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Jeff Minter on Sony's Arrogance
Regular Edge columnist Jeff Minter has lashed out at Sony over what he perceives as incredible arrogance on the console-maker's part. From the BBC article: "Mr Minter, writing in his regular column for Edge, said: 'They seem absolutely certain that even when they say it's going to be considerably more expensive than existing consoles... nevertheless us eager customers will rush out in droves to buy it because it's, hey, a new PlayStation.'"
I have not heard these millions. Where do they live? Certainly not in the United States, Europe or Japan. When the Japanese' eyes go big over the price of some electronic doodad, it's probably too expensive.
That's not even starting with the other hundreds of Sony gaffes, a list of which would consume pages.
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I've been a PC gamer for like... ever. But just knowing that I don't have to upgrade a component in a $600 gaming system to play the latest game every 6-12 months... hell there are video cards that run that much! In perspective, the PS3 IS a PC (cell processor yada yada), Blue-Ray whoopdie do, but consider the sheer amount of data they can throw on one of those discs? I am seriously considering picking one up. Now, give me a version of Linux that will run on it (with minimal hacking) and I'm sold!
Remember, adding a random "do:loop" into someone else's code is a damn good time!
Touché. Potential doesn't matter. The PSP had a lot of potential, but it wasn't taken advantage of, IMHO. I wonder if the PS3 will go that route too.
Well the ps3 hardware is worth 600, probably much more, but most gamers are unwilling to pay 600 for a gaming console.
Real games and Real fun are up to developers. Sure Microsoft support for devs is better, so this could mean better games, but it isn't a contingency. Let's see how supportive Sony will be to the homebrew comunity and developers in general to decide if the ps3 is worth the extra development costs and if games are good enough for consumers.
PS and PS2 absolutely dominated their generation (yes I'm aware Nintendo may have made more money). PS3 strikes me as too expensive but then I'm not the average gamer so it's not up to me to decide if Sony's strategy is sound. If their strategy is right, then who are we to tell them not to do it? And if it's wrong, it's not my problem either.
"Cheaper than a computer" has always been a feature of consoles, trying to justify the PS3 cost by comparing it to the computers is a bit of a strawman. Hell, if I buy a Wii, I can have $1250 left over for my "other things" machine.
As for these mythical hordes of people slobbering to buy the PS3, I have yet to see them. Please direct me to them. Honestly, everyone I talk to sees the PS3 to be like pulling teeth, they want to avoid it for as long as possible. Most of us know that in the future we might break down and buy a PS3 once the number of good exclusive third party titles for it is too good to pass up and it has undergone a theoretical drop in price. Meanwhile, I want the Wii like no one's business and it will probably be the first console ever that I will stand in line to have at launch.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
The vast majority of people that will buy the PS3 haven't been online to discuss it, and never will. They haven't heard about all of the stupid things Sony's executives have said, or heard any of the discussions about why the controller has certain features like tilt sensing. These people will know nothing about the console except what they'll see on the side of the box after they buy it.
The real question I see is, can Sony make money even if they sell 20 million units? Sure, a lot of people choke on the $600 price tag but most analysts figure it still doesn't cover the manufacturing costs. They seem to be willing to take a loss on the PS3 to try to win the HD format war. But if that bet doesn't pay off they could be stuck with a loss leader that doesn't lead anywhere.
Bite the hand.
Mighty respect to the Yak, n'all, and Sony are certainly a bunch of pisstakers, but Jeff did write the light synth that was bundled with the Xbox360 so he might not be a completely fair and unbiased observer here.
You might want to bear that small fact in mind...
Well, no, I'll be buying it to play the games.
What amazes me is that an expensive console is nothing new. The Playstation was almost twice the cost of the next dearest console. The Playstation 2 was also the most expensive console from that generation. I bought both of them. Approximatedly 100 million people bought the damn things. Obviously cost isn't that important an issue.
So what is the important issue? The games, of course. There are games on the PS3 that won't exist on other consoles. I'll be buying the console to play the games. I don't buy it because it's "new". In fact, I'm most likely to wait for the first price drop because there will be too few compelling launch titles.
And what's this about price?
I don't care! That's not an issue. It might have been an issue back when I was a teenager and had to beg my parents for money, but I have a job now and I can afford to buy things. The cost of a PS3 pales in comparison to the cost of running my car. My "video game habit" is still an order of magnitude cheaper than the booze and cigarette habit that infects 99% of the population.
These "analysts" need to realise that the video game demographic has grown up. The age group is no longer 5-15 years old, begging our parents to buy a Sega Master System for Christmas. The dominant demographic is 25-35 years old with gobs of cash. The price sticker on a PS3 doesn't bother us in the slightest.
Sony is big because they have a reputation for making quality products
Problem: Sony is not doing now what it was doing before it became big. Isn't the definition of insanity doing two completely different things and expecting the same result?
Either you're a Sony marketing bot, or this entire post is satire. Multiplayer gaming with a birds eye view from the PSP? Right. Like that's never been done before (Nintendo). Using your PSP as a remote control? How? Why? Who cares? What's wrong with a normal remote control? My media collection streamed to my PSP? Why would I want to stream it to a tiny stream when I'm going to be streaming it in my house with a big TV? PS3 DVR? How is that supposed to work? I haven't seen Cable card or a coax connector on the PS3. Normally a DVR does kinda need one of those. PS3 as a portable WiFi hotspot? Gee that's great, I'll haul around a $600 router with me. VOIP? Because the N-Gage didn't really well. Video calls? Yeah, that's a huge market there. A GPS? Right, because I'm going to take my PSP hiking with me with it's 10 hour battery life. Do I need to buy a solar panel too? 7000 PS1 games? First, I'll eat my sock if that many really are available. Secondly... why do I care? I can play PS1 games on a freakin 5 year old Macintosh. Use the PS3 to store my PSP downloads? So the PS3 has a hard drive. OOooooo. Impressive. PDA apps on the PSP? With what input? So far the only console succeeding at all as a PDA is the DS. Same for education.
Sony has very little potential. They're wrapping up all these buzzwords trying to impress us, when in actuality, half the stuff they promise doesn't exist yet, and the other half they'll promise and never deliver. The entire Sony gaming division must be stocked with the same people in charge of Vista. Cramming yesterday's technology into something high priced, and filling it with buzzwords most consumers don't care about. I don't care whether or not I'm paying $600 for 600 buzzwords. It's not new, it's not original, and for the most part, those features don't actually exist. Seriously... a DVR? You're talking about things that require connectors that aren't even on the PS3.
How many Units do you think an average store will stock?
Every Wal*Mart, every Target, every Sears, every Fred Meyer, every EB-Games...
If I were in charge of electronics inventory for a major chain, I'd have to think long and hard... If they don't sell, will Sony reimburse? Should each store stock 10 Wii's 10 360's and 10 PS3's?, or 30 Wii's, 10 360's and 5 PS 3's?
Which would make the store more profit? 30 Wii's plus 1-3 games each, or 10 PS3's with 0-2 game each? (If it comes with Linux, many will not be used for retail games)
How many pre-orders will end up not being redeemed, because the customer can't afford it?
Spending $600 for a game console is one thing, but if you're the guy who bought $60,000,000 worth for your company, and only 50% of them sell, who's gonna get blamed for the lost $30,000,000?
But then, if you stock too few, and the competition gets all the sales profit...
Then you should be buying a Wii.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Switch PS3 for Mac Mini, and Sony for Apple, and you just figured out Apple's marketing stradgedy.
Apple knows that people will pay more for a Macintosh than a PC. If the Mac Mini costs $600 and the generic PC clone costs $300, Apple knows that millions of people will buy a Mac Mini anyway despite it being twice the price of the low-end PC. The low-end PC being one without a monitor, keyboard, and mouse like the low end Mac the Mac Mini.
Apple also knows that people will buy a $5000 Macintosh system with all the features and software for video editing, even if that low-end PC with lower quality hardware can also edit video with an el-cheapo video capture card for less than $1000.
I guess Sony is trying to say, like Apple does, that its products have a superior quality to them, and are easier to use, and thus worth the extra money to buy them. Sony seems to think that the Blu-Ray technology alone is worth the $600 price of a PS3, because every movie that Sony's Movie division releases to home video will be on the Blu-Ray DVD format and not be able to be played on HD-DVD and standard DVD players.
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"I don't know anybody who would get a PS3" is much different than "nobody will buy a PS3." Last US presidential election I knew almost nobody who would vote Bush and were all confident that he would be a one termer because, hey... they didn't know ANYBODY who supported Bush. Guess what... Bush is still our president. The people you talk to most are most likely people who generally agree with you or don't express their opinion, otherwise you'd stop talking to them or they'd stop talking to you.
Microsoft's dev support is better, maybe NOW. Last July there were a number of frustrated and frantic launch titles scurrying about and cursing Microsoft. Even a year from now the platform potential and vast profitability of Next-Gen will still be in the future, so right now is not exactly a barometer for success.
And the whole "Microsoft == Better Developer (Devoloper! Developer!) support" + "extra development costs" is largely bogus. The XBox was plagued by the fact that many average developers could release middling games and low-effort ports running at 20-30 Fps. The XBox 360 seems to bear no effort in reversing that.
Console developers have always distinguished themselves with an understanding and exploitation of the hardware rather than a reliance on an API. Don't get me wrong, an API is useful to abstract hardware or to divert the efforts of less adventurous programmers, but it serves little purpose to hardware that is fixed and small developers whose only advantage is ability.
That is coupled with the fact that "extra development costs" are almost entirely due to extra artists and animators required for HD. The reality is that Microsoft's main thrust with XBox 360 + Vista is control of the entire Video game + Entertainment Distribution + Operating system + Application industry. Do you feel happy siding with that?
I mean, I'm ambivalent regarding the purpose and quality of Sony... but I know what Microsoft is for sure.