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I've got another one for you: PC gaming vs Console gaming

PCs have been around longer, have more options re: hardware & software, not to mention complete freedom for developers to charge and distribute however they wish, along with extreme modability. Meanwhile consoles are hampered by incredibly restrictive walled gardens, developer-hostile revenue splits and licensing and they only release new hardware every few years.

Given the obvious openness and freedom of PC gaming compared to console gaming it may come as a surprise that console games outsell PC games at ratios around 5:1.

(Source: http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=15831)

So now your job is to show that Android vs Apple is more like Internet vs AOL than it is like PCs vs Consoles.

The alpha didn't even attempt to do out of order execution until the EV6 chip...
The EV4 and EV5 chips were strict in-order processors.

The difference with the P4, is that the p4 was expected to run code that was originally optimized for a 386, whereas the original alpha had code that specifically targeted it... In-order execution works very well when you can specifically target a particular processor (see games consoles), since you can tune the code to the available resources of the processor... The compiler for the alpha was also pretty good, it could beat gcc hands down at floating point code for instance.

In terms of alphas getting hot, the only workstation i remember which had heat problems was the rather poorly designed multia (which used a cut down alpha chip anyway).. other alpha systems i used were rock solid reliable and i still have several in the loft somewhere - one of which ran for 6 months after the fans failed before i noticed and shut it down...

Clock for clock the alpha was pretty quick too, unlike the p4 that was considerably slower than a p3 at the same clock...
http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=11606 shows alphas getting specfp2000 scores higher than x86 chips running at 3x the clock rate.

A lot of people, myself included, think itanium should never have existed, and that the development effort should have been put into alpha instead - an architecture that already had a good software and user base...

http://www.pcvsconsole.com/features/consoles/playstation2.php

That's the bandwidth interconnect - you get more than that between the SPU and its dedicated memory on the PS3. The actual Memory data rate was far less than that, and it is trivial to emulate.

Very trivial - take a look at PCSX2.

In fact actual 48GB/s DRAM hasn't been available until DDR3, man. Well after the PS2.

all of the consoles have reached the maturity/decline slope in their product life-cycle.

Really? "For years, Sony has argued that its video game consoles have 10-year lifecycles" says this interesting article, which mainly focuses on PS2's 9th birthday. Also, I don't see a big decline in sales in this console hardware sales chart (which, admittedly, might not be too accurate, but gives you a rough idea).

Frankly, I don't think we're nowhere near seeing what can be eventually squeezed out of PS3 or 360 or Wii. Remember the difference between early vs. later PS2 games?

And I don't realistically see what major upgrades in the main units would be beneficial for either the manufacturers or gamers in the near future, apart from cutting manufacturing costs and providing new kinds of controllers and accessories and online gaming modes. The current consoles will be with us for a long time, and they will sell huge numbers for years.

Really? I think not.

Give me a setup that is under 300 dollars that can run MW2 at == levels as the 360 at 1920x1080 at lets say 30-60FPS consistently.

You can't go buy a PC that would run this game at a reasonable speed for the price of a 360, even today.

We can sit and argue over Console vs PC for games, but guess what? which "system" was the first to really take off for games? The good ole arcade machine with some buttons and a joystick. You and your buddies may have been playing Decent back in 95 when it came out, but guess what, the majority of the gaming audience was at the arcade playing Street Fighter II

Sales don't lie

A quick google turned up this:

US PC Game Software Sales
1998 - $1.8 billion
1999 - $1.9 billion
2000 - $1.78 billion (84.9 million units)
2001 - $1.75 billion (83.6 million units)
2002 - $1.4 billion (61.5 million units)
2003 - $1.2 billion (52.8 million units)
2004 - $1.1 billion (47 million units)
2005 - $953 million (38 million units)
2006 - $970 million

Or they just started making more of them, perhaps? The Wii still tops the sales charts in the UK, at least, and according to this site, sold more in the US in Feb 2009 than the 360 and PS3 COMBINED.

http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=11067

Looks like you're gonna need a new theory!

Ah, good point--I forgot about August. I was thinking more in terms of Apr/2007, May/2007, Jun/2007, July/2007 being four of the six lowest months on record for the system.

Haven't used Gaim/[Pidgin] on Windows, why bother? Nobody expects an application to close then there are multiple windows of that application open. Firefox and Internet explorer do the same thing. Its pretty standard. But when you close the last window on an application, you don't expect the application to still be running.

And what makes you expect the "window" to be the actual instance of the app?

Hint, Cmd-Q is not the same as closing a single window for a running application. Alt-F4 just closes a single window; if its the LAST window open for a running application, the application terminates. Cmd-q (according to the OP) will force the application to terminate.

Actually, Cmd-W is the equivalent to Alt-F4 (closing a window). And there are some apps where closing the last open window closes the app. (I remember thinking it odd the other day, but can't remember the name of the app at the moment).

The large number of posts of people complaining about incompatibilities indicate it's the status quo. (+16M entries there)

Right, because the number of google hits is an accurate metric of any problem.

But it certainly indicates at 16+M hits that it's not isolated to the rare individual. That was my point.

Considering there's 100s of millions of PCs out there, and top games sell around 1-2 million copies (there are some that hit 10M), I'd say most people could care less about games....

Again, brush up on your statistics. ...Nothing will change as far as MACs go next year with regards to gamers; Linux has more users than MACs, yet very few make Linux versions of games. A good example is DOOM 3; it was ported to Linux before it was ported to a MAC.

Let's change the stats to something that may mean something then. There's 300M people in the US. In 2005 there were roughly 38M PC games sold. That's roughly 1 in 9 people bought a PC game if we assume no one bought more than 1 game. My statement stands....

Doom ports are somewhat irrelevant, as I believe their servers were developed on Linux systems to begin with.

I used to do all those on a PC as well. I have several hundred dollars worth of software I no longer use, because even the default bundled Mac software handily beat them in ease of use and efficiency of time spent completing a project. Additionally, I've not had to much with my Mac's OS, unlike my Windows box which requires some sort of maintenance at least every 3 months to keep it running smoothly.

I'd argue MS is a victim of its own success here. Can you imagine the antitrust suits filed if they included a full featured image editor or movie editor? As far as your maintenance comment goes, please step out of 1998. WinXP requires nothing to keep it going just fine. I've had it running on my laptop for six years now without the need to reformat or do anything special.

Unfortunately, if you do software installs and uninstalls, you'll still wind up doing maintenance. If you like your machine to continue performing at the same level over time, you'll have to either install software or write scripts to perform maintenance on your system. You'll also have to reboot regularly depending upon what you're doing even if you're running pure MS apps. They have memory leaks, as does the OS, although the latter's main leaks have been plugged. Macs come with a set of maintenance scripts scheduled for regular execution out of the box, although it too lacks a disk defragmentor (yes, Macs fragment too).

FWIW, to play RE 1 on the Wii requires you buy a Gamecube memory card and controller (for around $30, if you get a new generic controller and used memory card) as RE1 is a gamecube game. If you liked the olden games (NES, SNES, etc.) you'll be pleased to know that the Wii can play natively any gamecube game, and can play many games fro

"Seems to me that PS3 is doing pretty well. It's outselling 360 in Japan and selling about even here in the States."

http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=11 067

In the US, the PS3 has been outsold on average almost 2:1 by the XBox 360 since its release date. And that does not take into account that the 360 had millions of units sold before the PS3 even hit the market.

"Sony is actually in a very similar situation to Nintendo right now. It's totally their game to lose."

Are you delusional? Sony is only beating the XBox 360 in Japan - they are losing to the Wii in Japan by ridiculous margins, and they are losing to the 360 and Wii in every other region I can find sales statistics for. If their sales continue to be lethargic they will never be able to build up a decent library of exclusives - first-rate games typically cost too much to make if you are going to release them only on a system with poor market penetration.

To be fair, I think the 360 is doing okay in Europe. And the PS3 is dead everywhere.

Sales wise it's doing slightly better, at least in North America. Go here and check it out for yourself.

As for bleeding cash faster, I haven't been following this. Losses-wise, don't confuse the Entertainment division losses with 360 losses. They're reported 400 million losses in the last quarter IIRC, but not all 400 were because of the 360. There's IPTV stuff in there, Zune and others.

You've drunk the anti-ms cool-aid a bit too much I think.

Um, the PSP never outsold the DS in total units since release. Ever. Prior to DS Lite it was getting owned, after DS Lite it's still getting owned.

http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=17 794
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#Handheld _war

What they're saying is more along the lines of "Violent games can sometimes be a trigger for violence," or more frequently "Violent games can increase violent tendencies, which may have an overall effect of increasing societal violence when systematically applied to a large population."

Why should we take them seriously when their argument is that "sometimes stuff happens" or more frequently "if we get a large enough population, someone will snap"? Other than, of course, the fact that the people making these arguments are rich and powerful and have Senators as lap dogs?

How many millions of people have played first person shooters since Quake? I'm waiting for someone to demonstrate a statistically interesting fraction of video game players that go on to murder people. San Andreas alone sold 5 million units by the end of 2004. Since then how many gamers killed people? What percentage of gamers killed people compared to the percentage of murderers in the general public? Can these people even demonstrate a correlation between gaming and murdering? Can they even back up their claim that games "can" cause violence with hard facts?

Well, Nintendo appears to be dominating right now, but if you look at sales in North America since it launched, you'll notice that Microsoft has sold 200K units more than Wii's so far and about a million more than PS3. So what does this mean. Since the Wii sales seem to be slowing down if you look at the chart, it means that the 360 and the Wii are pretty much going to be neck to neck in the next few months, until heavy hitters like GTA4, Mass Effect, Blue Dragon, Halo 3, Mario Sunshine and Metroid Prime 3 launch. I'm sure there's a few other AAA titles on the Wii coming soon, I just don't know about them. If the 360 can match the Wii in sales and Sony doesn't pick up steam real quick, the North American market will pretty be much owned by the 360. As for Europe, I can't tell. Japan is pretty much a no brainer. I bet the Wii and DS will continue to dominate there for a few years I think. Unless the Wii becomes just a fad. Which, I hope it won't be because I'd be sad to see Nintendo go away, but I wouldn't be surprised if people got bored of their Wiimotes.

Wanna bet?

Sure, lets bet. Unfortunately I'm lazy and only found numbers for WorldWide sales in 2004.

Video / DVD Sales - $20.9 billion
Portable / Console game sales - $18 billion

I didn't include hardware or accessories. So... I dunno is $20 fair?

The original poster alluded to a "port problem" - hardware sales and software ports are two completely different things.

Launch sales can also be deceiving. Fast forward two months and PSP sales sagged below both the DS and the Gameboy Advance SP.

The PS2 is still alive, with sony publishing first party games, and outselling the Xbox 360 (as of January 2007). It was launched in Japan in 1999, so it's creeping up on 8 years.

2012 for the next Xbox will mean Microsoft has done a good job. The thing is, at this point system power is not a selling point compared with system functionality. Console manufacturers have a distinct advantage in extending system lifetime because of the online upgradability built-in. Eventually they will need new GPUs but not before they've exhausted adding a lot of functionality on top of the current tech. It's way cheaper and more appealing than a whole new hardware launch nightmare.

In January, sure. It's February 20th. If it were Sony that still had their system sold out (think back to the PS2 launch), people here would be bitching about how incompetent they are. No matter what the excitement level, Nintendo should be able to meet demand by now. It is especially disappointing when you find out that they really weren't shipping nearly as many consoles as they said they were.

BTW, I say this as a happy Wii owner. I love everything about it except for the fact that any time I want to buy something for it I have to search.

You don't have to think it is. It is. Not only did it outsell the 360 and everything but the DS over the Christmas season... Even though it looks like it did so by a tiny margin, look at those software charts. Nine out of the top 20 for December and five out of the top ten for 2006. That's where the profit comes from.

Insidentally, look at the bestsellers for the 360 and for the DS. They each seem to have a hard time breaking out of their demographic niche, but the PS2 doesn't seem to have those barriers. If Sony can keep that up for the PS3, they'll be unstoppable again. If only their marketing department didn't keep getting in the way. They need to find out who all the marketing people they hired in the PSP timeframe are, and fire them.

Thats why most games don't embrace it- because most gamers (not all, but most) don't want it.

Big name and buzz can help, but it's certainly not required

There really were very few games worth playing released last year (that is, of the games released early enough to have any real impact on sales for last year), and the few that were are all on the top 10 list.

I wouldn't agree that it will take a PS4 to kill off the PS line- there's a lot of press out in all media that's already declaring the Wii as the winner over the PS3...

And vice versa if you look around such as this one which was referenced in What Analysts Will Be Buying For Christmas

...citing the early sales numbers...

Both the PS3 and the Wii have sold out all available units, with the Wii actually having a slightly longer average shelf life than the PS3 (probably due to supply rather than actual demand).

the $600 price tag is daunting... there's still a perceived price ceiling with consoles that the 360 seemed to actually push against, and Sony has jumped completely over.

This again is based on misleading information. No previously high priced console had a marketed predecessor let alone a market dominant one, which should only be seen to mean that there is a price ceiling for entry into the console market, which is why no respectable analyst has mentioned the price ceiling issue. Second in real/relative cost the PS3 is cheaper than any of the examples commonly used to illustrate the price ceiling.

The average person... looks at a game console, sees a $600 price tag, ... then look next door, see a $400 or a $250 price tag

Or the average person looks at High Definition Video players and sees $1000 price tag, then looks next door and sees $500 or $600, plus gets the ability to play the most extensive line up of video games currently available.

...and the semi-negative press about the PS3 being mainly for "true gamers" with HDTV's, and I would expect Sony's market share to fall considerably.

The HDTV market share is rising and a significant rate and will continue to do so until it is the dominant format. There is no doubt in anyones mind that HDTV will eventually be the dominant format. As the HDTV market share increases so will the desire for peripherals capable of High Definition output. Secondly the difference between "true gamers" and casual gamers shrinks every year, but that is just an opinion (from a casual gamer) so take it how ever you like.

...the explosive sales of DSs among non-gaming adults and the relative failure of the PSP...

If you consider selling 1 million more units a failure, or if you prefer 8% less in world wide sales, let alone the fact that the PSP is the 36th and 40th best seller in Amazon's computer & video games category (all be it well behind the DS, but certainly not a failure). The Idea that the PSP is a failure is yet another fallacy which is commonly passed.

And worse-case scenario for Sony, if they lose enough in system sales, and don't recoup the amount, the entire company may fail or at least downsize drastically, considering the problems they've had in other areas, such as laptop batteries and digital cameras

Beyond my previous comments, which fairly debunk the argument, I would like someone to give me examples of a $72 Billion in revenue company (30th world wide), or even close, that has failed catastrophically without the involvement of illegal activity. I mean look how bad the Valdez global catastrophe did to Exxon (#1 rank, $370 billion in revenue company).

It's nice to think that a company we don't like is going to fail or if our preferred manufacture and products ar

look what they did with the XBox, Web Servers, and Browser. Microsoft always tends to start slow with a crappy product and take heavy losses.

Your examples don't support your thesis:

1. XBox: Microsoft is pouring tons of money into the XBox just to sustain a distant second place status to Sony's Playstation franchise (look at the marketshare numbers here and you can see that PS2 maintains a commanding lead over both the original XBox and the new XBox 360). That's starting slow and staying slow.
2. IIS: According to Netcraft IIS is a distant second in the web-server market. I don't know what kind of money MS is wasting on that fight, but it doesn't seem to be doing them much good.
3. IE: Internet Explorer didn't start slow: it established an immediate foothold upon release and then rapidly ate up marketshare from IE over the course of about two years, almost all based on it's inclusion in the basic Windows operating system distribution.

So we have two products that started slow and stayed slow, and one that started fast and swept the field. Where is the example that started slow and swept the field? I'm not saying that such an example doesn't exist, only that you haven't provided it. I will say that, if such an example exists, it isn't from recent history (last 10 years or so), so the Microsft that was able to carry off the start-slow takeover is not the same Microsoft that we are dealing with today.

There is no reason to expect Zune to fare differently than either the XBox or IIS, unless Microsoft gives one away with every copy of Windows bundled with a new computer. Even then, there is no way to ensure that the free Zunes will actually be used: unlike IE, the Zune is of no use by itself (at least IE could display anybody's HTML webpage, not just MS-HTML(TM) webpages served by MS-IIS, though they have tried) and there is no way to force people to buy the Zune music even if they have a free Zune.

Worse, unless the Zune can rapidly take marketshare from both Apple and Microsoft's former allies in the PlaysForSure and Rhapsody coalitions, it won't get any of the network effects that it needs: music publishers will drift away from the music store and third-party add-on makers won't invest in Zune accessories.

As far as the smaller market for the Wii I think that is a little false. Comparing to the number of PS3s being released compared to the potential Wiis plus the fact that everyone is Wii crazy right now I think that the selling of them will be far greater than the PS3.

There will be more PS3s released. The PS2 has pretty good market penetration, and there were shortages at launch there, too. Same with the 360 (there are now over 6million sold, according to CNET). http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=11 067 shows that the Gamecube consistently undersold the PS2 and Xbox, despite launching later than those consoles (though the XBox only launched about 4 days earlier in the US). Unless I'm misremembering, the Gamecube wasn't plagued by quite the shortage problems that the PS2 was, and I have no idea about the XBox numbers at launch. Nevertheless, this shows that launch statistics may not correlate to overall success of the platform.

The problem I see is that this generation is unfolding much like the previous one, except that Nintendo has taken steps to significantly differentiate its console from the rest. It could be that this will prove to be a fantastic move, or it could be that it divides the market and causes Nintendo to lose out. Sheer numbers won't tell the tale, though, as I've shown.

Production of the PSOne was only halted March this year, 11 years after the playstation launch, and 6 years after the launch of PS2. I get the feeling PS2 will continue long after the launch of PS3 also. As the PS3 has PS2 on a chip inside it, I'd guess we'll be soon seeing another further slimmed down and cut price PS2 released.

I am confused with how you can say that PS2 was the weakest console of the last generation. It was probably the best. The only thing that Microsoft beat Sony at was online marketplace. GameCube was a simple console and did well in its own right, but PS2 was definitely, not by any stretch of the imagination, the weakest console of the last generation.

If you are going by hardware sales the PS2 was finally surpassed by the Xbox in late 2004 for 2 months, but since then, PS2 has dominated the market except for a couple of months. Just to show one other statistic. Last year in December these where the numbers of consoles sold by each of the three companies: PS2 = 1,500,000... Xbox = 415,000...Gamecube = 606,423. Source

In 2004, 6 of the top 10 video games sold were for PS2. Not to mention the top 20 for 2005 where 12 of the 20 were for PS2.

Not to mention the controller. Until the new generation Playstation and Sony has had the best controller overall. Even if you don't like PS2, you must admit its design is probably the top. It will be interesting to see how the Wiimote will stand up to it.

I highly doubt it. That particular comparison shows one year in the overall six year lifespan of the PS2. How much money was Nintendo making between 2001 and 2005, before the DS took attention off crappy sales of the Gamecube?

If you look at the statistics:

Cumulative Nintendo game sales to March 2005
Cumulative PS2 software sales to July 2005

Even accounting for the small difference in intervals, we can see that the PS2 has sold about 5x as many titles as the Gamecube (which makes sense, given that it sold about 5x as many consoles). Even if Sony spent a billion developing the PS2, and took a billion dollar loss on the production, Nintendo would still have to make enormous margins on each Gamecube to make up for the sheer greater volume of PS2 software sold. If we assume about $7 per game (which is a historical figure from the early PS2 days), and a $2bn setup loss, Sony made about $4bn in profit from license sales. If we assume that Nintendo makes about the same license fee per game, they make about $1bn on GC games. If we further assume the GC had no R&D cost, and they never took any losses on the console, Nintendo would have to make a profit of $136 on each of ~22m Gamecubes sold to offset the extra 700m PS2 games sold. That's absurd for a console that introd at $200, and quickly dropped to $150 then $99.

They may not play Pokemon, but they may play Madden, Zelda, Metroid Prime 3 and Red Steel ...

Yeah, but are they going to play Madden on the system that has Pokemon, or on the system that has Halo or Gran Turismo?

The fact is that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are all in competition for the same gamer-dollar.

If Nintendo is targeting the same gamers as Microsoft and Sony, they're screwed. Good first-party titles alone weren't enough to make the Gamecube anything better than an also-ran. Nintendo needs third party support, and that's exactly what they are so very bad at getting.

Super Smash Bros Melee: 3,765,500
Super Mario Sunshine: 2,886,000
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker: 2,435,500
Metroid Prime: 1,492,500 (Metroid Prime 2: Echoes: 758,000)
Pokemon Colosseum: 1,165,000
Total: 11,744,500

Where did you get those statistics? I highly doubt that they represent sales within the span of one year. Moreover, they represent a small fraction of the PS2's software sales. From the second article, software shipments for the PS2 for the year ending September 30 were 47m. Every single GTA3 game sold over 11m copies apiece, and Gran Turismo 3 is over 14m copies. As of September 2005, the PS1 + PS2 had a total of 1.87bn software units sold. According to Wikipedia, the PS2's share of that was a bit over 1 billion, which makes sense given that sales records put PS1 software shipments at 690m. In comparison, as of March 2005, Nintendo had sold 160m cumulative software units for the Gamecube.

The DS has been dominating in Japan, yes, but not so much in the rest of the world. Looking at the May 2006 NPD sales we see PSP > GBA > NDS. Looking at the April 2006 NPD sales we see GBA > PSP > NDS. Yes, the NDS has led the pack for the past two months (thanks to the DS Lite) it's still nowhere near the boost that Japan saw from the DS Lite.

Japan is simply a different market. The most extreme example would be the XBox 360 (which has performed weaker so far than the original XBox in Japan, yet has a rather intimidating market share in North America--enough that it will probably keep the lead through 2007 regardless of how strong the competition). Yes: I do expect the Wii to take Japan. In North America, however, I expect it to be initially third, with a chance (but no guarantee) of changing that depending on what kind of word of mouth it gets.

The DS has been dominating in Japan, yes, but not so much in the rest of the world. Looking at the May 2006 NPD sales we see PSP > GBA > NDS. Looking at the April 2006 NPD sales we see GBA > PSP > NDS. Yes, the NDS has led the pack for the past two months (thanks to the DS Lite) it's still nowhere near the boost that Japan saw from the DS Lite.

Japan is simply a different market. The most extreme example would be the XBox 360 (which has performed weaker so far than the original XBox in Japan, yet has a rather intimidating market share in North America--enough that it will probably keep the lead through 2007 regardless of how strong the competition). Yes: I do expect the Wii to take Japan. In North America, however, I expect it to be initially third, with a chance (but no guarantee) of changing that depending on what kind of word of mouth it gets.

The 360 wasn't in wide supply until about March this year (hence the April sales numbers). I've also read that the PS1 outsold the PS2 when it was released, you can find numbers here: http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=84 98 and I have seen some greater detail but can't find the link again. Oh, and ignoring that... you're comparing a $150 console with thousands of games to a $350 console with hardly any.

* Disclaimer, I own a PS2, XBOX and a Gamecube. Will buy into next generation when price drop and games arrive.

No the xbox360 regualy outsells the gamecube now. (but not much more) http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=82 72&page=24

Not any more

http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=82 72&page=23

Where DO you get your numbers?

Where DO you get your numbers?

'They're not losing money at present"

Huh? Methinks you ought to familiarize yourself with The Facts.

Sony is absolutely bleeding money. The game division was just about their only profitable division, and it is tanking bigtime at the moment. Another year or two of this and Sony really will be bankrupt or sold off.

This is why Sony is so adamant about getting BluRay into PS3 - the rest of the company needs the game division to carry them on their backs.

M$ smells blood, and they will be going in for the kill. As they said in Star Wars, "The emperor has made a critical error and the time for action is now."

I was amazed to see how low the sales numbers were for the GTA games on xbox.

Apples and oranges, I'd say. Have you ever seen the numbers for PS2 vs. X-Box? I'm not about to go wiki it up, but let's just postulate that it's something like 30 billion million PS2s for every X-Box (note: slight exaggeration).

Now, for every 30 billion million PS2s, at least five of them still work. So that's 5 working PS2s for every 1 working X-Box (note: source for final PS2 vs X-Box numbers: this thread).

Now, what percentage of X-Box users also own a PS2? Again, too lazy to Wiki it, but it's soemthing like 75%, if my memory serves me correctly.

So basically, the largest installed base gets an exclusive... and so then even when it does come out for both platforms, most of Platform B's users already have it on their Platform A. Gee, I wonder which platform will sell more copies?

Now, compare that to this generation, where, even if the X-Box (Circle) drops in price, only your Neo-Geo kiddies will have the monies for both consoles - and a lot of people have saved for an X-Box (Circle) without being able to purchase one, so they're prime Sony-bait - and I think you'll find that the split will be closer to 60-40 or thereabouts.

In conclusion, it's not the exclusivity period itself that determines final results. Rather, the install-base, and the "whatever-the-fancy-word-is-for people-who-own-both-consoles", play the biggest role in determining which console's version ends up selling more. Any doubts? Look at one of the GameCube "exclusives" that later came to the PS2.

Given the way the market seems to be shaping up, I'm betting sales figures will be roughly the same - assuming a relatively uneventful launch (neither good nor a disaster) for Sony.



--
My MOMMY knows I'm not a fanboy!

You get UMD Versions with every new DVD release of a movie.

Haha, nope. Hollywood studios cut support for UMD.


I gather the PS2 is selling well and still generating revenue, no?

It is generating revenue, but it is not generating profit. In fact, Sony lost half a billion dollars in the last 3 months, despite all the revenues from PS2 game sales.

And the manufacturing costs of the PS3 haven't even hit home yet. Sony is sunk.

Before long, DirectX 10 is going to be required to play any new video games. So if you want to keep playing video games and get all the features and whatnot, you are going to have to upgrade to Vista.
Uh, no.

First of all, Sony is definitely not using DX. As recently as March, Sony PS2 games were the top sellers:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6147802.html?sid=6147 802&sid=6147802

10 games on that list are PS2. 6 of the top 10 are PS2. The XBox 360 has only 4 games on the list, but they are all in the top 11.

I only found one source for these numbers, so they may be suspect:
http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=11 067&page=5
March 2006 US Console Sales
PS2 = 273,000
Xbox 360 = 192,000
Xbox = 83,000
GameCube = 63,000

Sony is doing just fine, and they are definitely not using DX.

As far as PC games go, DX has always been the biggest API, for obvious reasons: market share. If DX10 is tied to Vista, then that is no longer a compelling reason. What market share is Vista going to have at launch time, especially given that it is missing Christmas 2006, and all the bad press?

Game developers are going to face a choice:
- Develop for DX10, and target Vista alone.
- Develop two engines, one for DX9 and one for DX10. Target both Vista and XP, but double your development costs and support problems.
- Develop for DX9 or OpenGL. Target both Vista and XP, and possibly Mac OS X (if you use OGL).

I expect we'll see a couple high profile DX10 games that try to get everyone excited. The rest of the industry is going to going with the largest market share, and avoid DX10 until Vista is a significant market (25-50%).

"Back in 1998/1999 Microsoft was trying to determine where the next threat to their control of the home-computer market was going to come from.
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Now, Microsoft believes that their greatest threat comes from web-based systems so do they still believe that losing money on consoles is their best approach?"

There is some truth to that, but there is more to the picture than you are looking at.

M$ realizes that there is an end of the road to their traditional business model. THere is only so many improvements to an O$ and Office Suite that can be made. Eventually tehre is less need to upgrade. So this is why they are making some changes - first, by going to a subscription-based software model. This will help prevent the PC software well from going dry.

The next big change is to get into the consumer electronics business, and content distribution business (a la iTMS or even on-demand cable systems). Consoles are only a small part of this. THere is so much more, from PDA type devices, to media PC, to game console, to home media server, to media services like Xbox Live and movies/music on demand, and virtual marketplace. In short, M$ and Sony are battling not just about games, but for control of the heart of the digital home and digital lifestyle. You better believe that M$ will spend every last dollar in this fight, because they know that they will be the last man standing in a money war.

Here is another write-up I did on the battle for the digital home.

"On the other hand the ps2 has been enormously profitable."

Take a look at the chart. The hard data is there. There is a more detailed thread that has more info by quarter. All this info is from publicly available financial reports filed by each company.

After you strip away "revenue" (Sony always has big revenue numbers) by balancing it with costs, you get the real operating profits.

Here is the last 3 years:

Sony $1.252 Billion
Nintendo $2.747 Billion*

Also note the star, because Nintendo's lastest quarter has not been announced yet. It is expected (by normal precedent as well as forecast upgrades) that this quarter was huge, around the $500+ Million range. This would put Nintendo at around 3.4 billion, nearly 3x that of Sony.

And although Sony has turned out a profit for the last 3 years overall, it has very erratic quarterly behavior, with a few losing quarters recently, while Nintendo is always rock solid and consistent. Very intersting that Sony had a great unexpected 3Q 2005 at $500+ million, then recently announced that Q4 2005 was a $500 Million loser. That's a billion dollar turn around in 3 months, and the real hardware costs of the PS3 haven't even started yet.

Think hard about it and wonder why, with 80+ million PS2 consoles, and a zillion software licenses per quarter, Sony can still manage to lose half a billion dollars? The PSP is a money pit, and PS3 is a nightmare trainwreck of over-engineering and design changes. Even when Wii-volution launches, the costs will be low and Nintendo will turn a profit. They have only had one losing quarter in over 40 years of public trading.

Yes, Xbox loses even more money. But M$ is prepared to outspend Sony into oblivion. Nintendo is taking the smart route of getting the hell out of the way.

M$ can handle the enormous costs. Sony is barely scraping by right now with the hardware costs of the failed PSP. The PS3 costs and failure will be their undoing. Never underestrimate M$ viciousness, when they smell blood they go for the kill.

Here is an article I wrote last year about the coming decline of Sony marketshare in the game biz, and the resulting overall financial disaster for Sony Corp as a whole.

Oh and in case anyone wants real, comprehensive financial data, here is a chart that shows profits/loss for Nintendo, Sony (game division) and M$ (game division) by quarter for the last 3 years.

M$ can handle the enormous costs. Sony is barely scraping by right now with the hardware costs of the failed PSP. The PS3 costs and failure will be their undoing. Never underestrimate M$ viciousness, when they smell blood they go for the kill.

Here is an article I wrote last year about the coming decline of Sony marketshare in the game biz, and the resulting overall financial disaster for Sony Corp as a whole.

Oh and in case anyone wants real, comprehensive financial data, here is a chart that shows profits/loss for Nintendo, Sony (game division) and M$ (game division) by quarter for the last 3 years.

It's so crazy it might work. For every person who got angry or turned off by the name, there will be 10 people who are curious about what it means.

In the end, the acceptance of the name will depend on the success of the console, not the other way around.

OT, but I saw some posts regarding the financial strength of Sony and Nintendo. Here is the hard data. Sony is barely scraping by, Nintendo is very strong.

Sony
Operating Income/Loss per Segment (Q4 Ended March 31, 2006) (in millions)
Electronics: ($785) loss
Games: ($525) loss
Pictures: $258
Financial Services: $678
Other: ($88) loss

Detailed reports here.

Really? Show us some stats on that, because everything I've seen is that Gamecube did in fact end in third place.
http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=84 98

And Gamecube had a headstart. You Nintendoheads will make up any kind of stats to try and prove your system is the bomb instead of the kiddie toy that is it.

But I'm wondering if the mean the same xbox team that I am thinking of. If it is, then they better check the numbers again. (Yes, I know the numbers are old, but they are still relevant.)

For the longest time in Japan, even the original Game Boy Advance (the very first model with no clamshell design and a screen so dark you needed to attach a light to the thing to play) has outsold the Xbox. Microsoft's consoles have been a colossal flop in Japan.

And as you said, even the Gamecube is outselling the 360. Currently the DS is king, though....

http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=84 98&page=2

Worldwide Hardware Sales (End of September 2005)
PS2 - 96.01 million
Xbox - 22.5 to 23 million (unofficially estimated)
GameCube - 19.31 million
Game Boy Advance - 70.04 million
Nintendo DS - 8.83 million
PSP - 8.81 million
N-Gage - 2 million
PSone - 102.49 million

The figures are shipments (or "sales" to stores) using official manufacturer numbers, not from third party organizations such as NPD, Media Create, Chart Track, etc

Constrained by production? I seem to recall barely one-fifth of the 360s in Japan selling.

You'd be wrong. It sold over 62,000 in the first two days (some widely publicized early reports put it at a low 50,000, but they were wrong), and the country only got around 160,000 total. And I'm pretty sure in the weeks after it managed to at least break 100,000, but I don't really feel like crunching the numbers for such a silly debate (you can do it yourself here if you want, though understand the numbers run lower than reality). Not remotely awesome (especially compared to it selling out in the larger NA and European markets, where it definitely is being constrained by production), but also not remotely as bad as you claim.

Constrained by production? I seem to recall barely one-fifth of the 360s in Japan selling.

You'd be wrong. It sold over 62,000 in the first two days (some widely publicized early reports put it at a low 50,000, but they were wrong), and the country only got around 160,000 total. And I'm pretty sure in the weeks after it managed to at least break 100,000, but I don't really feel like crunching the numbers for such a silly debate (you can do it yourself here if you want, though understand the numbers run lower than reality). Not remotely awesome (especially compared to it selling out in the larger NA and European markets, where it definitely is being constrained by production), but also not remotely as bad as you claim.