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Wired Dissects Sony as PS3 Effort Falters
PetManimal writes "Wired has an excellent analysis of Sony as it struggles to overcome the failures of the 1990s and make the PS3 live up to its promise. Sony is counting on the PS3 turning around the company's fortunes, but it may have been too ambitious. Besides being hamstrung with an unusual company culture that emphasizes small hardware teams and proprietary formats, Sony's efforts to make the PS3 kill several birds with one stone and appeal to a wider customer base is turning off the PS3's core support network: gamers. From the article: 'Then there was the decision to build Blu-ray into the PlayStation 3. Sony's logic seemed ironclad: Not only would the hi-def drive's huge storage capacity allow for far-more-realistic and complex games, the PS3 would carry Blu-ray into millions of households and drive sales of HDTVs as well. As it turned out, however, Blu-ray has done nothing good for the PS3. Blu-ray was the main reason gamers weren't able to get the new machine last spring: The launch had to be postponed because the new format's digital rights management system did not yet satisfy every Hollywood studio.'"
They may have not "invented" it persay but they did make the first transistor radio to use all miniature components. It's just like Edison...he didn't invent the light bulb...just perfected it ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_b
If you can't spell "per se" properly, then there's absolutely no chance that you understand it well enough to use it in writing.
No they didn't.
The first transistor radio sold to the public was the Regency TR-1. Sony didn't get into the market until three years later. They made a good product and it is popular with collectors but it would be like saying Oldsmobile invented the automobile.
The transistor radio became a mainstream consumer item only when companies in Taiwan and Hong Kong started producing the super cheap little radios that you often see in sixties sitcoms.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You are either unaware of, or are ignoring, Nintendo's history of anti-competition practices:
t m
http://digital-law-online.info/cases/24PQ2D1015.h
Also, back in the days of the NES, they used to limit the number of titles that a publisher to release in a given year.
All three companies do what is in their own best interest, regardless of what's best for the consumer. Feel free to take sides, but you are kidding yourself if you think somehow Nintendo are the "good guys".
First off, I'm not sure why the comment above is marked as a Troll, except perhaps the last bit knocking Zonk and Slashdot, and that is really more of Flamebait.
...
... does it matter though?
... right ... the "pundits" need to pontificate)
As far as specs go, the parent is pretty much on the money, although I'm not sure if Sony has announced about things like 1080p over component, we haven't seen what their on-line system is, and "we" (as a community) feel a bit burned after the PS2's "Linux Support".
On the other hand
- backward compatibility is something that Sony HAS shown it "gets" (as opposed to MicroSoft's XBox), and that opens up a huge library of playable games from day 1 (similar to the advantage the DS has over the PSP, yet people seem to remember it on the handheld but discount it on the console).
- I'm not sure if we've see a web browser announced for the PS3, but considering they got one in the PSP I wouldn't be surprised
- The prices on 1080p TVs are dropping like stones. The set that used to cost upwards of 10,000$ is now in the 2,000$ range. Is this higher than most people will spend? Sure. On the other hand, as the price drops it enters more people's buying range. As that happens, things like HDMI output, 1080p resolution and Blu-Ray DO become significant. The mandatory hard-drive is also a neat feature to have for hooking in extra content (or caching parts of a game that you might be working on).
- Yes, its a computer, but one available in only one configuration (the size of the hard-drive, and how it connects to the net should be transparent from the perspective of any program running on the OS). Isn't that all ANY console is?
I expect Sony to do a lot better than Slashdot expects (which seems to be as well as the Dreamcast).
From the launch of the iPod:
CmdrTaco's editorial on the launch under the News Blurb, "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."
Comments went on to include:
"Unfortunately $400 is about twice as much as I'd want to pay for something the size of a pack of cards." , "iPod is a good product, but nothing to get excited over."
Not all the comments were negative, but if I went by those comments alone, I doubt I would predict that people are starting to consider the iPod as a monopoly product.
Why don't we wait until the PS3 launches, and then we can see how it does? (oh
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Are you kidding? The only reason Nintendo can't be said to have an ulterior motive is because they have no leverage with which to accomplish any ulterior goal.
I don't think (s)he was kidding. Nintendo had no ulterior motive than making profit, by trying to monopolize as much of the gaming market for itself. Why did Nintendo experiment so many "unusual" gaming devices ? Simple: to attract as many customers as possible, grabbing them before less inovative competitors. Somtimes, it was a huge success (Gameboy, NES), sometimes it wasn't (VirtualBoy, NES64). But their core strategy stayed constant during the last 30 years: focus on the gaming business, and try to cut the grass before their opponent's feet by "being the first" in the innovation field.
So, how is that different from Microsoft and Sony ? Well, the goal of those two doesn't seem to make a lot of direct profit with their gaming devices, but rather use them as 'front-ends' to technologies they promote. They play a game of technological reputation: the one with the best-looking gaming device will won the label of "cool brand", and the key technologies associated with their machines will get a boost (PS3 is using Blu-Ray + PS3 is cool = Blu-Ray is cool; PS3 is a Sony product + PS3 is cool = Sony is cool). I think that Sony and MS don't care if XBoxes and PS3s are sold without any direct profit: they are seeking about indirect returns.
And Nintendo ? Well, their strategy seems to be very different. They are still focusing on gaming - and only gaming. They underline the 'social' trait of gaming. They push forward new input devices technologies to provide a new experience to players. Why ? I think that's because they're trying to make profit out of the gaming market itself, instead of using it as a display case for their technological skills.
In that respect, I think saying that Nintendo "has no utter motive" is quite accurate: Nintendo produces games and gaming devices to sell games and gaming devices, while MS and Sony produce those as advertisements for themselves and their other technologies.
That amount of storage space for games would be nice to have, but really wont be utilized for a while, and only for certain types of games.
Actually, according to Microsoft (several times) the HD-DVD add-on will never be used for games, period, end of discussion. See reference material here and here and here, just to show a few examples.
Aside from that, I agree with your post. MS isn't doing this to promote a format as much as they're doing it to spur more sales of their console. $600 for an HD-DVD player is still a decent price at the moment, and if you consider that most people considering the add-on will already have the X360 at that point, it looks a lot more like $200 to them. Plus, it's a completely non-requisite component for the system -- as opposed to the PS3, where the BD-drive is so important to Sony that they've delayed the console launch TWICE because of it. I'm all for Sony taking as long as it takes to get it right, but there's a point where their 'top-of-the-line' console starts to look like a very, very expensive way for them to promote their new (and ultimately doomed, like UMD, betamax, and mini-disc) proprietary media format.
To the darkened skies once more, and ever onward.
Actually, I just thought about looking at Wikipedia, and I've found the information my other reply to my post was lacking. Seriously, Wikipedia is way better at finding information than Google now. Anyway... straight from Sony's website
Playstation 1 shipping figures
Playstation 2 shipping figures
Now, before anybody get's excited, I know that consoles shipped != consoles sold, but they are a pretty good indicator of sales anyway. And if you go to a store right now, you'll see both PS2s and 360s sitting on store shelves.
Sony started shipping PS2 on March 6, 2000. 10 months into the PS2 life span, they had shipped 6.4 million units. Microsft has shipped just north of 5 million consoles 10 months into their console life.
At the same time, Sony kept on shipping Playstation 1s. The number of console shipped from march 31 2000 to december 31rst 2000 went from 71.2 to 79.61. This means they actually shipped (thus more or less sold, face it, no stores like to keep too much unsold consoles in stock), 8.41 million consoles, while the shipped only 6.4 million PS2s.
After a year, Sony has shipped 10 million PS2 (interresting, since this is the figure Microsoft is shooting at for their first year with the 360). And shipped 9.31 million more PS1. So it nearly took a year for the PS2 to outsell the PS1.
Now, fast forward a couple of years to the 360's launch. On June 30th, Sony had shipped roughly 6.22 million consoles since the 360 came out. 21 days later, Microsoft accounced they had shipped 5 millions.
So where does that leave us. Yes, the 360 is selling less. Keep in mind that it's (360's retail at 400CAN$ and 500CAN$) between 3.1 and 3.8 times more costly than a PS2(129CAN$) and 4 to 5 times the price of a GameCube(100CAN$). On the other end, PS2(299US$) was 3 times PS1's price when it launched(99US$).
So all of this considered, I think Microsoft is doing a pretty good job.
Uh. No?
That widely varies with the people you poll, the Wii is either extremely liked or extremely disliked (due to debatable and nearly not shown graphic abilities)
By your declaration, the GC should've been less powerful that the PS2. And it wasn't. Even though Nintendo sold it with an alledged poly count 10 times lower than the PS2 or the Xbox (difference being that the GC poly count was for fully textured ones).
They failed to attract 3rd party titles the medium was crap and it was hard to juice out the maximum perfs out of the console, but saying that the GC was less powerful than the concurrence is not even misleading, it's downright wrong.
Don't have one in the first place?
True that!... wait... Super Smash Bros Brawl for Wii is a Nintendo game and it will use the classic controller because the dev team considered it was fitter to SSBB's gameplay than the Wiimote... There goes your shiny theory...
Let's see. The following have been comfirmed for Wii at or within 6 months of release:
Bah, it's just annoying to create that kind of lists, so i'll just write them inline. Not necessarily a good thing but THQ is in (Avatar, Barnyard, Spongebob, Cars) as well as Midway (Blitz: the league, Happy Feet, MK: Armageddon, Rampage: Total Destruction), Kuju will release Batallion Wars II, Sega will have Bleach, Nights, Super Monkey Ball and a Sonic episode, Gnosis' Broken Saints will be on the Wii as well as Activision's CoD3, Square Enix will start with a Dragon Quest and FF: Crystal Chronicles, Bandai/Atari will have a Dragon Ball game, Namco will have Final Furlong, a Gundam game and Digimon and Tamagotchi franchise games, NTREEV's Pangya is in, a One Piece game is in the making, and of course a bunch of Nintendo titles (AC, Excite Trucks, Obstacle Course, Project H.A.M.M.E.R., Super Mario Galaxy, SSBB, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a WarioWare, Wii Music, Wii Sports).
And quite a few other devs/publishers have said that they had Wii games in production or that they were planning Wii games.
But yeah, I guess all of these are for non-gamers exclusively.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler