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 -

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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?

Regardless of what happens a year from now this is a major blow for Sony, a coup for Microsoft, and breathing room for Nintendo. What do you think the console market will look like this time next year?

Comments

Need a Linux for PSP

[DrXym]

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.

Re:Well well well...

[Lave]

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.

Re:Will there be an emotion chip too?

[ThinkFr33ly]

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.

Re:Will there be an emotion chip too?

[RexRhino]

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)?

It's never been about Slashdot, grasshopper

[Moraelin]

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.

Art of war

[tacokill]

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" -- Sun Tzu (Anonymous), The Art of War