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PS2 Demand Will Not Be Met
oMaT writes: "An article @ CNN states that Sony is having problems purchasing as many of some components as they need. They state that the projected 1m units to be shipped on Oct 26 will actually be more like 500,000. They also hope to have the demand met after the holiday season... Jan-Feb. Bummer." I've heard that if you want to pre-order one, you better pay in advance, as it isn't looking good. Personally, I'm just gonna play the new Zelda, and wait and see what happens with the PS2.
Seriously, I've always thought console gaming was overrated; until I played Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Now with the new one on the way, the N64 in my house should keep me busy for another month. Heck, maybe we should all re-live our youth. download MAME from www.mame.net and get all the ROMs you want from www.mame.dk - Man, it takes me back to when gaming was all about the game and not just fancy graphics and surround sound. I lost 2 hours last night just playing all those different versions of Pac-Man (Ms and Jr., too!)
How much is the PS2 expected to cost(at retail, not inflated price)?
And how is development going? I just remember all this jazz about developers were having troubles making use of its power, and that it's game wouldn't even look much better than Dreamcast for a couple cycles of development.
And since Dreamcast is backwards compatible with PSX through Bleem...I'm not yet seeing any reason to buy a PS2.
I hope they have some good first-party games planned...why pay 300-400$ for a gaming system worse than my PC?
I'm not buying the whole parts shortage excuse. How long has Sony been gearing up for an American PS2 release? At least over a year now? And they're just now learning they can't make their original shipping estimates, a month from release?
I think this really is a cheap ploy to drum up hype for the system. Limiting the supply in October will result in a lot of disappointed people who couldn't get the console. Then, around December 1, you suddenly announce your shipping a new batch, and bam, they fly out the doors right before Christmas.
Quake.
That one word changed the video game market forever. Where did it begin? The PC.
From setting new multiplayer standards to giving the infrastructure for the 3d hardware accelerator market to be built upon.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
4 years ago I played my first linked PSX game. Wipeout, I was hooked. I loved that game, but night has nearly fallen over the day of the console, let is go in peace.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Now, granted, consoles may not be as cost-efficient compared to PCs today as much as they were five years ago, but if someone is looking for a great looking game with not an overly elaborate amount of depth and zero hassle, consoles are still the way to go.
Ñ'
This is purely manufactured PR put on by Sony in order to whip the public into a frenzy over its latest and greatest box. Its a perfect announcement because it a) rallies the people who might be interested to go out and try to preorder a machine asap (like they have a chance in hell) and b) provides great free advertising.
I think Sega did this last year with the Dreamcast, too. Can anyone confirm that?
Has anyone noticed any advertising for this machine yet aside from the endless hype on any number of web sites (including this one)? Right, you haven't. Cause their isn't any. Kinda strange for a major, major product launch that is going to happen in a month.
</hat>
As for "killer apps" for the PS2, launch games usually suck. Hard. Look at the Dreamcast launch. Out of 18 games there were maybe 4 good ones (NFL2k, Soul Calibur, Sonic, and
Thank god I ordered mine the day that ebworld.com preorders went up.
Pete
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And stability, actually. After a few hours battling Win98 over some issue, or configuring Samba for a few hours to get it just the way I like it, I find it very soothing to go down and use something that just turns on and works without my intervention.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is there a killer game for the PS2?
When I got my super nes, the first 15 games available all sucked. It wasn't till Street Fighter II came out that I felt the machine lived up to the hype. (About 6 months later)
I've heard that none of the PS2 Games on the market in Japan are killer games. Is this true?
-Peace
Dave
Free as in "the Truth shall set you..."
Console systems were only good when most people couldn't afford a computer. $100-200 for a console was better than $3000-$4000 for a computer.
Now that we've got sub $1000 PCs, I don't see the point in spending so much money for an obviously limited console.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
One look at that and you'll know one of the major reasons people will be purchasing PS2s... (Backwards compatibility and Final Fantasy X are the other reasons for me...)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Actually, in the world of video games this is THE MOST effective marketing technique. You get the stories on the evening news showing parents lined up out the door to get one of the few PS2's... you see a story about some guy who paid $1,200 for one at an auction... it creates hype, excitement.
Nintendo did this beautifully with the N64 in 1996; it became THE HOT TOY that holiday season (actually second, next to the even-harder-to-find Tickle-Me-Elmo's) for one reason and one reason only: limited supply (see the law of Supply and Demand for details). Ten years earlier, when all the buzz was about some game called Zelda that everyone was excited about, they announced a chip shortage that would limit supply. The people standing in line for the post-shortage supply were legion.
By the way, it later turned out Nintendo invented the chip shortage story. Yes, it does work. Don't be surprised when Nintendo does the same thing with GameCube, and MS does it again with X-Box.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
Look. A month ago, Japan raised its primary lending interest rate from 0% to 0.5% (out of national egoism, more than any other reason, but that's another post altogether). This makes it more expensive to obtain the loans necessary to finance large manufacturing operations, so it's entirely natural that Sony should feel the pinch when it comes to getting these machines out the door. It's as simple as Sony not building another plant in time. That's all.
Cheers,
Froid
And on Oct25 some guy says Ready,Set,Go, and on the 26th, 500,000 units are ready to ship?
They've probably go 2,000,000 sitting in a warehouse already. Like the Kernel said, "Never give them too much." (or something like that, I never was a big Elvis fan).
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I fully expect stupid people to pay $1500 for these things on eBay.
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
http://www.penny-a rcade.c om/view.php3?date=2000-09-04&res=l
o/~ Join us now and share the software
PS/2 is the latest and greatest from IBM! noone has licensed it, and it will soon use OS/2! This is the product that will return IBM to market dominance! It uses lots of exclamation points, too!
:)
oh, wait; no slash . . .
I saw the title and immediatly thought why would anyone want to get an IBM PS/2 now?
PS2 games are selling in Japan in a lot less quantity (in terms of the ratio of games sold to machines sold) than Sony would like. And since modern game systems are sold very close to cost (being the razor handles), and all the profit is made in manufacturing the games (the razor blades: proprietary format, monopolistic manufacturer, or why else would we have triple-edge razor blades after all these years? fresh patents!), this is not a good thing for Sony.
Since DVD has already become well entrenched in the USA, and we already have plenty of cheap crappy (and hackable) DVD players, we don't need the PS2 to for that.
Nintendo got it right when they decided not to pay the $20 per unit licensing fee to the DVD consortium for the N^3. Why confuse customers with a half-assed DVD player when you can concentrate on making a good game system without strange hard-to-program hardware? (Anyone remember the Atari Jaguar? Like the PS2, it also had "wierd" hardware that was difficult to write code that could use it to the maximum potential.)
About the only thing you can rely on is playing most (but not all) PS1 games, so the customer droids won't mindlessly sell them off all their old PS1 stuff simply because they can't comprehend the idea of owning more than one game system at a time. And if they're playing used games... then Sony doesn't get to sell new blades! The difference is real razor blades wear out, but CD-ROMs don't.
Personally, I think most of the PS2 sales are going to be blindly on the hype of being the hottest latest thing. Little Johnny wants it because all the hype makes it sound like the most shining golden heaven thing in his current world. Little Johnny's consumerism-brainwashed mother will do everything she can to get one so her son won't grow up with a horrible inferiority complex just because he didn't get some stupid game system on its release date and then grow up to knock off liquor stores and go to jail.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I saw this a while ago on ZDNet Gamespot... it's probably good news if you haven't preordered yet.
WalMart and Target have not initiated a preorder campaign for the Sony PlayStation 2. Both retailers will be selling the console, games, and accessories on a first-come, first-served basis. For those who haven't preordered yet, these major department stores may provide the largest supply of PS2 consoles on launch day.
Oh, and we've known about this shortage of parts for some time now... if I'm not mistaken it was discussed here before, but I could be wrong.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
What is Sony's aim with the PS2? To be THE platform of this generation of consoles as the PS was to the N64, Saturn generation. To achieve this aim it needs to sell lots of machines and convince the good developers to get titles out for it. If Sony could meet (as I personally am sure they would have been able to) the full demand for PS2 for Christmas then there will be a very saturated market instantly. If they cannot meet the initial demand they get publicity for this (demand outstrips supply), then they get people interested in seeing the PS2 and all the games that have been released (people buy more games because they actually have a PS2 to play them on) so that when the stocks start to come back in they will be more likely to sell more games with each unit (if I'd been waiting 2 months watching my mates playing their PS2 I'd be a lot less likely to buy it with only 1 game). End result they have a publicity boost (just to be sure everyone knows about it), followed by constant sales stream with an initial unnatural boost of games sales (where the real money is and what the developers want to see). The only downsides are that they have to wait a bit longer for some money on the hardware (the units they didn't sell before Christmas) and that their main resellers can't have the same Christmas boom but Sony wouldn't care about this because all they want is year round strong sales of games.
"PS2, not just for Christmas"
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
It says the following at the end:
So, by Xmas, there will be just as many units as originally planned and nearly twice as many titles.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
I will agree that this is all part of Sony's marketing hype to make the PS2 seem like it was molded from a single piece of gold but we all have to remember back to the original playstation. Back when the original playstation came out in the states the first generation model had a very easy way to bypass the region lockout. "Swaptrick" was what it was called. After this first batch of around 2 million units was produced (serial number on the swaptrick playstation's was U58XXXX-XXXX) Sony caught on to this swap trick and they disabled it for future versions. This certain playstation was a hot item before a modification chip was developed. Since this was around 94-95 when internet was just starting out it was hard to find one of these playstations so import shops were selling it with a $100 markup. So what I think sony is trying to avoid here is having a widly released first generation in America. Cause you know how much Americans love their piracy and illegal importing!
After someone eventually cracks the protection scheme allowing for playing of imports (something that sony doesnt like) which will inevitably be within a month or two. They will change the system to close the security hole. SO HURRY AND BUY A FIRST GEN PLAYSTATION AND MARK UP THE PRICE!
drug law enforcement is modern day witch hunting.
The PS2 uses Rambus (kinda figures, Sony embraces new, unproven technology like a straitjacket on a psychopath). Does the Rambus boycott factor into this at all?
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Mind you, who finds the timing of this just a little suspect? A couple of months before the solstice-oriented holiday rush, people are told "oops, we're going to be short some units". (Implied: "better buy early".)
Just a thought, but I'll be watching to see if there's a miraculous appearance of components just in time to meet the end-of-year demand.
-TBHiX-
I'm don't buy that theory though, although i'm not dismissing it either. There is some sort of an electronics parts shortage, so that could very well affect Sony's production. I'm not a manufacturing engineer-type person, but i would've thought that Sony would have secured the amount of parts they needed to meet their desired output.
In any case, I'm guessing this will peak the demand for them - pre-orders will be flying out of the door. I, being a poor college student, will hold out until the price lowers. Justin
Every console release I have ever seen (at least of consoles people want) has always had these stories before their release. Here in Ireland we always get REALLY screwed as the UK is always short and anything around ends up there first.
Imagine Sony had all the PS2's required to satisfy the Christmas demand, there would be no mystique or charging over to your friends to see his. This is all about fueling demand for the PS2 and ensuring no-one bitches about the initial price-point. Once the Christmas rush is gone (with the stories of how Joe Schmoe payed $1500 for a PS2 for little Joey), we will still see stories of the first PS2's arriving and then a bit later about how the shortage still isn't quite over and all the time Sony will be rubbing their hands with glee as the false demand will ultimately allow them sell more devices.
Bottom Line: I don't believe for a minute that Sony could have any problems producing the numbers they would like to have, they have a lot of money and have had plenty of time to prepare themselves.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Well at least this playstation will meet it's delivery date.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
As for Killer Apps, I think GT2000 will be really nice (although not in time for release), and there are a bunch of other nice ones.
A supliment to the CNet article is found at Daily Radar.
Because you can't, you won't, and you don't stop...