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PS3 - Lateness With Linux?
ZombieRoboNinja writes "The New York Times is reporting that Sony's press conference has confirmed the delay of the PS3, which is now slated to come out in November. More interestingly, the article claims that PS3 will ship with a 60-gig hard drive, built-in network card, and Linux!" Serious stuff here, with Sony's shares falling on the delay confirmation. There was a lot more news handed out at the conference than just the delay. Next Generation has details from Ken Kutaragi's 10 Point Breakdown. From the NYT article: "'We were discussing selling it in September, and some even said put it out in July,' Mr. Kutaragi said. Some analysts were immediately skeptical of this explanation, saying Sony needed to get the console out as soon as possible to combat Microsoft's head start, and the expected release this year of Nintendo's next game console, Revolution. They said Sony may be trying to buy time to bring down the production cost of key components, particularly untested technologies like Blu-ray and Cell. While Mr. Kutaragi did not reveal a price on Wednesday, analysts say Sony will likely try to sell PlayStation 3 for about $500." Please see related links and commentary below for more coverage.
My two quick cents -
- If they're not releasing in Japan until November, I find it highly unlikely they'll be releasing in the states until 2007. Previous PlayStation launches have always been staggered Japan first, U.S. second. I don't care if they say they're launching worldwide; At this point I think they're spinning to keep people happy.
- If they're not out in the U.S. until 2007, they'll probably be the last next-gen console to do so. So far Nintendo says it's on track to launch this year. Sony isn't getting finalized dev kits out until June. Even just with that metric on the table, Nintendo looks to be in a better position than Sony at the moment.
- At $500, there are going to be a lot of indifferent customers come March of '07. This will be especially true if, over a year after launch, Microsoft cuts the price of the 360 to coincide with the PS3 launch. If you have to choose between a solid platform that costs $300 (and already has a stable of games available) and a brand-new system that is two hundred bucks more with far fewer games, which one do you think most people will buy?
No...
Jan
Seriously. Sell the thing on UMD with a downloadable cross-platform set of compilers and let the homebrew people have at it. Then everyone's happy - the user for having a bunch of cool new things to run, the homebrew scene for having official endorsements, and the games makers since running homebrew over Linux and through different APIs effectively kills any notions of piracy.
If it's true, it can only be good news. The more big companies that use Linux for their products, the more defen[c|s]e there will be for any legal challenges that affect it - hurrah!
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Will it also be a PVR?
Will it have a memory stick slot so you can take your show straight from the PS3/PVR and put the on the PSP?
Any chance that the PS3 will play UMD movies so you don't have to buy two versions?
Just some ideas that could really help Sony do better. Of course what they really need to do is drop this DRM crap like a hot potato.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Because it won't play PS3 games, duh.
Seriously, though, there are a good number of games for which the console controller are superior to a mouse and keyboard. No one released PC games that depend on a standardized controller because there isn't one that comes with them.
You won't see a Soulcaliber or a Dead or Alive for the PC. You won't see a console-style RPG for the PC which instead favors RPGs like Elder Scrolls and the Ultima series. PC racing games have always sucked, and so have the sports games.
If you like those genres, get a console. If you like exploration-based RPGs, RTS games, FPS games, etc. then get a PC because those games are better on a PC.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I think that's the main reason they decided to delay it. They probably made the first revs of the chips, and decided that, at $900 component costs, thought it would be WAY too much. So, they go ahead with their die shrink versions of the CPU and GPU, which I'm sure they've already planned on doing anyways as the standard course in a console's lifetime.
I think the machines they release later this year are going to be die-shrink parts. That'll sell for about 500.
They've done exactly the same as they did for the launch of the PS2 against the dreamcast. Lied about it's abilities: Check. Produced "real time footage" (Final fantasy cut scenes for the PS2 and we all know the PS3 debacle): Check. Lied about the release date: Check. I truly believe they knew all along it wasn't going to be released in "spring."
I remember confidently telling my girlfriend she was a fool for getting a dreamcast as the PS2 "will be so much better" and "they're releasing it real soon." The blood of the Dreamcast is on my stupid hands.
Fool me once Sony shame on you, fool me twice ....
They've been doing anything to put you off thinking about a dreamcast/xbox360. And with the root kit fiasco they are pretty muuch dead to me. They need to stop treating me like a moron and a pirate if they want my money.
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I don't want Microsoft and its crappy console to gain any foothold. Have you used the "crappy console"? It's actually a helluva lot of fun. The launch titles were only so-so. No bad ones, but no truly great ones. That aside, Xbox Live makes up for it all. It's an incredible experience and it alone makes buying an X360 worth it. The only reason the XBox exists is to push the Windows platform into the living room--originally Microsoft offered their platform libraries to Sony and Nintendo and only made the X-Box when both companies refused to ship Windows on their consoles. This is completely false. Microsoft created the trimmed down version of Win2k for the Xbox exclusively. They never made any such offer to Nintendo or Sony. They intended to enter the market and compete with these companies from the get-go. In addition, saying that the Xbox runs Windows is misleading. The Xbox runs a very, very customized version of the Windows 2000 kernel, but that's about where things end. There is certainly a strategy to make the Xbox/X360 work well with PCs running Windows (media center in particular), but that's just one part of the overall strategy to win the gaming market. Microsoft cares nothing at all about games or quality of games, which is why we get commercials espousing the wonders of sweat on a basketball player mesh. Microsoft case about the quality of its games the same way Nintendo and Sony do - only insofar as that quality makes them money. You honestly think that Sony is some pure of heart company that loves its gamers? Get a grip. his gives more time for the XBox 360 to actually gain a foothold, even despite their pathetically slow start (Nintendo sold more Gamecubes last Christmas than Microsoft sold XBox 360s). Are we in the No-Spin-Zone all of a sudden? Microsoft's "slow start" was completely due to the LACK OF AVAILABE CONSOLES TO BUY. EVERYBODY wanted one, but they were all sold out. Everywhere. Why do you think they were going for 5x face value on eBay? Meanwhile, Gamecubes are a dime a dozen. Microsoft will undoubtedly solidfy a strong lead over the next few months thanks to finally being able to go into almost any store and buy an Xbox 360.
I don't know why you would take either side in the Xbox 360 vs. Playstation 3 debate. Even if you don't like Microsoft's buisness practices, Sony has dome some extremly unethical things to customers (Music CDs that install rootkits on your computer, anyone?). And from a Geek perspective, Sony is super annoying (Microsoft actually publishes system specs on it's hardware... where as Sony gives vauge statements about "emotion engines").
The fact is, having more than one game machine and one company dominating the whole industry is a good thing. Having Playstation the MAIN console with everyone else distant competitors (like it has been so long) is a bad thing, having several powerful competitors is a good thing. Don't worry, Sony isn't out of the video game industry yet despite their screw ups, there are too many die hard Sony fanboys for the Playstation 3 to flop. But the good news is that the market will probably be split evenly between the large companies, instead of the Sony quasi-monopoly on consoles.
So, from a consumer perspective, what is there to worry about? If you have extra money to burn, or are impatient, or you could care less which one will be the "winner", buy a Xbox 360 now... or simply wait a few months until the Sony machine comes out, and decide then what is the best console. Why have loyalty to any company (they certainly aren't loyal to us)?
Sony doesn't actually give a flying fsck about Slashdot or Linux as such.
Sony needs Linux on their console for the same reason they've needed it on the PS2: to dodge import taxes. I don't know what the situation is in the USA, but in the EU if it's a general purpose computer, it doesn't get taxed the way toys do. And EU is a games and consoles market of the same order of magnitude as the USA (if marginally smaller), and twice as big as Japan. So being able to say "see, you can boot this CD on it and have a general purpose OS that makes it a general purpose computer" is gonna make Sony a _lot_ of money in dodged import taxes.
Even better, what this means is that it can be more competitive with Microsoft and Nintendo who chose not to dodge those taxes. Sony needs to take much less of a loss to give those a nasty price competition.
And as the final exhibit: notice how Sony never actually bothered marketting or even selling (more than theoretically) that Linux they've flaunted all along for the PS2. They _didn't_ really want you to play Tux Racer on their subsidized machine.
Think about it this way: they sell the consoles at a loss and make the money from games. Each console bought just to run Linux and troll Slashdot in Mozilla is for Sony just a loss. Each console that you run gnometris (Gnome's tetris clone) or kshisen on in Linux, instead of buying a game from Sony, is just a loss. It's not something they want you to do, but a nasty risk they're willing to take, in the hope that they'll lose less with that than they gain by dodging customs.
So basically, don't let that ego blind you. We nerds like to pretend that the world revolves around us, and Sony would bend over backwards to please Slashdot. In practice, Sony couldn't care less about Slashdot. It's just a business decision, in which Slashdot played _no_ role whatsoever.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I don't know about Nintendo dropping off the radar... The fact that the Revolution will have a game catalog that includes every Nintendo release from every Nintendo console ever made will attract those grown-up, non-Japanese game players.
The fact that you haven't considered buying a Nintendo product in 10 years is exactly why they decided to make this available I would think.
There's a saying for this:
Microsoft doesn't have to compete. It just waits for its competitors to shoot themselves in the foot and Microsoft wins by default.
But the thing that this says to me is... Sony screwed up big time. Now I don't see why they didn't just do update the Blu-Ray driver later (like they did with the DVD driver in the PS2). Instead they delayed the launch.
Now Nintendo has a major leg up. I have been waiting for the Revolution and I think that it will do much better than the 'Cube did this generation. But now they will both launch around Christmas. Let's ignore the fan-boys and look at the people who want a new video game console. So little Billy wants a console. Do you...
So if we assume $60 games, that is $360 for a XBox with one game, $485 for a PS3 with one game, or $260 for a Rev with one game (assuming no pack-in). So for the price of a XBox, you can get a Revolution with about 3 games. For the price of the PS3, you can get the Revolution plus 5 games.
That will be a MAJOR plus to Nintendo, not counting all the other pluses (controller, backed library, etc). Look how Nintendo is doing in Japan with the DS. Nintendogs was HUGE here in the states, I know lots of little girls who got a DS just for that game. If Brain Training becomes big here too, wow. If they can do the same sort of thing with the Revolution, they could break out of their "slump" big time.
I can't wait for E3/GDC when we'll see more of all three systems.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The "emotion engine" was just the name of the chip, much like "cell processor." Sony has never been shy about publishing specs- in fact you could accuse them of being a little TOO open about system specs as they tend to publish rather generous (over?)estimates of hardware performance. The performance specs of the Ps3 have been known for months as a quick trip to wikipedia will tell you.
Interestingly enough, the only company who's shown an outright reluctance to publish ANY specs on their new hardware is nintendo.
It'll be no different from today: Microsoft and Sony will still be taking up 90% of the press attention with their wafer-thin attention grabbing B.S., with Nintendo continuing to take in profit by the truckload in the background. Graphics will continue to win ground against gameplay, and I will continue to buy less and less games. More companies will be bought by bigger companies as the price of producing a game is forced up by increasingly laughable production values.
honestly, if there were modchips for the 360, I'd own one already. to hell with waiting for the PS3. Maybe by the time it came out I'd be able to own both, anyway. But with things as they are, I'm willing to hold my breath...
Yes, the 360 launched much earlier than the PS3, but they did so without much flare. Good games for it are just now starting to come out, but I'm not compelled to buy a system that has two or three games I'm really interested in getting. Sure, the 360 will probably have a bunch of games available when the PS3 launches, but I'm sure the PS3 will launch with some killer games up front.
On top of that, remember that the PS3 is completely backwards compatible. This is yet another reason I'm shying away from the 360. All the money I invested in Xbox games is now out the window because most of them are not on the support list, and god only knows what hoops I'll have to jump through (if and when they are supported) to get them running.
And, I'm sorry, but once the PS3 gets into full swing, it's just going to blow the 360 out of the water, based on 1 factor - blu-ray. I know it's all smoke and mirrors right now, but think about it... no matter how cool Halo 3 is, it'll have to fit on a dual-layer dvd. in comparison, just imagine how much more content you can fit on a blu-ray. It's like building a powerful gaming machine and sticking a floppy drive in it. I think Microsoft shot themselves in the foot with that one...
Target here in Spring, Texas, off the busy I-45 freeway into Houston, had a few XBox 360's, two core systems, and one with the HD.
But I've given enough money to Microsoft, I'll keep my PS/2 and buy a Revolution when it comes out. I already have a DS which is great fun, and the Revolution looks like it's going to be the system with the most "fun and cool" games, instead of just more eye candy. I'm hoping that the new controller will allow some cool motion games. Who knows, maybe there will be exercise games that help old people stay mobile. Lots of cool ideas spring to mind when you have a controller that knows where it is in space.
Also, the fact that the Revolution is going to likely be cheaper is going to swing the purchase decision for a lot of people.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
I wish this crap would die.
Those prices are so out of whack. For starters, blue ray will NOT cost $300/drive. That's insane. Sony owns the license agreements for it, and will be fabbing it themselves. No royalties and no middle man = the blue ray drive will cost next to nothing. Same with the cell processor: It may cost $230 to buy one of them, or even a thousand. What about when you buy 500,000? Or 2,000,000? Or, you agree to fabricate them yourselves, and then you're only paying for the blueprints. The same goes for ram - how much ram is this thing supposed to have? Cause $40 buys you 512MB of ram off the interwebs now. Sony will make their own ram.
Everyone needs to chill out. Please remember that Microsoft and Sony are very different - Microsoft is a software company, and always has been. Sony has ALWAYS been a hardware provider; they own their own fabrication plants, they hire their own engineers - and most of the costs of outsourcing and subcontracting are moot points.
Not to mention, the very article the parent post links to conceeds that the $905 manufacturing cost will probably be down around $300 after 3 years. If that article was Feb of this year, and the console isn't launching until 2007, that's already 1/3 of their time-to-price-reduction elapsed.
Buying one does not equal buying millions.
Price now does not equal price in a year, or even next month.
End user does not equal patent owner, developer, and fabricator.
Sony is not in any trouble.
~Will
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"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" -- Sun Tzu (Anonymous), The Art of War
You guys don't get it when it comes to Sony and Linux. Go ahead and mark this a troll. Sony is MORE abusive than MS when it comes to their interactions with their customers, but slap the words Linux on it and many people on Slashdot become instant supporters. I use Windows and Linux (depending on which workstation I am currently working on) and to me, Sony defies everything that Linux originally stood for. We have DRM that limits YOUR rights with your media. The PSP has not 1 but 2 proprietary media formats. Does anyone remember ATRAC3, another proprietary DRMed format we didn't need. Also, please keep in mind that the version of Linux that will be bundled with the PS3 will have to conform to ALL of Sony's vices, and won't be the garden variety that we can do what we please with. Linux compatibility doesn't make it all better.....
The most that all three companies care about is your money, its the underlying current that differs. MS cares about the profit of their system while forcing you to have their desktop system to use all of the functions. Sony cares about the profit of their system while forcing you to give up your fair use rights in music and movies. Nintendo seems to be the biggest straight shooter of them all, they just want to make money (maybe I am just missing their subversion)
None of the three companies are doing ANYTHING here because they think it is the right thing to do, but rather because it suits their profit model in the long term
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Just because a company manufactures something itself, doesn't mean it's free. The prices aren't actually out of line, and a blu-ray drive can indeed cost $300 and the GPU can cost $150 and CPU another $150 and so on. These include the actual raw costs of the materials themselves. A blue laser diode isn't cheap to make, nor is a GPU. They all have costs, such as wafers, materials, capital cost depreciation (one silicon stepper can cost $15 million) and so on.
Again, these ARE the actual costs for the parts themselves. To give you an example, a wafer might cost $10000 - it is a single piece of silicon crystal developed from molten silicon. Lets say you print about 400 chips on it. That means it costs you $25 just for the wafer alone. Meanwhile, only half the parts work, because a defects (dust, crystalline defects, and so on). Suddenly, that number goes to $50/part, just for the wafer cost alone. Add up everything else (chemicals, power, labor, etc) and it does mean your chips are going to cost $150.