PS3 Delay May Hurt Current Gen Too

Next Generation reports that, in some analysts view, the real victim of the PS3 delay may actually be current gen console publishers and gamers. Houses like EA and Activision have a lot of money tied up in creating games for the next generation, and if the PS3 isn't launching here in the states until after summmer... They end up laying out four increasingly bad scenarios for the industry. From the article: "The third scenario theorizes on a 25 percent price cut on current generation software. We've already seen substantial price-cuts from EA, as the current-gen versions of The Godfather, Black and Fight Night Round 3 all debuted or will debut at $40, a 20 percent cut from the normal $50 price tag. The erosion of sales prices may be caused by publishers trying to unload inventory, or by publishers that target budget shoppers. This scenario could cause major publishers' earnings to drop between 35 and 49 percent."

Comments

Until after the summer?

[CaseM]

According to the interview cited here it won't launch in Japan until Holiday '06, which puts the US release sometime in '07!

Re:Until after the summer?

[gabebear]

Actually, in the article says "Sony will roll out the PS3 by year end, in time for the holidays", but I don't see any quote from Stringer saying anything about release dates in Japan or America.

Re:PS3 may not be backwards compatible with PS2

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes anybody think that the PS3 will be backwards compatible with the PS2?

The fact they said so, over and over again, endlessly? The "it may not be fully backward compatible" comments shold be taken in the same sense as PS1->PS2 compatibility, I.E., the number of incompatible games will be measured in tens.

I mean, yes, of course, anything Sony says may be a lie. But why not just go whole hog, and claim the PS3 doesn't exist, or won't actually have a blu-ray drive, or won't have controllers? I'm sure you can find a cherry-picked out-of-context quote to support that just as easily, and it's about as likely.

What makes anybody think that the PS3 will be backwards compatible with the PS2? The hardware is totally different.

Not as different as the PS2 was from the PS1.

Re:PS3 may not be backwards compatible with PS2

[Animats]

Sony could build PS2 emulation hardware into the PS3, but they don't seem to have done so. The PS2 has the IOP from the PS1, which simplifies compatibility. The PS3 doesn't seem to have any legacy hardware. When the chief architect of the Cell chip spoke at Stanford two weeks ago, he indicated that the PS3 is using stock Cell parts.. It's too close to launch for that to change.

Remember, the current Cell implementation is a PowerPC with eight (seven for bad chips) "Synergistic Processing Elements", which are relatively conventional CPUs tied to 256K of uncached memory but with hardware to support asynchronous scatter-gather copy to and from main memory. This is very different hardware from the PS2. It's not going to be an easy emulation.

Trying to get the NVidia part to emulate the PS2's VS1 and GS units will be a neat trick; the graphics power is there, but in a very different form. It's a reasonable porting job, but straightforward emulation at the binary level is tough.

There's kind of a "build it and they will come" attitude from some of the Cell people. They're not quite sure how to use all those little isolated processors effectively, but hope someone will figure it out.

We'll all know more after GDC in two weeks.