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PlayStation 3 May Play Too Much

Posted by Zonk on from the hyperbole-much? dept.

Businessweek has a piece looking at the PlayStation 3, worrying that Sony is confusing the consumer with all of the technology it's trying to work into the console. From the article: "Some question whether Sony is trying to cram too much into the new box. The PS3 is expected to cost $350 to $400. While it has the potential to be a megahit, Sony's message might get muddled in the process of going after too broad a market, says Deutsche Securities analyst Takashi Oya. 'It would be difficult to sell PS3 initially as anything other than a game machine,' Oya says. Sony declined to comment on such concerns."

3 of 367 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It'll grow into itself. by engagebot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The 'rampant success' of the PSP you speak of is nothing on the scale of what they're trying to accomplish. PSP may be big to you. Personally, i know two people that have them, and they're kids (relatively).

    If they're gonna get on in every living room, marketeing it as the next gen HD movie format, they're gonna have to sell it to my mom and dad too. I don't know anybody's mom and dad that watch movies on their PSP. You see the difference in scale i'm talking about?

    --
    Han shot first.
  2. Re:It'll grow into itself. by Threni · · Score: 5, Interesting

    > Remember the Dreamcast? Dial-up modem, the whole thing. It tried to do too much at the time,
    > before the consumers were ready for it.

    The Dreamcast was nothing special. I know there are always a few people who say "No, I liked $game" but it just didn't inspire people to buy it. But they certainly didn't fail to buy it because they were afraid it would do too much.

    There's "costs too much". The PS3 might do alot of stuff, but the problem at the mo with Xboxs and the like is that they only really add `playing games` to a list of things which you can already do on a £30/$50 DVD, but they charge ten times the cost of that DVD player to do it. Unless you're a hardened gamer, or very well off, that's just really terrible value for money.

  3. Re:It'll grow into itself. by hackstraw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Remember the Dreamcast? Dial-up modem, the whole thing. It tried to do too much at the time, before the consumers were ready for it.

    Remember the Apple Newton, the TiVo, and plenty of other things that came to market before their time??

    The thing is that the Playstation has a following for game developers and gamers. So long as it has good playable games it will do fine. If the other features work as advertised (or better), then that is icing on the cake. Only a few of us /. geeks would ever buy a Playstation or an Xbox with the intention to do things besides games. Believe it or not, we are not like the majority of the human population.

    If it works well with slideshows of pictures from a digital camera, and works well with HTPC kind of stuff, then that is only free advertising to sell more of these boxes. If it sucks at playing games, no matter how good the extra stuff is, it will fail. If they are able to pull off all of the extra bells and whistles, I see no problem with it selling or confusing the user, and it will only be an extra plus to the system in general.

    I don't even play video games, and I'm planning on buying the 2nd rev of the PS3 when it comes out. The graphics and capabilities of the thing seem amazing, and who knows, maybe I'll learn how to play a game or two.