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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 am willing to bet that bloomberg have got the story wrong, for starters their sources do not sound very credible. I think that that are confused with what has been dubbed the PS2.5, a new version of the Playstation 2, much like the psone was to the psx.
This rumor can't be true for the simplest and most basic reason - the money doesn't work.
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.
In order to make the billions necessary to go it again in the next round, you have a nice, long run with each platform. This is one of the good things about the console business model. Rather than the upgrade race the PC software vendors and hardware manufacturers like to suck you into, the console vendors are incentivized to make each revision of their hardware go as long as possible, so as to maximize their profits.
While Sony may be concerned about Microsoft's growing marketshare, last I checked XBox wasn't even close to PS2's penetration. Trying to pre-empt xbox2 may be on Sony's mind, but given that sales of PS2 hardware and software are exceptionally strong (in fact, record breaking) right now, releasing a successor product will just kill their money factory. Yes, I'm sure prototype hardware will be floating around before long, and I'm sure the first games that will come out on the system have already begun. But Sony will wait as long as humanly possible before a retail release. Only lagging sales, or (much more likely) Microsoft and Nintendo will push them out of the gate, and it's way too soon for that.
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1. They don't want to kill current sales of PS2. If they announced now that there would be a new platform for Christmas worldwide it would kill current sales. Also, if they do plan on launching before Christmas and then miss the date they have just killed their sales year. You can be sure that if they think they have something that will be ready for this year, they won't announce it until there are SURE they can deliver.
2. They don't want to alert Microsoft to what is going on. Everyone says that it would be impossible to release a PS3 this quickly, but what about an XBox2? By using what is basically commodity hardware again MS can develop and release a backwards compatible followup to the XBox with relatively little effort. They will be able to meet a Sony launch date with much less prep time. So not tipping off MS would be a huge reason to not hype the PS3 until just before launch.
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.
I think that if you though about it for a while you could probably come up with some reasons of your own why operating in stealth mode would be an advantage even though it is n't what they have done in the past. Remember though, that while your reasoning might be flawed, it doesn't mean that the article is accurate.
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