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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
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.
...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.
Whilst there is still some murky legal sniping going on around the PlayStation brand, the story you're thinking of (Sony lose rights to Nintendo and must pay silly amounts of money as royalties) was a hoax.
Sony will defend the PlayStation brand to the death - I'd say it's more valuable to them than 'Walkman' was in the '80s. Whilst I don't expect to see a PlayStation 3 in 2003, I do expect the natural successor to the PS2 to have the PlayStation moniker, whenever it comes out. Gamers love brands (think Nintendo, Sega, Final Fantasy, Zelda, Tomb Raider).
But, what will the Third Place be for PS3?
My favourite word has always been "vapurware" so I'm very confused. How do you call things that arrive at the market *before* the exspected release date? HurryWare? ChronitonWare?
:)
I won't start an "ask slashdot"-Session for this but I'd like to invite you for collecting new words for this phenomenon.
Disclaimer: PS3 has still chances to become VapourWare
Like drugs?
(sorry)
This was listed as a 'news' article in the APRIL edition of PSM. It also stated that ALL games on the PS3 would be cell shaded, and would even convert 'old' games to cell shade technology. The last line refernced that fact that this was an April Fools Joke.
Guess the real joke was on Bloomberg News.
"This must be a Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
The Playstation 2 does have the "videogame shorthand" going for it, as did Atari and Nintendo. However, what keeps it in the #1 position is a full library of great titles, like Devil May Cry 2, etc. That lead becomes cemented because developers looking to stay profitable aim for the dominant console, and so the cycle continues. That is not what I would call a tenuous lead, that's a solid lead.
However, what you say after that is unfortunately totally wrong. A backwards compatible PS3 does not help the PS2 to "catch up" to the X-Box or the 'Cube in terms of graphics capability. A backwards compatible PS3 would be an entirely new system, which would segment the existing market and the development houses into multiple camps. You would have a large group of people who just invested money in the PS2 who would feel cheated by Sony (see also: SEGA), and who wouldn't buy the PS3. Likewise, the PS3 at this point might look better than the PS2, but not enough to justify spending an extra 300 dollars for most people. What you would have is a halfway release, cutting off the value of the previous generation of console while not delivering on the promise of the next. Plus, you again are saddled with a console that isn't as powerful as the machines from Microsoft and Nintendo when they release on the regular 5 - 6 year cycle. In short, Sony releasing a backwards compatible PS3 would ruin the market for them.
A *forwards* compatible PS3 might be interesting, but such a PS2+ in order to not break PS2 compatibility could only contain more RAM, a few more graphical tricks, etc... but would royally tick off development houses who already find the PS2 to be a tremendous programming burden and wouldn't give the games any kick more significant than the PS2 can do for PS1 games (or perhaps the RAM pack did for the N64).
And let's not forget, to achieve backwards compatibility with the PS1, the PS2 uses the PS1's processor internally as a DSP. Many games leverage that extra processor to help balance processing loads. This is one of the things that lead to the developer lament that the PS2 is the hardest console to develop for. For a PS3 to be backwards compatible, it would need to contain the chipsets of the PS1 and the PS2. The Emotion Engine is probably too large of a financial and technical burden to be included as a throw-in to the next generation of consoles (Hitachi made the SH-1 for other uses besides the PS1)... Such a solution would not be feasable until the PS2 chipset can be had for under 40 dollars, and with Sony having to keep a full fab plant running just for the emotion engine that doesn't seem likely.
No, releasing the PS3 now would be an incredibly bad move. Sony needs to accept that the system they released is just not quite as graphically powerful as others on the market, and play up its strengths:
System releases are like a game of chicken... you always want to release with a better technology than the other guy, which usually means launching just after them. But you do have to launch, and you don't want to give your opponent as large a launch window as Microsoft did with Sony. So the game continues, but the PS3 remains, thankfully, quite a while off.
The ______ Agenda
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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