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Slowing PS2 Dents Sony Profits
Thanks to BBC News for their article discussing the fall in Sony's quarterly profit by 25 percent, blamed partially on "feeble sales in many products - most notably games hardware." The article points out: "Sony's game division, which produces both hardware and software for games, saw its sales fall to 161bn yen in the third quarter, from 250bn yen a year earlier", and a Reuters article adds analysis, pointing out the 91 percent operating profit reduction was partly down to "...additional research and development cost for next-generation microchips", as Sony ramp up R+D for the PlayStation 3. But although an analyst commented that "...the game division was hit harder than we had anticipated", the company will still be making a nearly $1 billion overall profit for the year, with PS2 by far the most popular, currently best-selling worldwide console.
That had nothing to do with Nintendo's price drop huh? I'm not buying into it.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Sony's pretty much saturated the market - everyone who wanted to buy a PS2 has had ample opportunity to do so by now, so the attention is now starting to shift towards second consoles like the GCN and XBOX.
--- Bwah?
Let's say you're suggesting that the PSX might save sony's extra ass untill the PS3 comes out. The PSX is definetly going to be sold for more then 500$ retail and most likely have the same sell rate as the NGAGE, but it's in no way meant for the average person anyway, think of it as that giant quad opteron air compressed cooled system we'd all like to have, but don't need. It'll also most likely be in between the next generation and this one, but if i remember right it should come out sometime 2004... atleast in japan.
Just HOW MUCH shit do corporations expect all of us to buy in the fucking first place?
You wanna keep your profits from taking a huge dump after some time? Stop trying to get all of us to buy your product the second it dumps onto the market.
DON'T spend 30 million dollars in marketing and advertising just to skew the natural bell curve.
If the product is good, people will buy it, period.
People need to learn a litlte patience and get a fat hunk of common sense and stuff like this won't be news anymore.
s'wut i sed.
If the talked about manfacturing cost vs. price numbers for the XBox are to be believed, a slowing in hardware sales of the XBox would BOOST profits for Microsoft.
Didn't I read that the CPU for the next Playstation wont go into production until late 2005?
That's a loong time in the console industry.
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
I think this is just an early sign of Sony feeling the heat from Microsoft and Nintendo. The only way you can ignore Microsoft and Nintendo as a factor in this case would be either,
A) you're a Sony fanboy or
B) you know nothing about economics.
Because its not. The drop in the Gamecube's price was too recent to have any real effect on Sony's profit. I am sure it is just because everyone who was in the market for a console already has a PS2. Most people now are getting a second console (since they already have a PS2). So now is the time for Nintendo to shine by outselling Xbox due to the price drop. There are always exceptions to this (someone just has an Xbox, etc.) but Sony's gaming hardware profit will continue to slide until it comes out with its next version of the PS2, the PS3, or the PSP. I'd like to see Nintendo do well too, but let's not give it more credit than it's due.
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You're not fucking retarded and you understand that with a saturated market and an aging technology, you're going to sell fewer units.
Seriously, it sounds like you're the annoying anti-Sony fanboy, just as bad as the Sony fanboys.
or C) most of the people who buy gaming consoles have already bought a PS2.
I don't care who "wins", some would probably say the winner has already been decided (as far as sales and profit goes). But to think that Nintendo and Microsoft are a big factor in this and then accuse people of not knowing anything about economics...well, I will refrain from making any insulting comments.
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This probably didn't have that much to do with the GC's price drop (espcially since this is about sales for the entire quarter, not just the past couple of weeks,) but sales will not get much better if they continue selling PS2s for almost twice the price of Gamecubes.
And people thought Nintendo was going the way of Sega because they were expecting only a $555 million in profit.
Maybe people are starting to realize that it's just not a really good video game system like XBox or GC. That PS2 has a ton on blah titles with only a few really unique, satisfing games.
Naaaaah....
Sure, Windows PCs dominate the market. But so do cheap toupees.
Although they seem to have been kept buoyed up by their successes in the console area, they have a pretty large portfolio of other stuff. However, recently they've been falling behind a bit in a lot of departments, especially in Japan. All the other big home electronics companies are doing pretty well, and I could rattle off some of these other comapnies' new products from TV adverts in Japan, yet all I can remember from Sony is their PS2 ads plus generic corporate "It's a Sony" adverts. I'm sure these ads must actually do feature a product or two, but I can't for the life of me remember what.
As for their market for PS2 sales: recent adverts have featured more primary-school-aged kids and retired people as the owners - presumably they've saturated the 10-40 age bracket?