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.'"

Comments

Can we declare Nintendo winners yet?

[Yvan256]

Between the high price of the PS3 and all its delays and problems, and the relatively high cost and problems of the Xbox 360 (along with the "Xbox 1.5" perception by most people), how can Nintendo not jump from 2nd to 1st place?

Yes, they were 3rd in the USA, but world-wide they were 2nd, just a bit ahead of the Xbox. Given their larger marketshare when you take the Nintendo DS into account (marketshare, i.e. which % of console(s) owners have a Nintendo system), you have to wonder what the future holds for Microsoft (still in the red with the whole Xbox division) and Sony (betting it all on the PS3, which seems to be a failure before it even starts).

My daily naive question

[UbuntuDupe]

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.'"

Blu-ray was the *main* reason? So, otherwise, they were basically ready to launch before May? So, a bunch of launch titles had *already* been completed by developers and should have had full functionality at E3, and it's possible to send reviewers ready-for-gaming (but crippled) PS3s with these games? And the "tilt controller" was ready to go then?

Is it just me, or were several other equally important issues preventing the Spring launch?

Re:My daily naive question

[Anonymous Coward]

The amazing sales of the PS2 are the real reason Sony pushed back the launch of the PS3.

The PS2 is flying off the shelves in all territories even during these usually slow Summer months. Sony could have launched in Spring without the upgraded HDMI spec and with smaller numbers of PS3s to stores. And obviously with less games, but the insane sales of the PS2 have given them the luxury of being able to chose their launch time. People like to claim the "Nextgen doesn't start until we say so" talk by Sony was just arrogance, it is really just a reflection of the utter dominance of the PS2.

We just learned that the PS2 is outselling the 360 in Germany some 27 to 1 each month, and the PS2 has outsold the 360 for almost every month in 2006 in the US.

Sony is in charge and is the sole driving force in the console industry.

Re:My daily naive question

[DDLKermit007]

Actually it's more Sony can't use rumble anymore so they HAD to put something in there. Copying Nintendo badly was the best they could do.

Re:Great, Sony vs. Microsoft

[Frag-A-Muffin]

...and I have no clue who to cheer for.

Nintendo.

This is more insightful then you know. It's the only gaming company left that doesn't have some ulterior motive. Sony wants the PS3 to push its bluray format into every living room. Then you have Microsoft battling that by siding with the HDDVD camp, cuz THEY also have interest in the "living room".

Meanwhile, Nintendo wants to make games, and fun ones at that. You can argue it's motive is to try to tie in the DS and sell more of those (or vice versa). But at least it's still game related.

I for one am siding with Nintendo on this one, and not only because I'm a Nintendo fanboy, but because I want my gaming to not be affected by some stupid political battle of the formats. I don't want to be caught in the middle of a format war that no good can come of.

Microsofts Lead

[Ironsides]

I hate to say it, but from what I've read about the PS3 and it's cost components, it seems to me that Sony should have followed Microsofts lead and released the 1st gen PS3 without Blue-Ray. As I understand it, that alone would have allowed a several hundred dollar price cut and would make it competitive with the 360. Also, given the lack of blue lasers out there, it would help with manufacturing as well. Then, in a year or two when the Blue Ray drives have come down in price, they could release the 2nd gen PS3s with Blue-Ray. One revolution per generation seems to be enough.

One thing I'm curious about. I wonder if one reason MS delayed shiping the 360 with an HD-DVD drive was to see if Blue-Ray would come out on top over HD-DVD and make sure that they didn't support the losing side prematurely. Basically, even though MS says they are commited to HD-DVD, if it flops they could just put Blue-Ray drives in the 2nd gen 360s instead.

Re:Yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I agree with you that what you see online doesn't greatly reflect reality, and that people online have unrealistic sense of self-worth.

If you talk to people who do market research more and more of their work is going online and gauging public preceptions of a product because of how accurate it is; I met a guy who's entire job was going online and reading web-forum posts, assigning various (weight) values to them, and comming up with a popularity index for a particular product. If done well you can anticipate what product is going to become the next DS Light/iPod Nano and what is going to be the next nGage.

What the internet really represents is a collection of loosely defined sub-cultures that may overlap; the opinions you find online are very representative of these groups in real life but are not representative of the general public. For example, if you go to a rock-snob website they'll bash Brittany Spears but the general public still likes her "music". What is very clear with the PS3 is Sony has upset (through various actions) the hard-core gamer and geek population; being that these groups are heavily represented in the early-adopter crowd one would expect that the PS3 will have great difficulties selling their system at launch.

Re:Great, Sony vs. Microsoft

[buzzzz]

While I understand the concept that Game Companies should focus on games, I for one am excited about the possibility of someone finally getting it right and integrating the living room into a single device. One can just let one's imagination run with the possibilities of that scenario.

Controlling devices in your house by doing stuff with in a game for example? :)

Re:Great, Sony vs. Microsoft

[AKAImBatman]

The crash had nothing to do with games being prurient; it had to do with them being bad.

That's actually an urban legend. The Video Game Crash was a result of too many games for the market to support, combined with a general feeling by the public that they were just a fad. While the likes of E.T. and Pacman didn't help anything, they certainly weren't the cause. The cause was attempts by retailers to clear their excess stock by marking down large numbers of titles. This started a chain reaction that lead the public to stop buying console games and focus on computers.

Not inconsistant or wrong

[SuperKendall]

Division sales fell 29% as fewer consumers bought PlayStation 2 consoles in anticipation of the next model.

Yes, and yet the PS2 STILL managed to outsell the 360 every month except I think for last Christmas, which is what the original poster was saying. Even despite that drop the PS2 is selling in very large numbers.