Kutaragi Admits Sony Hardware In Decline

An anonymous reader writes "In a surprising admission, Sony Computer Entertainment President Ken Kutaragi acknowledged that Sony's strength in game hardware might be in decline. BetaNews has the article, which reports on Sony's PS3 struggle for the holiday season." From the article: "In an extraordinary public statement of regret and despair over having to postpone his company's PlayStation 3 debut in Europe and Australia until March, and to limit availability elsewhere to only 500,000 units come November, Sony Computer Entertainment President Ken Kutaragi is quoted by Reuters as having told reporters, 'If you asked me if Sony's strength in hardware was in decline, right now I guess I would have to say that might be true.'"

Comments

Wow!!

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

This has the potential to be the first article about a Sony exec saying something that may not be tagged fud!

Re:Wow!!

[MilenCent]

Oh it's still FUD. It's just aimed at his own head!

Re:Wow!!

[n3tcat]

So the quantity of fud is directly proportional to the amount of sony hardware available?

They seem to be good at software

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes some l33t sk1ll2 to make a piece of software which acts as both spyware and DRM at once, and then install it on a person's computer without their approval. Thanks, Sony. You took the art form to a new level.

Re:They seem to be good at software

[Stormwatch]

It takes some l33t sk1ll2 to make a piece of software which acts as both spyware and DRM at once, and then install it on a person's computer without their approval. Thanks, Sony. You took the art form to a new level.

Actually, their DRM/malware was licensed. They're not even good at being bad!

Sony's problem

[Yvan256]

They think they're the #1 in electronics and gaming, but they're no more important than Toshiba, Hitachi, etc.

Given their obsession with proprietary Sony software (ATRAC comes to mind) and hardware (miniDisc, memory stick - when we already have too many flash standards already, UMD, etc), the general public is less likely to choose Sony in the first place.

Then add PR fiascos like the rootkit, the PS3 delays, the PS3 price tag and the latest "Blu-Ray doesn't look much better than DVDs" comments I've read, Sony better do something before it's too late.

However, seeing their new "Four PSP movies locked in a single 1/2GB memory stick that you have to unlock and then still only play them on the PSP" idea, I have no hope left for them.

Re:Sony's problem

[Wintermute21]

yeah
i bought
a DVD-ROM drive from them not too long ago
crapped out in 3 months

never again will i buy Sony

Re:Sony's problem

[JonnyCalcutta]

right on
i bought
a DVD-ROM drive from them not too long ago
its still working fine

i will always buy Sony

Re:Sony's problem

[JonnyCalcutta]

what about?
i bought
a DVD-ROM drive from them not too long ago
its works intermittently

i will sometimes buy Sony

Re:Sony's problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr John Calcutta
Reply to yourself you do
Karma whore you are

Re:Sony's problem

[shoptroll]

That's cause it's a rebranded Lite-On drive? I did the same thing, and then found out my folly. Take a look around for the firmware updates and see what's really behind the label.

Re:Sony's problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony's warranty "support" sucks. Trying to get something fixed by Sony is very trying. I recommend against them for just this reason (and not merely the price premium tacked on to everything they sell just so you can have "Sony" written on the product). Sony used to sell good quality products. That has changed over the last 5 or so years. They sell shoddy products and do not stand behind them when they break.

Re:Sony's problem

[MemoryDragon]

Good luck for you mine failed two days after warranty expiration, the sony TFT monitor I have however works flawlessly and has been for years now.

Re:Sony's problem

[fromvap]

"Blu-Ray doesn't look much better than DVDs"

That is really hard to believe, because HD can look MUCH better than DVD, if you pause it. See here: http://www.cornbread.org/FOTRCompare/index.html
These 2 especially: http://www.cornbread.org/FOTRCompare/FOTR_Compare3 _DVD.html

Remember the thrill when DVD first came out of pausing a movie and being able to read the writing on letters, signs, liquor bottles?
Now that will be expanded and you can read many more tiny objects, and the higher resolution will let you zoom in on women in the crowd with enough detail to really see if they are hot.

Re:Sony's problem

[WilliamSChips]

yeah
i bought
a pair of headphones from them not too long ago
they're still working fine

sony still makes the best headphones

Re:Sony's problem

[Yvan256]

"Blu-Ray doesn't look much better than DVDs"
That is really hard to believe, because HD can look MUCH better than DVD, if you pause it.

I didn't say Blu-Ray wasn't better, I was talking about "tech people" doing demos in stores and such. If they can hardly set up the things properly, imagine the regular users.

Remember, we still have people connecting their DVD players via composite (RCA) instead of S-Video or component... The advantages will Blu-Ray will be lost on most people.

Re:Sony's problem

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

sony still makes the best headphones

Eh. If you're into that sort of thing. I still like my Grados more than anything. They're sexy. Well, not everyone thinks so to look at (they're not exactly modern-looking headphones and can be an acquired taste), but they sound great, and that's all I care about.

Re:Sony's problem

[Technician]

Given their obsession with proprietary Sony software (ATRAC comes to mind) and hardware (miniDisc, memory stick - when we already have too many flash standards already, UMD, etc), the general public is less likely to choose Sony in the first place.

That paragraph alone sums it up nicely. My first digital camera was a SONY. My experiance with it was short battery life. It was good for 1/3 of a wedding and none of the reception, 1/4 ball game, etc. Many recommended buying a spare battery. At $40 a pop, I passed and stuck with a camera that tool AA batteries. I use NiMH as a primary battery and second set. When they die, I move on to backup batteries. The CF card can be read in any CF reader. No special software or cable needed to get the photos off the card.

Go ahead

[Tsiangkun]

Ask me if I care.

I'm still in shock really. I was anticipating the PS3 for years, and then in just a few months, SONY destroyed any desire I have to do business with them ever again.

I don't know about you, but in my house Wii have already decided what Wii think of the PS3. They could have a mere dozenPS3 ready by november, and it wouldn't change a thing for me.

I discriminate against companies infected with DRM

Re:where's the original Reuters link?

[namekuseijin]

ok, forget. sorry. here it is:

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?typ e=reutersEdge&storyID=2006-09-08T124607Z_01_T73859 _RTRUKOC_0_US-SONY.xml&from=business

yes, something smells bad...

Re:where's the original Reuters link?

[Reality Master 101]

Why not stop the Sony bashing, please?

"Bashing" implies excessive or unwarranted criticism. What criticism of Sony would you say is unwarranted these days? They're an empty shell of their former self.

Just the Opposite really

[adam31]

The One positive PS3 has is its hardware. Its the software, sales, and marketing departments that are killing PS3. Did you watch E3? That was the longest continuous WTF I've ever seen. Powerpoint? Massive Crabs? Card monsters? The devkits they're giving developers are supposedly a total nightmare, with SDKs that take days to get working... And then sales goes and picks the magic number we all know.

But the hardware underneath it all is brilliant. Cell is a pretty sweet piece of chip for video games. RSX is good enough. Blu-Ray has 25 GB of storage, which should be enough for the next 5 years of games. A hard drive removes the artificial limitation of streaming bandwidth from building seamless worlds. Wireless controllers, Wifi internet, 1080p... tilt is tilt, even if a gimmick-- all these options are there for devs.

If only the rest of Sony could get their shit together, the box would sell itself.

Re:Just the Opposite really

[antifoidulus]

But the xbox 360 also has much of what you said(no blue ray, but that won't be a big deal for a while) And the xbox 360 premium is 2/3 the price of the ps3 and may very well inch lower before the release of the PS3. I don't own a 360 and will probably not own any of the next gen systems, but Sony's hardware is basically just a 360 with blue ray bolted on and a cheap imitation of the Wii controller. Pardon me for not getting excited over that.

Re:Just the Opposite really

[Rycross]

Interesting about the dev kits. Do you have some sources for the problems, because a friend of mine didn't seem to have any troubles at all devving for the PS3. He seemed a bit confused when I mentioned this rumor.

I'm not trying to troll or spread FUD or anything. I'm genuinly interested where there have been problems.

Obligitory: I'm leaning towards Wii myself. I'll have to see the whole package Nintendo delivers.

Re:Just the Opposite really

[UbuntuDupe]

I'm sorry, but I don't think you fully appreciate how vital the Cell processor is in order to facilitate real-time weapon changing. I guess you just don't understand the internal architecture of console systems.

Re:Just the Opposite really

[masklinn]

Dunno, most of the feedback about the devkits indicate that it's extremely complex and the tools are akin to PS2's devkits tools: they suck, and you have to create your own.

From what I've read, for this generation, the Microsoft devkits are the absolute best (in simplicity, functionality and features, I guess MS' experience with Visual Studio helped a lot there), then comes Nintendo (the devkits are OK, and the fact that the Wii is fairly similar to the GC allows companies to reuse GC knowledge), and dead end is Sony with much more difficult to use and less featureful devkits. I guess companies which developped a lot for the PS2 are used to it though.

But it seems that what sucked the most about the PS3 devkits were the second-to-last iteration: seems like they were extremely noisy ("vacuum cleaner") while the final iteration is extremely silent.

Re:Just the Opposite really

[Anonymous Coward]

Cell is a pretty sweet piece of chip for video games

Actually, I'd personally argue that the Cell is pretty crappy for videogames; its a very powerful processor that can do a massive number of floating point operations but doesn't really address the fundamental performance problems that exist in Videogames.

In videogames (like most applications) 5% of the code takes up about 90% of the processing power; take scene graph management as an example, most of the effort to manage your scene graph (to determine which objects to be rendered) is doing matrix-matrix multiplications, vector-matrix multiplications, and vector cross/dot products to determine whether the bounding sphere is within an arbitrary box, segmenting the box, and then testing whether the bounding sphere is within the 8 new arbitrary boxes. On the Cell processor each matrix multiplication will result in 64 floating point multiplications and 48 floating point additions (with an aditional 128 integer multiplications and 64 integer additions if the programmer is dumb), each vector matrix multiplication results in 16 floating point multiplications and 12 floating point additions (with an additional 32 integer multiplications and 16 integer additions if the programmer is dumb) and so on; if you were truly designing a "games processor" you would include far more vector instructions (with the possiblility of a hardware based matrix multiplication) to greatly reduce the ammount cycles needed to handle these types of operations.

The reason Sony didn't do this is that this would reduce the clock speed that they could run the processor at (in theory, a matrix multiplication could do 64 floating point multiplications at the same time, which would use a lot of energy, which would produce a lot of heat, which would mean that you couldn't run it at nearly the same speed) and thus reduce the speed at which you could run generic code; the fact is that Sony and Toshiba have already said that the Cell was designed to be included in their entire electronics line, the only reason it is the CPU in the PS3 is that they had to spend the money to develop a CPU for the PS3 anyways and they could use that money to develop a generic multimedia processor instead.

Trust me, Sony could have developed a much more powerful CPU (for gaming) at a fraction of the cost if they wanted to; PS3 early adopters are paying extra money so that Sony can use the Cell in future TVs to upscale a 480p image to 1080p.

Re:Just the Opposite really

[Money for Nothin']

Good hardware sells itself -- like Betamax!

Re:Just the Opposite really

[ravenshrike]

I have yet to see any quoted source on the insane complexity of the devkits. Nowhere. The closest thing I've seen actually quoted is that it's difficult, but not near the shittyness that was the PS2 Emotion Engine.

Re:Just the Opposite really

[BeeBeard]

You raise some great points about how Sony at least knew enough to sandwich together some pretty interesting hardware for their upcoming console, but how in the world can you claim that the PS3 is being "killed" when it hasn't even been released yet? Rather than engage in endless debates about who will be king of the mountain after the PS3 arrives, the thing to do here is to just wait until the PS3 is out and the dust settles.

Trust me, there are plenty of ways to kill a console that don't involve unfounded PR moves and minor devkit problems. How about having *no* developers even making games for it? That was the case with the Sega Saturn, which I owned and loved. There was a time when it was the hottest thing on the block, too. But the Saturn soon turned into a kind of cautionary tale about how you really need to get some grassroots developer support before you even think about releasing a new machine. Sony has done that.

Will it be enough to topple Microsoft and Nintendo? Who can say?--I'm no fortune teller either. But what we shouldn't do is assume that because Sony has completely dropped the ball in other markets, that they will likewise fail in the console arena. Still skeptical? Look at Microsoft: Their operating systems range from mediocre to absolute garbage, their office suites are pretty nice, and their console systems are now wildly popular. If we had just considered Microsoft's past history with operating systems, could we have accurately predicted the success of the Xbox? It's doubtful. There was a time years back when ./ ran almost nothing but anti-Microsoft stories, and a lot of that general enmity translated into some early Xbox-hating. Now, Sony is the new punching bag. Will we all make the same mistake again?

Re:Just the Opposite really

[Rycross]

I've heard that too, but its always been hearsay. I can't remember actually reading it in an article. My friend is really smart though, and it sounds like the guys he works with are likewise. So its possible that they didn't have any difficulties. Could also be that a lot of console developers have a hard time dealing with multi-threaded programming.

Re:Just the Opposite really

[Rycross]

I looked on wikipedia concerning the PS3 and the programming aspect at least seems promising. The launch titles are meh for me though.

Re:Just the Opposite really

[aichpvee]

Look at Microsoft: Their operating systems range from mediocre to absolute garbage, their office suites are pretty nice, and their console systems are now wildly popular. If we had just considered Microsoft's past history with operating systems, could we have accurately predicted the success of the Xbox?

Wildly popular? The first xbox sold about 20 million units worldwide (this is about 14% of the market for the generation) while losing buckets of loot. The xbox 360 is going to do about 5 million units (projected) by the end of the year, which is right on track to match the original's 20 million number by the time microsoft jumps the gun again in 4 years and releases xbox 720.

If we were using microsoft's history with operating systems to predict what would happen then we would see xbox actually being "wildly popular", at least if sales and installed base were the determining metric.

xbox so far is a pretty big disaster and will remain so until it gets any sort of mainstream acceptance as the living room extension of microsoft's desktop monopoly. Hopefully this won't happen, but it's about the only way that xbox will be a "success."

Re:Just the Opposite really

[BeeBeard]

This is just what I'm talking about. I don't know where you're getting your numbers, but they're not even close to reality. I'll have to assume that you were referring to market conditions back when the Xbox was first released, as opposed to the state of things now (when it's relevant).

I'm no expert on console market share, but I do know what comes up on the first page of a Google search. Here, I've done the work for you:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/05/26/news_60993 69.html

That article tells us that Xbox had a 51 percent market share as early as 2004. In the U.S., Xbox has been outselling PS2 ever since.

Nevertheless, I could cut you some slack if you don't live in the U.S. Even though Americans put more money into consoles than the rest of the world combined, the console market in other parts of the world is not so Microsoft-friendly. If you go by global figures (where Microsoft is still the new kid on the block), then the picture changes. Here's something I pulled up about Sony's current console market share. It was published today, so you won't need to use your time machine when learning about market share:

http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2006/sep/09game.htm

"Not worried about the headstart that Microsoft has gained in the next-gen gaming space, Jayant Sharma, chairman and CEO, Milestone Interactive, engaged in marketing of digital devices, interactive games and media, points out that in the console market in India Sony has a 100 per cent market share and 70 percent globally."

100 percent in India?? 70 percent globally! I think in all the confusion, we all assumed that only Americans buy console games? It seems that Sony is already the Microsoft of the console world. Perhaps they might actually know what they're doing when it comes to releasing consoles. Cheers.

Re:Just the Opposite really

[AbRASiON]

LOL, no!

Xbox has been a dismal failure for Microsoft and it is absoloutely selling terribly in comparison to the PS2 (or rather was)
I think at ONE point it outsold the PS2 and the PS2 soon took over again.

There is 100, 110? or so million PS1's and PS2's in loungerooms internationally and 20 million Xbox's

Microsoft are basically just using their $$ to leverage their way into the market, they can afford to make a loss on the Xbox 1 and hopefully not the Xbox 360.

They were hoping that Xbox 1 owners would all adopt an Xbox 360, however because the dipshits rushed out the Xbox 360 and dropped the Xbox 1 support like a sack of shit (unlike Sony with the PS1) a lot of Xbox owners are pissed off, should you risk 4->600$ investment on an X360 when MS might kill that too in only 4 years, instead of the traditional console 5,6 or 7 year generation and support?
Xbox 720 in only 3 years if Microsoft keeps this shit up.

Re:Just the Opposite really

[AbRASiON]

Look I hate to blow my own trumpet but I completely disagree.

http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195886&c id=16051389

Sony have completely and utterly lost their shit, at this point I'm absoloutely convinced that Sony PR and Marketing, Sony management, Sony hardware engineers, Sony software engineers and finally third party game developers are all simply NOT COMMUNICATING - everything these idiots say either contradicts themselves or is just outlandishly bullshit sounding.

Sure we should wait for the release before we say "wow Sony really did fuck up!" however I'm comfortable saying right now that they are definately going down the path of screwing up.

Re:Just the Opposite really

[Mistshadow2k4]

I don't own a 360 and will probably not own any of the next gen systems

We're with you -- and what says everything is that my husband is a hard-core gamer. I game some too, but more in pen & paper RPGs. Anyhoo, here's our assessment of the next generation consoles:

XBox 360: Very limited backwards compatibility. To play XBox games, you need an XBox. 360 doesn't play both. Therefore lacking in a big enough library of games to our tastes.
PS3: If everthing holds true, WAY over-priced and too much DRM. Husband says if he wants to get screwed that way he can just commit a serious crime and turn himself in. Big library of games, true, but the vast majority of that will play on our PS2.
Wii: Maaaaybe. Past two Nintendos haven't had a whole lot of games we wanted, but with Sony shooting themselves in the foot every time they speak, more devs might switch over to the Wii. Let's wait and see.

In conclusion, if we buy any console out of this generation, it'll almost certainly be the Wii and we're not even sure about that yet. If there are more folks out there like us, gamers old enough to have seen more than one console generation before now, this may not bode well for any of the console companies.

Re:Just the Opposite really

[SuperDre]

that ofcourse is utter bullshit... The devkits for the PS3 are just fine.. and a lot of companies are using the unreal engine 3, so that's no different than it would for like that shitty xbox 360... And also you say that the 'akin to PS2s devkits tools: they suck', but that's not what I've seen, the PS2 devkits where extremely good...

Re:Just the Opposite really

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the PS3 devkit (as of SDK 092) is that the software just isn't good enough to let developers work efficiently with them. For example to update the flash ROM of the kit (one with each new SDK version) you have to copy it to a usb storage device, power down the kit, reboot the kit and insert the key *at the right moment*, that's just stupid (both 360, PS2 and previous versions of the PS3 devkit would let you do this by network). The Sony dev forums are full of posts from developers trying to recover from bricked kits.

And speaking of the dev forums, developers are getting really pissed off, the tone as been changing lately. These forums are usually really polite and politically correct, but we're starting to see some really snarky comments from veteran developers like David Etherton (who's doing both PS3& 360 development and had done a lot of PS2 dev). There's even a guy from Insomniac (a Sony 1st party) who basically declaring Sony dead by their own incompetence. Basically what most of the devs are saying is that the tools and the doc suck and everybody is on his own trying to get something working, and Sony doesn't seem eager to help. For example, IBM is working on some compiler technology to enable arbitrary code to run on the SPUs, Sony's answer to that is that it's not the most efficient way to use the SPUs so they flat out refuse to integrate any of that in the PS3 tools.

The Cell is an interesting processor, but in a multiplatform context it's just isn't what the devs need. It used to be that on PS2 some of the low-level engine guys and the graphic guys would have to get really intimate with the machine to get it working correctly, that's only a few people. But right now with the PS3 if your game is planning on using the SPUs for anything other than graphic stuff you'll have to train your entire team to use it since none of the C/C++ code you'd usually write will work well (if it event works) on it. This cannot happen, there's not enough low-level guys in this industry. The PS3 also has 8 cells, 1 is disabled to improve yields, that leaves 7, 1 is reserved by Sony that leaves you with 6, and 1 other can be requested by the OS at any time. They also lock 96MB of memory for the system (32 in VRAM, 64 in main RAM), that's like 19% of the memory. That leaves you with what good be a good machine but the architecture is really stream oriented, and most game code just doesn't fit that paradigm.

And the RSX is getting humiliated by the 360's chip, it just isn't funny how much slower that chip is. On paper they look a bit similar but the reality is that the 360's chip is faster at context switching and can pipeline state changes this gives it a a real big advantage with real work game scenes (compared to useless tech demos and benchmarks). And since it uses unified shaders engine the performance is pretty much always balanced, quite unlike the the RSX. And we won't even start talking about the moronic RAMDACs in the PS3, we've compared the output quality of the PS3 and 360 with the same image side by side with identical TVs, the PS3 has an enormous ammount of ringing arround edges in 720p, the 360 has a much better image quality.

And back to tools, on one side you have Microsoft with Visual Studio 2005 with a custom compiler full of special 360 extensions for better performance, a ton of optimized libraries, great documentation and PIX. PIX is like to coolest tool ever invented to debug and profile graphic performance, the PC version is not so good because it can't exposed the low-level stuff but the 360 version is completely out of this world. None of our graphic programmer does it's primary work on PC because of it.

On the other side you have Sony with a custom version of GCC and GDB as your debugger, custom only the fact that it targets Cell because otherwise it's pretty much the same thing, and the SPU version has tons of problems with dead code removal (which due to the SPU limited memory size, is frigging important). Now I like free software but GCC just isn

Re:Just the Opposite really

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/08/11/report-us-july-s ales-up-22-ds-and-ea-top-sellers/

US Sales figures for July this year. In short: PS2>360>Cube>Xbox

I wouldn't really call the 360 or the original Xbox widly sucessfully. The xbox did very well for a new entrant to the market, but didn't get near sucess on the level of the PS2. The 360 isn't really doing any better, although when you consider that it's an expensive system with expensive games and a subscription fee for online play on top of that it has respectable numbers. Aside from in Japan, obviously.

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/08/18/japanese-hardwar e-sales-7-august-13-august-fake-comments-edi/

360 sales: ~5000 per month. Xbox sales: ~0

Still, you're right overall, market sucess in unpredictable. But, since it's a fun game and getting it wrong costs nothing we might as well play! I put 80 funhouse dollars on Wii to take 40% global home console market share in 2007. :)

Re:Just the Opposite really

[aichpvee]

I was going to reply and refute your claims, but it's not even worth my time. You're a fucking idiot. Go read that gamespot article you linked. Then gtfo out of my country. We don't need morons like you and have too many already.

Re:Just the Opposite really

[Anonymous Coward]

because the dipshits rushed out the Xbox 360 and dropped the Xbox 1 support like a sack of shit (unlike Sony with the PS1) a lot of Xbox owners are pissed off

That's funny. I thought the extended lifespan of the PS1 was because the PS2 launch was horseshit. Tell me - what was your favorite launch game? Kessen? Ring Of Red? Orphen? Hope you like fighters, since basically the only two games worth anything at launch were Tekken 3 and DOA2 Hardcore, a Dreamcast game. Oh yes - and Riiiiiiidge Racer...

Re:Just the Opposite really

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, way to sound like you know what you're talking about.

Each core on Cell has 128 128-bit registers and vector instructions out the wazoo. The thing is designed for crunching vectors and matrices. If you've ever written assembly-level vector code you'd know that.

If I were Microsoft right now...

[Mr. Samuel]

...I'd be planning every conceivable way to capitalize on Sony's situation. A small, highly advertised price drop, a pack-in game with every console, or whatever it takes.

Yeah, Nintendo wants to create the mass appeal console, but I'm not certain that they'll crack the mainstream market yet. I'd say the Christmas season is Microsoft's to lose.

Re:If I were Microsoft right now...

[7Prime]

No way dood, forget Nintendo's previous few generations for a second... consumer memory is VERY short when deciding on new hardware anyway, especially when you look at the trends of video game console sales from generation to generation. Bottom line is: Wii is CHEAP and COMPLETELY UNIQUE in terms of design. Lackluster GameCube sales aren't going to mean crap this generations, and that's basically all MS has going for them. I have no doubt in my mind, that the holiday release of the Wii is going to be owned by Nintendo, all MS is can do is to hope to ride it out for the time being. I have no clue what the long-term success of the Wii will be, but I'll be VERY suprised if Wiis don't outsell 360s, 3:1. The very fact that the 360 has been out for almost a year, and many people of who will have wanted it will have already done so, and the Wii is just jumping in now, there's no chance in hell MS will outsell Nintendo this next season.

That said, I think 360 sales will spike along with the Wii. With the three 7th gen (is it?) game consoles out the door, the next gen will have OFFICIALLY begun, where-as the past year has been kind of in limbo. Many people will only now hop on board with the next generation, now that they have a real choice to make, and many will go with both a 360 and a Wii, many will go with a Wii, and some new ones will go with a 360, and a very few (500,000 max) will walk out with a PS3. Now that the PS3 will be properly sitting out next to the 360, many people will be ready to make the choice... and MOST of them will choose the 360, many others will jump on board with Wii. I think MS is looking at a very profitable holiday season, but they won't come close to Nintendo's sales.

Re:If I were Microsoft right now...

[justchris]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you are dead wrong. Holiday sales this season will probably look a lot like this (for the US market): DS PS2 360 Wii PSP PS3 GCN Xbox The simple reason is availability. DS, PS2 & 360 have been out long enough that they have more stock available. The bottom line is, people will go to the store to buy a Wii or PS3, and there won't be any. Most people, tired of waiting, will spend that money on a 360, or a DS if they don't have one. There simply is no possible way for Nintendo to produce enough stock for this holiday season that they can hope to exceed Microsoft's sales. PS3 or Wii may win out in the long run, and they are both pretty much guaranteed to sell out this holiday, but the 360 will have the highest hardware sales this season.

Whats Worrying Is Sonys Linking via PSPConnect

[Joan Cross]

On my trawl of PSP news sites i came across one which had an article about Sony linking to a hacking site , i thought this is of course rubbish, but a closer look at PSP Connect has verified that news.
Now i went to the site in question and theres an iso loader called DevHoook for the PSP. Surely sony dont want to offend all the game companies by linking to sites like this.
Are Sony that desperate for users to use the playstation portable that they link to a hacking site.?

Only things to do!

[monopole]

1.Raise Prices
2.Add more proprietary hardware
3.Add more DRM, not playing Blu-Ray isn't enough. Destroying the disc (on the faint possibility that it is pirated) while installing a rootkit is preferred.
4.Add exploding batteries

Where's the positive news?

[ConfusedSelfHating]

For nearly every product there is negative news, as well as positive news. Where is the positive news for the Sony PS3?

It seems that for the price they want to charge ($499/$599) everyone wants an amazing system. If the Wii ends up only having five good games, it's a pretty cheap system so people won't complain. If the PS3 has only five good games, Sony needs to fireproof their headquarters. The Xbox 360 at $299/$399 is still considered too expensive for most people, most people who like the idea of buying the 360 want a $100 price drop (I'm not saying we'll get it, but we would like it).

Sony has created a console which gives very little room to manuever. It would only be successful under the following circumstances:
- the Wii is a failure
- the Xbox 360 is a failure
- people are happy to pay $700 for a console + game + HD cables
- manufacturing is successful at producing large numbers of PS3s

I think Microsoft will drop the price of the Xbox 360 pretty soon to increase their install base. I think quite a lot of people will buy the Wii whether it's $170 or $225. There are a lot of complaints from people who own PS2s about the high PS3 price. Their manufacturing has been less than successful in producing the number of PS3s in the time frame needed.

Personally I will purchase the Xbox 360 when I can get 65 nm version with a hard drive for $300. I wasn't really impressed by the footage of the Wii (IGN has a 20 minute demonstration on their website), but they may release games that appeal to me. The PS3 may be a good deal when it hits $300 for the premium version, but that will be about 3 years from now and there will be new consoles being released.

If anyone has positive news about the PS3, could they please post it.

Re:Where's the positive news?

[Headcase88]

"If anyone has positive news about the PS3, could they please post it."

Dude, the controller detects tilt! What more do you want?

Seriously though, exclusive games.

Re:Where's the positive news?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say that there is no good news for Sony but that is not entirely true; I would assume that there are good stories being produced (games being announced, games reported to be on schedule and what not) but that things have been going so badly for Sony that the general gaming news has started piling on.

I really don't know how Sony did it in such a short period of time (I'm even surprised after seeing it unfold) but somehow they went from being everyone's darling and ensured the top sales position (worldwide) in April, to being one of the most hated companies in all of gaming. It used to be that you only saw fanboys act with such hatred towards one of the console makers, but everyday you see rational (reasonable) gamers desire to see Sony fail because of the level of arrogance and hubris that they have demonstrated.

Re:Where's the positive news?

[ConfusedSelfHating]

Actually the exclusive games front is negative news. Assassin's Creed, Grand Theft Auto 4 and Resident Evil 5 are coming to the Xbox 360 first day. There are exclusive PS3 titles, but no where near as many as their were on the PS2. The PS2 was cheaper than the Xbox 360 and had a lot of exclusive games. There may be exclusive by default games on the PS3 from Japanese developers because the games are developed for Japan. Don't get me wrong Gran Turismo 4, Final Fantasy XIII and Metal Gear Solid 4 will be system sellers, but most causal gamers will take a wait and see approach because of the $600 price tag (no one wants a crippled console). If the Xbox 360 has a price drop it will hurt Sony badly (except in Japan).

Re:Where's the positive news?

[buffer-overflowed]

The only exclusive games in big franchises hitting the PS3 anytime soon are Gran Turismo(not a new game, just 4 in HD), Final Fantasy(main series), and Metal Gear Solid IV. All TBA 2007. That's maybe 20 million consoles(being generous and not assuming any overlap between the fanbases), and requires that FF and MGS(both series are in a sales decline as well) stay on the PS3 exclusively, which isn't assured. That's about what Nintendo pulls off with their franchises(also in decline), btw, and about how many systems the Gamecube sold. It's also about how many Sony can get out there by Christmas 2007 if you give them the benefit of the doubt.

With the drastically increased cost of development in this new generation, exclusives are a bad idea unless one console really pulls ahead, and given the launch numbers and production rates of the PS3, that's not going to happen until late 2007, if at all. The reality is there are two development targets atm if you want to make money w/o incentives from a console maker in this next generation. PS3/360/PC and the Wii.

Maybe it will get cheaper

[Animats]

Postponing the launch may help the PS3. The basic problems with the PS3 are 1) it costs too much, and 2) Cell programming is still in the experimental stages. A relaunch in time for the 2007 holiday season might actually succeed. The games will be better, and it will be time for the price to drop to Xbox 360 levels.

Re:Maybe it will get cheaper

[KDR_11k]

Yeah now try explaining that to all the developers who had PS3 games lined up for that time and give them a good reason not to simply port to the 360 instead.

Re:where's the original Reuters link?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're an empty shell of their former self.

This means that they're likely to be taken over by a giant hermit crab !!!

Xbox 360 == ps3? Nuts.

[twitter]

... Sony's hardware is basically just a 360 with blue ray bolted on and a cheap imitation of the Wii controller.

Sorry, the PS3 specs blow xbox away if the two pages I just read are current. PS3 has twice the floating point performance xbox 360 does

, not to mention a spec page with real specs. All the hype and bullshit on the xbox page makes my head hurt. Similarly, the software Xbox runs has a tendency to make computers hurt whereas what PS3 is leveraging is know to be clean. Sony's DRM might crap it up, but at least they are starting with something that works. I expect Xbox to be as buggy as any other Windoze box.

Re:Xbox 360 == ps3? Nuts.

[shoma-san]

Are You living in a hole or something? Haven't you at least test driven a XBOX 360? It's not buggy and neither are the dev kits.

hardware or manufacturing?

[R5900]

I don't what the original japanese text is, but this translation is actually different:

Said Kutaragi: "If asked whether Sony's level of manufacturing technology declined, I have to admit it under the present circumstance. But Sony intends to prove its technical capabilities by manufacturing the necessary number of blue lasers from now on."

I reckon that actual PS3 hardware is actually very good. Cell is really impressive, if you use SPUs (I do everyday, and love them - would never be able to do 1/10th of what I'm doing with them on "another console"). On the other hand PPU is utter crap, but considering it's the exact same core used in "another console", it's probably not that relevant. RSX is a very decent GPU, despite not matching the ridiculous numbers announced at E3 2005.
The big issue is that Sony seems unable to manufacture the full system.
Disclaimer: I'm somehow biased since I work mostly on PS3. But things I have to complain about are on the software side, not hardware...

Re:Xbox 360 == ps3? Nuts.

[twitter]

It's not buggy and neither are the dev kits.

Except for melting, right? No, I don't live in a hole but I think it would be cool.

Re:where's the original Reuters link?

[rgbscan]

And I for one welcome our new giant crab video game overlords.....

Re:where's the original Reuters link?

[Anonymous Coward]

why not stop the Sony bashing
because SONY really did license a rootkit without understanding it

because SONY really did sell somthing with a CD logo that was not a CD

because SONY really did say the Wiimote was dumb, a month before they copied it, poorly.

because SONY really has held press conferences where they were like 'our consumers will eat our shit, vomit, and eat it again '

because SONY really did say that the PS3 is a bargain, at only three times the anticipated cost of a Wii

because SONY really did release a rootkit remover that opened up security vulnerabilities on our computers.

Fuck you troll. People are bashing SONY these days because they are a piss poor company that is fucking themselves in the ass
while they give each other reach arounds and moaning about how great they are.

Re:where's the original Reuters link?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand! You may never understand! Some of us have faith - we MUST have faith - many of the greatest games ever made are near exclusive to PlayStation - if it fails, what will we do then?

Re:where's the original Reuters link?

[WilliamSChips]

Once people stop calling the BMG rootkit the "Sony rootkit" then it'll stop being unwarranted.

Re:where's the original Reuters link?

[Reality Master 101]

Once people stop calling the BMG rootkit the "Sony rootkit" then it'll stop being unwarranted.

You think it's just the rootkit that's the problem? I didn't even have that in mind when I wrote the post. The rootkit is just a symptom; Sony's problems run far deeper than that. Look at their MP3 player that doesn't play MP3s and requires you to go through that multi-hour "conversion process of pain". That's if it doesn't infamously crash along the way. This from the company that used to OWN the portable "walkman" music market. "Walkman" at one time was in danger of becoming a generic term! Not anymore.

Heck, I bought TWO pairs of Sony headphones in the past year or so. These supposedly "noise cancelling" headphones that didn't worth at all, and some more normal ones that lasted about six months before spontaneously breaking (the latter also had a ridiculously badly designed case that I won't go into).

Look at "memory sticks" -- more proprietary Sony garbage trying to monopolize the market and turn everyone in the industry into licensing slaves. That's the Sony of today -- create something to try and lock everyone in.

There is absolutely NOTHING I will buy from Sony anymore. I have a Sony monitor on my desk, for crissakes, but they're dead as far as I'm concerned.

Re:Xbox 360 == ps3? Nuts.

[geminidomino]

So that's why Oblivion never just spontaneously crashed and wedged the system on me.

Oh, wait...

Re:where's the original Reuters link?

[justchris]

Wait until those games are ported to the Wii, Xbox 360 or PC? Cause they will be, you know.