_news&subj=6166644

 

LOL LOL LOL - I can see it now! A wee smiley badge to wear around work! :icon_bigg

 

No offense taken mate - I have a Xb360 too, add me to your list if you wish (gamertag: The1Parris). If I can't kick your butt in logical discussion, perhaps I will banish you in pixel form lol :110:

 

I really feel I should get a Gold account so I can kick some of the "old-men" here .. very tempting.. :lol:

 

I certainly agree with you, it will get better later on. But right now as I see it, the XBox 360 is so much better. Better games, better looking games, more games, cheaper system, better online gaming. One thing I've noticed about PS3 games I haven't noticed so much about any 360 games is the images seem "jaggy" or pixelated. The 360 games I've played all look very smooth.

I'm sure down the line I'll buy a PS3, but unless something amazing comes out for it I just haev to get, I'll wait till its far cheaper. And no, MGS4 isn't amazing.