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Sony May Delay PS3 Until 2007
GodFather writes "ArsTechnica posted an article that claims the PS3 may be pushed back as far as 2007 if the Xbox 360 launch flops. The reasoning behind it? If Microsoft comes out with a weak set of titles at launch Sony could delay and build a larger launch library to lay the smack down on Microsoft."
You completely misunderstood the parent's point. He meant, they let Dreamcast release first, delayed a bit, then released the playstation. Dreamcast is dead, PS3 is being made.
Its interesting that this comes quite soon after Bill Gates himself announced that the first next-gen Xboxes would ship with non-HD DVD drives
He did no such thing. It has ALWAYS been specified that the Xbox360 would have a regular DVD drive (see this article from May), because the next gen formats would not be available in time. What he announced recently was that in the future, they may ship new models with HD DVD drives.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
No, they didn't.
Read this.
I can tell you first hand that hardware specs are certainly NOT finalized the moment developers start working on software. Console makers release best guess estimates of what the hardware will be able to do in its final form, and provide alpha and beta development systems that are basically just souped up (i.e. extremely expensive) PCs that have wrapper APIs and roughly give the same performance. Developers working on launch titles only get final hardware to test on in the last few months of the development cycle.
It's still kicking. Just because it was stop being manuifactured doesn't mean Dreamcast is dead. DC is very alive and kicking in home brewing.
Oh and I still play my DC every week.
You do realize that this was some independent analyst suggesting this is what Sony MIGHT do, not a press release from Sony saying what they plan to do.
Growing unpopularity in the general market? Wait, since when was the general market slashdot geeks who put jabs at MS in their sigs? The Xbox is far from 'unpopular', and far from a 'failure'.
If microsoft had it's way, you would only buy one console and share it with like 10 friends who all still bought games.
Uh, no. I think Microsoft would prefer that those ten friends also buy XBoxes in addition to all those games.
I don't see why so many people have such a hard time grasping this "loss leader" concept. Microsoft loses money on each console sold, which they intend to recoup by game sales. However, Microsoft loses MORE money when those consoles AREN'T bought.
It seems most Slashdotters think that the reverse is true, that Microsoft makes money when XBoxes sit on the shelf, and only lose money when an XBox is bought. Mind-boggling.
Actually, they have about a 45% share of the non-japan market. That's not particularly bad for a first gen console, especially for one that's as large, loud and ugly as the xbox
As usual an AC is talking bollocks.
In a C&VG artical there is a section that tells us how many units (of each current console) have been sold.
Here is a snippet Sony's PS2 is the undisputed leader of the current gen console pack, having sold over 90 million units worldwide since it launched in 2000. As of December 2004 the Xbox had moved 20 million units, and the GameCube had shifted 18 million.
Now even with my rudimentary math skills I make them figures:
PS2: 70.3125%
Xbox:15.625%
Cube:14.0625%
For your figures of 45% that would mean that the PS2 has sold 45.6m units in Japan alone and the other 44.4m units in the rest of the world and that Xbox to have sold none at all in Japan.
Now forgive me for being a bit sceptical but somehow these figures don't seem to add up, why?
BECAUSE YOU'RE A MICRO$OFT FANBOY WHO'S TALKING BOLLOCKS LIKE ALWAYS.
FF7 only takes three CDs for one reason: FMV. If you were to replace those cutscenes with real-time graphics, you could easily lose a disc and probably get the content under 1 GB. And guess what? 1 GB cartridges are easily possible these days.
FF7 may be good, but let's be realistic - while a lot of developers did move to CDs because of the space limitations of cartridges, they were (and are - see GBA and DS) doing just fine with cartridges. Code didn't *need* the extra space - it simply swelled to fit the given size. This is evident in the "transition" from CD to DVD games. Most of the PS2 library is under 1 GB.
Yeah, except 1GB cartridges were most definitely not easily possible back during the PS/N64 generation, so your argument doesn't hold any water.