MS Touts Time Advantage Over PS3 Launch

Gamasutra is reporting on Microsoft's loud exclamations on the advantage their November launch will afford them, compared to the expected 2006 launch of the PS3. In fact: "UK Xbox boss Neil Thompson has boasted that Microsoft expects to have a even more significant lead on the PlayStation 3 than previously supposed, suggesting that, in his opinion, the PlayStation 3 might launch in Europe as late as spring 2007 ..." More on this FUD from Next Generation.

Comments

Console competition

[MBraynard]

The Xbox 360 isn't going to compete with the PS3 when it is released - there isn't much point in discussing them head to head for market performance purposes.

The Xbox 360 will be competing with the PS2, however. And is anyone predicting that there will be more Xbox 360 games sold in than PS2 games sold in the time before the release of the PS3? Or at least in the time before the end of the 05 holiday shopping season?

Perhaps the sales of games will tilt a little more in favor of the Xbox brands and the PS2 sales > xbox 360 + xbox sales won't be as overwhelming as the PS2 sales > xbox sales were in the earlier days.

Rather than focusing on trashing a yet to be released console, I hope MS realizes that on their release day, their nemesis is still the PS2.

Wouldn't it be hilarious

[Xarius]

If Sony released the PS3 on the 31st of October?

I know it's almost certainly not going to happen, but we can dream.

Also, why is it FUD if it's MS, and rumours if it's anyone else?

Re:Wouldn't it be hilarious

[badasscat]

Also, why is it FUD if it's MS, and rumours if it's anyone else?

It's FUD to say the PS3 won't be shipping in Europe until 2007 when Sony has said no such thing and MS clearly has a financial agenda for spreading such nonsense.

Rumors are spread by people with either a) no vested interest, or b) an unconfirmed (or uncomfirmable) vested interest. You could call this a rumor if you didn't know the source, or if the source was independent, e.g. neither MS nor Sony (nor Nintendo).

Coming from the company with a console going head to head with the PS3, it is FUD to spread unsubstantiated rumors that make the competing system look as bad as possible.

You may as well say it's a "rumor" that there's SCO code in Linux. That's not a rumor, that's FUD coming from SCO. It's an unsubstantiated factoid designed for no other reason than to drive people away from a competing product and towards yours. That's the definition of what FUD is, and this is the same thing.

First-release advantage?

[Bastian]

One word: Sega

Re:First-release advantage?

[ivan256]

Same answer in more words: It's the games that win, not the launch date. If they deliver the better lineup, they'll win. End of story.

Re:First-release advantage?

[DrEldarion]

So the moral of the story is "don't fuck with Sony"?

Re:First-release advantage?

[NeMon'ess]

Good lord, what the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you jumping to conclusions so easily? I didn't waste my $200 because there were still many great games for the DC that I fully enjoyed.

Do you really think I just made stuff up to "hear" myself talk on the internet or pick an argument with you?

I never said that the games weren't the most important deficit. I just felt a few lesser known facts needed to be pointed out. It's pretty obvious developers went to the PS2 in part because it was a safer bet, even though it's still harder to program for, has only half the texture memory of the DC, and also doesn't have texture compression. And Sony paid several companies for exclusive games. Sega did manage to put up a good fight, and sold almost five million units, which they said was the threshold for continuing to support the console. It's unfortunate that Sega didn't have other divisions with deep pockets like MS or Sony to draw money from. After all, it's hard to compete when others are willing to spend whatever it takes no matter how high the losses. I would guess Nintendo wouldn't have been able to do so many in-house games without Gameboy profits keeping the company going.

FUD?

[Jarlsberg]

UK Xbox boss Neil Thompson has boasted that Microsoft expects to have a even more significant lead on the PlayStation 3 than previously supposed, suggesting that, in his opinion, the PlayStation 3 might launch in Europe as late as spring 2007 ..." More on this FUD from Next Generation.

I know how Slashdot likes to spread their funny acronyms whenever they have a chance, but this is certainly not fear, nor uncertainty, and certainly not doubt. The PS3 is going to be equal to or slightly better than the Xbox 360 in performance, but it's going to be launched at least a year after the new Xbox. That's pretty much a fact. It's definitely not going to be launched earlier than spring/summer in Japan, and then late summer/fall in the US. Given how Sony treats the European market, it's probably going to launch here about six to nine months later, so I don't think a 2007 release date is off the wall.

Re:FUD?

[sdhankin]

Sorry - all of your "facts" are speculation. You don't know when the PS3 will be released, either here or in Japan. Sony hasn't announced that. "Pretty much fact"? What does that mean? Either it is a fact or it isn't. Since Sony hasn't said, it isn't.

Making bold pronouncements about how well the Xbox 360 is going to do because the PS3 "might launch in Europe as late as Spring 2007" is FUD, pure and simple. Spread fear among buyers that if they don't buy a 360, they won't have any new console for more than a year. Spread uncertainty about the launch date of the PS3. Spread doubt that the PS3 will launch next year at all.

Sounds like FUD to me.

Re:Don't Forget ...

[KDR_11k]

The word here is "may". A year ago it seemed like the X360 may launch with interesting titles, too. That usually gets resolved as launch draws closer.

Re:Desperate And Misguided PR

[KDR_11k]

There are people that buy all consoles. They would count as PS2 and Gamecube owners that will buy an X360 at launch.

I'd say you're trolling.

What MS has...

[oGMo]

So, let's see where Microsoft is at:

• They're releasing their second console.
• They've got a technologically inferior console that's the sequel to a console whose only redeeming feature was technological superiority.
• They're releasing a console without any significant original titles, and the only significantly-planned title is ... Halo 3.
• They're trying to get this out the door early.

So in essence, they're delivering a time-crunched crappy box that doesn't run anything... even existing XBOX games. Even the Dreamcast had (at worst estimation) a decent lineup. And it was touted as being technologically superior.

People buy consoles for games, or at least the surety of games down the line. We can buy a PS3 and rest assured that we'll have a ton of games. We can buy a Revolution because it'll have all the Nintendo franchises we love. This is the reason tons of people bought the NES, the SNES, the GB/GBA, the PSX, the PS2.

The 360, simply, gives no reason to buy.

Re:What MS has...

[KillShill]

even on paper, the 360 specs are equal or greater than the ps3's.

anyone with a decent understanding of the technology involved can see that.

simply having a faster cpu, as in the case of the "6.4GIGAfLops Emotion Engine" that was in the ps2... doesn't make it remotely more powerful if the competing solution has a much better graphics subsystem as was the case with the xbox.

the new cell boasts "2 trillion FLOPS...etc)... let's see what the real world performance is like... if anyone has a copy of the xbox launch video... bill says the xbox does "1 trillion flops"... seems like a few months ago he said the 360 does "1 trillion flops" also.

more likely than not, they're all lying through their teeth.

the cpu in a console is the least important part. look at every single console from the past... the ones with great graphics processors held their own or surpassed the ones with a greater cpu.

and the graphics processing subsystem of the 360 is indeed next generation, as opposed to the rsx of the ps3 which is a 90nm geforce 7800. the next ati card that will have similar capabilities to the 360's gfx processor will come out in late 2006. unified shaders is the future, hell even nvidia has basically said they are transitioning to it when reluctant to do so earlier. the massive amount of bandwidth being used for the framebuffer also means that essentially, 4x antialiasing can be done without further penalty.

but if you look at both systems as a whole, they both have their strengths and weaknesses. basically you can say they're approximately equal.

and really, that's what consoles are about... to people who say "it's about the games"... if it's about the games then why bring out new generations of consoles? keep making games for the previous ones.

clearly graphics and sound etc are damn important. at least 50% of the equation.

i wonder what final fantasy and grand theft auto would look like on atari 2600 hardware.

Re:Desperate And Misguided PR

[phxbadash]

Raises hand.

Former PS2 owner who going to be buying the 360 at launch. The biggest draw for me to the 360 is the online. MS has put together a solid online system that neither Sony or Nintendo can even come close to at this point.

There are many games that I am looking forward to for the system, many of which will use the online connectivity for more than just multiplayer aspects.

Also the media centre extender capabilities are a plus on top of that as well as I'm planning to set up a media server PC to host movies and record shows and crap on and it will be nice to be able stream movies/music/tv shows to the 360 if someone else is using the TV.

I haven't seen any ACTUAL games for the PS3 as of yet so it's kinda hard to judge based on that, but sony's online strategy seems like a mostly tacked on, hack-job kinda thing so I don't have too much confidence in that. And if I take their PSP online support as an indication it will probably be abysmal. On top of that there is the talk that making PS3 games will require $16M investment before you even start to develope a game for it and I have a feeling MS may be getting a pretty decent head start as first to market, especially when the power of the machines will ultimately be pretty close.

Also the rev I am actually interested in, which is something I haven't been able to say about nintendo's product in a long time.

Dirty Tricks

[malsdavis]

It seems very malicious of Neil Thompson to suggest the PS3 will have such an extremely late launch date. Does he have a reliable source backing up this claim?

I suspect he is trying to use the age old Microsoft-perfected tactic of instilling doubt about their competitor's product. Trying to say to people, the PS3 is years off (even though offically it is less than a year away) ...so buy our product which you don't really want in the meantime.

Oh well, Microsoft using dirty tricks is nothing new I guess.

No more Sega comparisons.

[superultra]

Come on guys. Every Xbox360 slashpost for the last three months ends up with some highly moderated post about how the Xbox360=Dreamcast. If it's gotten to the point where you're using one word and getting modded up X points, it's too far. There are other, far more intelligent reasons why a first release does not equal an advantage, but a comparison to Sega is not one of them. Sega is nothing like Microsoft, and the Dreamcast is completely different than the Xbox360.

Microsoft could not be more different than Sega in this situation. Sega was already running out of cash. Its arcade incomes had dropped next to nothing. More than that, Sega had lost its single major technology partner - Microsoft - just before launch, because Microsoft had suddenly decided to start dev on its own console. Sega lost its president just before the Dreamcast launch. It postponed the launch date an entire month after a solid promise of September 23. Sega was banking on the Dreamcast, but Microsoft will not go under if no one buys an Xbox360. Sega nearly did when few bought the Dreamcast.

With regards to the hardware, there are now declining returns on hardware performance. Three years of R&D does not look like three years of graphical and gameplay improvement to the mainstream. Nintendo has wisely realized this and correspondingly revamped the UI technology rather than the graphic tech. I haven't seen the PS3 in real action (few have), but I can't imagine it can do much more technically than the Xbox360, at least in terms of the difference between the Dreamcast and PS2. Sega pushed the online capabilities of the Dreamcast, but they were too far ahead of the game (this was when ISDN was fast). Now, with broadband penetration in most American middle class homes, Xbox Live 2 looks revolutionary.

Finally - and unfortunately - Microsoft has realized that it really isn't even games that matter to a consoles success: it's culture. The Dreamcast's launch lineup was unarguably the best console launch ever, and hedgehog heads and tails above the medicore PS2 launch and Halo-driven Xbox launch. What it was missing was cultural penetration. But owning an Xbox, in America and Europe, is cool. Turn on MTV and watch Pimp My Ride. It's not PS2s people want in the backseats of their cars, it's Xboxen. You never saw anything like that with the Dreamcast. Sega thought it was all about the games, and it never was. The PS2 succedded because the PS1 was cool, and because it racked up massive cool points with GTA3.

I could go on. Go research the Dreamcast launch and you'll see that not only is Sega/Dreamcast completely unlike Microsoft/Xbox360, but the market is a completely different animal now. But please, stop with the Sega comparisons. They're dumb.

Re:No more Sega comparisons.

[superultra]

This isn't worth replying to, but it's late and I'm bored. So, specifically, you - or someone - please explain how is the Xbox360 like the Dreamcast?

You know, instead of using one word or drunken cowardly retorts.

Not that it matters, but I have very little personal interest in the xbox360. PGR3 looks great, as does Xbox Live 2, but beyond that - yawn. But that there aren't many games, or good games, at launch makes it completely different from the Dreamcast, which had a terrific launch lineup.

Re:No more Sega comparisons.

[superultra]

Well, the poster said, "Sega" not "Dreamcast." And once again, you said that the two are uncannily similar to the DC without specifically mentioning why. The only one I see is that they are both a year ahead of the PS2, but the same could be said of the PS2 to the Xbox.

I might be insane, but if you think it's all about the games you're niave.

Think back to the PS2 launch. It blew. Seriously. I am not a fanboy. I love all games, regardless of their platform. But when I was an assistant manager at EB during the PS2 launch, people would come into the store during that first year, people who had scrunged and fought for a PS2 (and a memory card!), and they would just stare blankly at the wall. There was nothing. That year's Madden looked like a clean cut and paste of the PS1 version. Onimusha was the first quote-unquote-great game for the PS2.

Onimusha!
The PS2 launch was one of the worst launches in history, as admitted by Sony themselves. It was not until MGS2, GTA3, and a Madden designed for the PS2, and later that year FF - all of these were post Xbox - that the PS2 came into its own. Yet, immediately, the PS2 sold amazingly well. Why?

Culture. You're right, the final indicator is unit sales. But we don't have unit sales yet because we're still a month and a half away. I am not saying that Microsoft will conquer all, which is basically what most slashdotters instinctively think whenever you ask people to think reasonably about anything to do with Microsoft. I'm just saying that the Xbox360 is further ahead than the Xbox was when it launched, and look where the Xbox is now.

FUD?

[thebdj]

So, people want to start this DC and 360 comparison again...let me tell all of you who never picked up a DC and have never seen one, it was and is better than a PS2. It was the only online console at the time. Games were often made on both systems, and often ran faster and looked better on the DC. The DC had all the advantages in place that the 360 had, the difference is that Sony did something Sega didn't expect...they dished out the FUD. Go back and do some checking and you will find that Sony's FUD compain against Sega was as bad as this one everyone is claiming M$ is up to now.

The fact is we have two huge companies going head to head over a console. This is honestly something that has never really happened. Sony has TONS of money and check out the numbers folks, their worth is more the M$. Sega and Nintendo never could have hoped to make the money these two companies make because they are specialized into a single market of consoles. Sony has their hands in everything from home electronics to DVDs and computers. There is a lot more money for M$ and Sony to duke it out with.

So we will see two new consoles going head-to-head at the same time, relatively. There will not be the 1 year gap like the last time, 1999 for DC, 2000 for PS2 and 2001 for Xbox. If PS3 is out in Spring 06, we will see to competitive consoles with close launch dates duking it out for supremacy and then we'll see if Sony starts up their own FUD.