Slashdot Mirror
Sony And The No-Confidence Vote
Sony continues to spend the goodwill it has achieved over the last generation of consoles. As widely reported over the weekend, last Friday CEO for SCE Europe David Reeves spoke to the press. "We have built up a certain brand equity over time since the launch of PlayStation in 1995 and PS2 in 2000 that the first five million are going to buy it, whatever it is, even it didn't have games." This 'you'll buy it anyway' attitude has further annoyed gamers already rankling from the announced pricetag. Next Gen and IGN talk about the two sides of the coin, with IGN laying into the company for the lack of HDMI output in the cheaper model, and Next Generation saying that Sony is far from defeated.
Reeves' blithe assertion that their 'brand equity' will induce gamers to shell out 600 clams for their console, despite the dearth of available games, is pure fantasy.
Basically, Sony is making many of the exact same mistakes Sega made with the Saturn. Given that Sony was Sega's "$299" antagonist at the time, you'd think they'd know better.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It will be 2 years before all the hardcore sony fans get done buying their PS3s, by that time sony will lower the price and all the casual gamers will buy it, nothing is going to change this generation. Sont sold 103 million PS2s compared to 22 mil xbox and 20 mil GC, anyone who thinks Sony is magically going to lose this gigantic market lead is fooling themselves.
But in 2000, most people had not seen DVD in action, players were ridiculously expensive, and more importantly, so were DVD movies. It had barely entered into the equation in PCs.
Actually, DVD was initially released in 1997 in Japan and early 1998 in North America; by 2000 every major electronics store had a decent DVD movie section and carried DVD players that were in the $300 range. In 1998, when I got my lightning fast Pentium 2 433MHz pc it came with a built in DVD Drive; in 2000 you had the choice of a DVD drive, CD+RW or a hybrid DVD CD+RW drive. DVD was very much an established format by the time the PS2 arrived.
What Sony has done is priced the PS3 into a position where only about 5% of North American gamers (a yahoo Japan survey had it at 8% of Japaneese gamers, who spend more on games than americans do) are willing to pay it. The PS3 has the weakest line-up of all three platforms for the next 12 months and the only saving grace is Blu-Ray (which isn't rentable yet, unlike DVD in 2000, the movies cost $40 compared to the $20 that DVD cost in 2000 and you require an upgrade on your TV to take advantage of the format).
The PS3 is already a disaster and they haven't produced 1 system yet.
But in 2000, most people had not seen DVD in action, players were ridiculously expensive, and more importantly, so were DVD movies. It had barely entered into the equation in PCs.
Not true. I built a computer with a DVD drive and MPEG decoder card in 1998, and quite affordably. By 2000, consumer DVD players were in the sub-$200 range and DVDs were already taking significant amounts of shelf space away from VHS in retail stores and video rental outlets. And at no time did the typical DVD movie EVER sell for about $30 or so.
By 2000, Circuit City's DIVX experiment had already failed.