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PS2 to Have 10 Year Lifecycle, PS3 Not Cheap
Anonymous PC Gamer writes "CNet is reporting that Sony's Ken Kutaragi has said that he expect the Playstation 3 to have a ten year life cycle. Methinks Sony's production woes are going to be their achillies heel this time, especially in America. Will Sony be able to survive a couple of months of having another expensive, hard-to-find console with Bill and Co. bloodthirsty at their heels?" From the article: "I'm aware that with all these technologies, the PS3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households. I think everyone can still buy it if they wanted to...But we're aiming for consumers throughout the world. So we're going to have to do our best (in containing the price)."
Should be "PS3 to have ten year life span...."
This sig is o Unfunny o Funny
The DAMN TITLE of your story is completely wrong. No where in the articles linked does it say PS2 will have 10-year life span, which we know is false anyway because the PS3 is being launched next year. Hello, Mcfly???
No sig for you!!
I don't quite understand how they're expecting the PS3 to last 10 years. Given the current pace the hardware industry is advancing, it's unlikely that the PS3 will be too appealing 7 years from now, let alone 10 years. Not to mention how in 6 years, the technology behind the PS3 will be OLD, they'd be able to sell it for $100 US and turn a favorable profit. I can't even begin to imagine how quickly the PS3's hardware will be outdated, let alone it surviving nearly 10 years.
Imagine using a 486 DX-33 to play computer games on, not quite so entertaining is it. With processor speeds and graphics cards increasing steadily over the years, we're going to be expecting a lot 10 years from now. There haven't been many revolutions in games. Today's games follow the same ideas as those from 10 years ago, only that they've been enhanced, both in complexity and aesthetics. Sony must have something really big up their sleeve, if they think that games can continue to evolve the way they are presently, and still be playable on their hardware!
PS2 to Have 10 Year Lifecycle, PS3 Not Cheap
:P
Well ok everyone pointed out the typo in the headline, but it's actually fairly correct...because if the PS3 is as expensive as everyone keeps speculating, my PS2 will certainly have a 10 year lifecycle.
So what does this mean? Is sony aiming for businesses that deman premium gaming consoles, or rich bachelors with no life and tons of money?
So you spend a fortune on this machine, expecting it to last 10 years and after a few years disk read errors rear their ugly head! Great!
Did you get that thing I sent ya?
I think Zonk has been drinking.
Perhaps. His mother certainly was.
Trolling is a art,
Sony said this already with the PS2 before its release. It's just a marketing scheme to try and get people to accept their over-priced day-one purchase by saying "Hey, this console will still be sold 10 years in the future it will be so popular!" It all stems from the PSOne's popularity: the Playstation was released in 1995 and is still sold in stores, so it has a "10 year lifecycle", especially since the PS3's appearance next year will push the PSOne off of the market. The PS2 was released at the middle point of that 10 years, and the PS3 will be relased in the middle of the PS2's 10 years. The PS2 needs to last until 2010 for its 10 year lifecycle to be true, and the PS3 needs to last until 2016. The whole lifecycle thing is just speculation on Sony's part based on the PS1's sales curve. If Blu-Ray's not accepted or one of a million other things happens, the PS3's lifecycle might be cut short.
the xbox has had what... a four year life cycle? MS has stated that they released the first xbox as a simple test of the gaming industry. i think that their significant losses have prompted them to rework their strategy.
O -4-4 thats one of the more highly touted features of their next gen system; its nothing new... i think that they saw the rise of the mod community and the media center capabilities http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/ of the xbox being used and realized this was their chance to turn the tides on their debt problems. they are playing their hand. feeding us back what we originally wanted from them in the first place. great marketing!
supposedly the first xbox supported HD output up to 1080i. http://hardware.gamespot.com/Microsoft-Xbox-9399-
what this has done is cause the other companies to jump onto the next generation. i wouldnt be surprised if the ps3 and revolution where not originally supposed to be released until 2007-2008 or so. sony and nintendo have to play their next gen card earlier now in order to compete.
i think this is a prime example of how MS entering the industry is diminishing it. sure we get next generation graphics and performance sooner, but we are going to take the hit on our pockets earlier and more often too.
Trying to plan a console to last ten years is ridiculous. Yes, the rate of change has slowed. No, it hasn't slowed that much.
How can any company even remotely guess what will be current and popular in ten years? FIVE years is stretching it. The PS2 was released in late 2000, and it was really obsolete by early 2004. You can (obviously) still get games for it here in 2005, but pretty much everything else on the market was consistently better by then.
If you assume a generation time of 2 years (shorter than the commonly-accepted 18 months, but computers aren't speeding up as quickly anymore), each additional 2 years of lifespan will make the initial console twice as expensive. Microsoft is obviously planning for 5 years, and they're launching at around $300-ish. If Sony wants to last 10, they'd basically have to add two and a half generations' worth more hardware.... they'd probably have to ship at around $1800. And they'd have to guess everything PERFECTLY.
In other words, Sony is hoping for no unpredictable innovations in the next ten years. Hey, that's a bet I'd put billions on!
The PS3 is looking rather like the Itanic, er, Itanium. Sony has spent untold billions on development. Their product will do some things a lot better, but it's not as good at general purpose processing. They can't ship anywhere near the same price point. They're trying to predict the future ten years out, and it doesn't look like they can accurately predict their own ability to ship their product. (They're still dropping features, so they're probably not seven months from putting product on shelves). March 2006 is very likely marketing spin to hurt Microsoft.
Guesses: Sony will ship late (VERY late) and too expensive for the mass market. By the time they get the price to the level that Joe Sixpack will buy their hardware, it will be firmly and permanently in second place. Possibly even in third. It will still be a viable platform, but the XBox will have enormous momentum by then. Sony will never make back what they spent on Cell.
My really daring prediction: Microsoft will actually make money on their console division.
That's rubbish.
Especially at the current time, networking is not a viable platform to increase processing speed. I guarantee it never will be.
the only way they could promise this without lying would be to have each of the critical components removable and upgradeable, which we all know is not going to happen. Plus, it's already been shown that Cell is great for floating point math, but not for much else. It's doubtful that the "multiple core" complex people have right now is going to bear greater numbers than single cored AMD64's in the very near future.
I dunno, if the PS3 has a toast buttering feature, I'd be sold.
Buttered toast rocks.