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Rumours of Playstation 3 in 2003
aosgood writes "PS3 in 2003? Bloomberg's got a story
from some manufactures stating that they are to begin trial runs next month. All I can say is WOW. "Cell" is ready?" I've got my doubts on the veracity of this information - unidentified sources and all. But it does indicate that even if it's not this year, Sony may be rolling the 3 out sooner then previously thought.Update: 03/10 14:50 GMT by H : Yep Sony has begun denying it.
I somehow doubt that this (unverifiable) story is true. There may be some prototype units being made to test the new 'Cell' processor architecture, but the debugging cycle of a new processor can be time consuming. If the chip is still under developement, we won't be seeing the final unit this year.
Smells like vapor...looks like vapor...maybe it is vapor!
To be honest, I think the whole "Playstation 3" thing being released in 2003 is bull. I mean, think about it... The Playstation 2 was released with a LOT of fanfare. It was announced 2 years before, pictures of the unit a year before... If this is indeed true, I would be deeply surprised. Sony's famous for it's marketing and hype machine.
;)
I would know, I fell victim to the hype. I wanted one so bad that I wanted to trade my left nut for it.
(Thankfully that didn't happen as I was cheated out of a PS2 at Walmart, although I was able to pick a used one up a few months later for $125. Don't ask.)
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steve Wright
Whether Cell is ready or not, you still have to go through manufacturing trails, quality assurance, a big Japanese release (with requesite game titles), then a US release.
:)
Even with a reputable source like Bloomberg, the odds that Sony would have a US launch before Christmas would be long, in my completely uninformed opinion.
Sony may be winning the console war, but I'd say their hold on their lead is pretty tenuous. They need to keep people buying their systems.
My impression, and I admit it's from a pretty cursory overview of the console world, is that the PS2 gets its market share because of its market recognition (the name "Playstation" means "home console" in much the same way "Atari" used to) and its huge game library. Folks who are real graphics nuts are talking about how much the PS2 lags behind the competitors in terms of how "pretty" the games are.
A fully backwards-compatible PS3 would definitely help this, without losing their two main advantages in the market. A PS3 that isn't backwards compatible had better have some real big pluses going for it.
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
...for one reason only. PS2 is currently taking up the large share of the market as of right now, and sees now signs of slowdown. The only time that I think Sony would bring one out is when it sees imminent competition from the next consoles from microsoft or nintendo.
Have they sent out any kits to game makers, you can't sell videogame console without games.
Why would Sony shoot themselves in the foot like this? They're the current console market leader with millions installed, everyone's developing games for their system and they make money off of every title sold. Hell, in the console war, they're still selling a less powerful machine for more money than the others. All the while, Microsoft is bleeding on each Xbox it subsidises. So according to this article, they go and ruin it all by making the public think the Playstation2 is going to be outdated this year? I don't think so...
I truly hope the PS3 will be backwards compatible. Definitely for PS2 games - as there are many I'm sure I will still play for years to come. PS1 would be nice too, but I rarely play any PS1 games anymore - I've got a few kicking around (King's Field, Vandal Hearts, and Frogger for the wife) - but heck it's probably trivial for them to include PS1 compatibility so they'd better do it!!
One thing I would like to see that annoyed me about PS2- I think that they should've included the ability to partition off a small space in the PS2 memory card for a PS1 compatible storage area- it's a pain to swap cards (the PS1 cards don't always seem to like to fit as nice). If the PS3 has a HDD or higher capacity capabilities of some sort, I truly hope they allow this sort of thing for PS2 and PS1 media!
If there's any grain of truth to this story at all, it probably has something to do with a few prototypes. That would give Sony time to have some hardware demos ready for the next E3. Then the promotional onslaught we've all come to know and love can begin.
However, Sony are going to need to get PS3 out within a reasonable timeframe, simply to keep up with the Xbox. Right now, it's showing its age against the latest offerings and the only thing keeping it going is brand loyalty and a larger game base. Once MS catches up with the game base (particularly if it keeps buying companies and making Xbox-only games), the PS2 will start to lag.
Heck, even if the PS2 comes out relatively soon, it may not be enough; MS are already thinking about XBox-2 which could leapfrog the PS3 (NB: wild speculation here!). If the timeframe between PS3 & Xbox2 isn't enough, Sony are going to have some trouble making sales.
if Intel has taught us anything it is be the first with the worst.
And if the 3DO and Dreamcast have taught us anything, Intel was just lucky.
I wouldn't say that it would hurt them, but it's an expense that would be completely unnecessary right now.
I'd bet the could get another two years out of the PS2 easy. Maybe a Christmas 2004 launch?
Perhaps this this the start of the PS3 hype machine. "Leak" a few rumors to start getting the fanboy interest up...
Come on it's Sony.. if they were going to be releasing the PS3 this year then there would already be tons of advertisements and articles straight from the horses mouth.
The PS1 had a HUGE base installed as well, and in fact, devs are still bringing out games for it. In Japan the PS1 is selling just as much as the XBox. Why did they bother with the PS2? Because people always want more and better technology. The PS2 has a little ways it can go to be on par with the XBox and Gamecube.
I will buy a PS-3 when Gran Tourismo 4 comes out for it.
Gran Tourismo 3 is why I bought a PS-2
GT 2 and GT 1 are why I bought a PS-1
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
You paint a bad picture for the PS2/3. I will counter that with a bleak picture for the Xbox.
Xboxes currently being built are being sold below cost. One core reason is that Microsoft can't force (easily) Nvidia and Intel to lower the price of their hardware. So while Sony combines chips to lower manufacturing cost, Microsoft must still pay the higher cost, and loose money on each Xbox sold. Nintendo and Sony don't.
Xbox sales are WAY below what Microsoft had hopped they would be. Understand that Microsoft generally sets extreemly low expectations for their products, and then brag about how great it is selling! Their shareholders were kinda pissed about 40Billion in the bank and no dividends being paid. Microsoft paid some, but now those same shareholders don't want Microsoft loosing money.
Microsoft has been trying to get developers to ONLY develop for the Xbox. Very few companies have done this. The core problem is that Sony owns a HUGE chunk of the console market, those developers don't want to exclude that market.
Now the biggest issue. The Xbox is just a Inter/Windows PC. Software development companies that "port" their games to the Xbox from the PC because it is "easy" find out that 95+% of their sales comes from the PC market. The Xbox generally competes against another Microsoft product... the pc. The customers that have an Xbox seem to also have a great PC, and the games play much better on their PC. There are a few exceptions, specifically sports games.
A HUGE mistake Microsoft made was giving up the younger generation market to the GameCube and only going after the ~15-35 year old males. So the way I see it the maket kinda breaks down as follows:
Kids and family gamers - Nintendo
14-40 year old males without a good PC - Xbox
Everyone Else Sony.
That is a HUGE everyone else!
I believe that Microsoft will probably not develop an Xbox2 for a LONG time if at all. If they put in a new Intel and Nvidea combination, then what would that buy them? The games run at 720X512 resolution? How much more is a P4 3GH and new Gforce going to give you, at that resolution? Yes 4X anti-aliasing is nice, but the current Gforce does a fine job at that low resolution. Now if HDTV becomes more mainstream, this may change things... but that will be a LONG way out.
I honestly believe that Microsoft is going to get out of this market, but it will take a few years, and they will continue to support the current Xbox for at least 3-4 more years. Their primary concern is getting Intel and Nvidia to lower the cost of their chips!
It has been said before, but it is the truth. When Microsoft can't leverage it's OS, it doesn't do well. I don't see Office for the Xbox any time soon.
Another mistake is betting heavy on online games with the Xbox. Sony is kinda falling in to this trap to some degree. Nintendo is the smartest in this one... This is a topic for another day though... Just imagine letting your 6 year old play "Mario Online" and having them ask you what all those cuss words mean.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
Come on, people. This is ridiculous. Sony has no reason to launch the PS3 this year, or even next year. The PS2 is still the king of all video game consoles, with sales several times that of the GameCube or Xbox. It's cheap, Sony is making money off of it (in contrast to the ~$100 Microsoft loses for each Xbox) and it's still the "coolest" console out there. If they released the PS3 this year, it would not only cut into their sales, but force a still-viable product (PS2) out of the market prematurely. Nintendo could have released the GameBoy Advance long before it did, but instead chose to make minor improvements on the original GameBoy because releasing a new system would have been disastrous. Which one would consumers buy...the old outdated one or the new expensive one? Neither. They'll go to a competitor whose product is still cool, i.e. Xbox or GameCube.
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You build consoles and sell them at a huge loss. It's a multi-billion dollar gamble only the largest players can attempt. If you win, you get a piece of the action for every product sold on your (dominant) platform, _and_ over time, your margin on the hardware comes back out of the red, and you make a profit selling that too. Sony has now been profitable on the PS2 hardware for some moderately short period of time.
Ok, this will be the fourth time I've done this, so PAY ATTENTION. The per unit cost of each PS2, is GREATER than the per unit cost to build the PS2. The same was true for the PS1. They are not "taking a loss" on the consoles. Sony never has done that and never will. You can view it as "taking a loss" only if you divide the R&D cost across the first year of consoles, but the fact is that Sony sells each console for more than it cost to make that console. They had recouped their R&D by the middle of the second year the PS2 was out, they have been making straight up profit for over a year and pushing that into the R&D for the nextgen. Currently Microsoft is the only player on the market taking a loss on their consoles.
The nextgen Sony console will most likely be released for Christmas of 2005, but if there doesn't seem to be a new console coming up from Nintendo or MSFT Sony will very likely hold the actual console release a bit. Their plan is usually to release just a few days or weeks before Nintendo does, but advertise for a year or so beforehand.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Anyhow, I disagree with your assertion that consoles always outstrip the current offerings of computers. In the past that might have been true some of the time. It certainly wasn't true in 1983 when the C64 was the best game machine out there. I don't think that it is true right now either. Perhaps in the SNES/N64 era there was some truth to that.
MS has a huge advantage in that their upgrade path will always be clear. It will be inexpensive from an R&D standpoint. Backwards compatibility will be a no-brainer. It is a platform that developers are already familiar with. The big disadvantage is that over time your commodity parts become less common rather than more. An example of this is the HD in the XBox, which is now bigger than the original, but still is formatted to the same size.
The Sony advantage is momentum. Right now they have the games, developers, and love of the public. The industry has certainly seen how that can change from one generation of hw to the next.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Um... 1983? Okay - my assertion might not have been valid 20 years ago. But consoles weren't in competition with computers 20 years ago because personal computers were exotic and rare. (I was playing on an Apple][!)
What I'm saying is the consoles survive by applying specialized hardware towards a certain goal (playing games) and do it at a lower price. Microsoft could not have competed with Sony at the PS2s roll-out because packaging 2 year-old computer hardware into a box and selling it at a loss would NOT have created a box that would have competed in performance with the Playstation. M$ was only able to compete because they entered the market well after the rising tide of general computing power floated general computing power into the range of specialized hardware.
If Sony makes their stated target goal of 1 trillion FPU operations with the PS3 processor it will outstrip ANYTHING that M$ can field for another few years after the PS3 rollout (if they depending on general computing hardware) let alone field at the several hundred dollar price. M$ can continue they schedule of letting general computer power rise to the level of specialized hardware and then repackage it for the masses, but it's not working out very well for them now and it probably won't into the future.
How many XBoxes are they going to sell when the PS3 is about to ship?
=tkk
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
I know you'd like to think that, but the current statistics have NGC outselling the XBox around the world, and with the imminent release of Metroid Prime, Zelda:Wind Waker, Phantasy Star 1 & 2 Online and heaps of other GCN only titles I can only see the distance between them getting bigger. On top of that is the fact that XBox is sorely lacking on exclusive titles, ie: Splinter Cell now on GCN etc. The war ain't over yet, XBox will have to do something amazingly amazing if it wants to be a serious threat to GCN, and then the PS2, which is miles ahead of both (saleswise, not tech).
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
The problem for M$ is that consoles always outstrip the current offerings by computers - that's how they survive.
No. As a general rule, consoles NEVER outstrip the PC market. Are you trying to tell me that in November 2001, P3 733 w/ 64Mb was top of the line? Bzzzzzzzz... Or maybe you think that the PS2's ~300 MHz RISC was top of the line when it was released? Wrong. Next contestant please.
3. The "surprise" of a new console this quickly will be hype enough. Think about it. How blown away would people be if this were true? It will generate its own hype. Especially if the tech is good.
Actually, Sega tried this with their saturn, in order to beat the Playstation to market, and that backfired badly, with not nearly enough release titles to compete.
Sega's poor advertising strategy didn't help, either.
God is dead -- Nietsche
Nietsche is dead! - God