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Sony, Analysts React To PS3 Launch
cdneng2 writes "Sony may be aware that something is just not right. There's a reshuffling of management occurring within Sony. Kazuo Hirai is set to head their videogame unit, as Ken Kutaragi has been bumped to the Sony board. Jack Tretton, former COO for SCEA, is now the president and CEO of that arm of the company. There's no word on the reasoning behind these position shifts. On the same day, Namco announced that they must sell 500,000 games to begin making profit on PS3 games. A Financial Times article confirms speculation on how hard it will be for Sony to make money, as analysts with UBS predict that 30 games must be sold per PS3 for them to break even." To add insult to injury, EA CEO Larry Probst has said PS3 numbers were lower than expected. Current thinking is that Sony managed to ship roughly half of the 400,000 units they were promising.
30 games per PS3 is really a lot. Not being much of a console gamer myself, I don't know what the average games-per-console is, but that seems pretty high. Of course this figure depends on how much Sony can bring the cost of manufacturing down. Did the analysts assume that they would and factor it in, or did they assume a constant cost/console?
Good lord, just how many new games do they think the average gamer buys? At $50 a pop that's $1500. I have that much disposable income, but I'd certainly not blow it on paying top dollar for games. I'm sure I don't have more than 20 games total for my PS2, and all but 2 of those I fished out of the bargain bin.
I am so happy I own no Sony stock, and even more optimistic about having bought Nintendo stock.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Most folks that bought PS/3's bought them to sell on eBay. 100% of the poeple I know bought the PS/3 with the intention of eBaying the console. They did not buy any launch titles--just the PS/3. Another newsflash--the auctions are closing on the PS/3's in the thousands of dollars--but no one is paying for the auctions. One of the folks I know ebaying a PS/3 was estatic when his auction closed for $5,000. ($5K!! Damn--you could have bought a PC in 1981 for that kind of cash!) The win bidder though seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. All the hardcore gamers I know have picked up a Wii and rave about how much fun they have with console. Time will tell the true victor in the console wars. Personally I have 360 now, plan to get a Wii before Christmas, and will wait until until there is amply supply of PS/3's and several top rated titles before spending my cash.
This is true from what I've come to understand.
Japanese executives with high visibility are generally not fired, but rather are basically forced into a psuedo-retirement where they sit on an ineffectual board or something similar. From the outside it may look like a promotion, but (as you said) in reality he's been moved to a spot where he won't be doing very much as far as actual job duties.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
PS3s are snapped up the second they hit stores shelves, eBay prices continue to very high for the systemBecause there are very few of them.
gamers are raving about these epic 40 player lagfree free online Resistance matchesBecause there are very few people hitting the servers. Wait until there are a whole lot more people. I'd be willing to bet there'd be some lag on 40 player games.
the reviews of the PS3's BluRay features and playback are absolutely gushing and calling it the best player on the marketGot a link or something to back that one up? I've heard nothing either way.
none of the massive hardware failures people were claiming would plague the system like the 360 have come to pass.It's only been a couple weeks. Give it a few more months and then we'll talk.
And Zonk continues his one man crusade against the PS3. What exactly is the point? Because whatever it is it clearly isn't working.And you and all the other Sony fanboys continue your crusade for the PS3. What exactly is the point? Because whatever it is it clearly isn't working.
Everything I say is a lie. Except that... and that... and that, and that, and that, and that... and that.
I've heard about a Japanese businesses promoting failing managers, the theory is that more responsibility will lead to better performance by said manager.
But I don't think that's the case here, not that I'm a big Sony fan but the guy did start the whole playstation project which undeniably took the video game industry to a new level (which has it's good and bad sides offcourse), so he's not a complete idiot. In the end he did make Sony ALOT of money and at the beginning of Sony's gaming division there were few people at Sony who thought gaming was more than a fad.
I think Sony promoted him to keep him away from the press, because like you said, the guy is a PR nightmare.
Alot of people in the industry told me something like this would happen as soon as the launch was over with because the guy simply couldn't keep his mouth shut.
the reviews of the PS3's BluRay features and playback are absolutely gushing and calling it the best player on the market
If I'm not mistaken, the PS3 is only the 2nd Blu-Ray player on the market... There's the Samsung player, which has been out for a little while now, the PS3, and the Sony one won't be released until just before Christmas, I believe. Pioneer and Philips should have players... eventually... but for now they're getting screwed over by the already short supply of blue lasers going to the PS3. I'm sure the main reason the Sony BD player has been delayed so much is also because of the blue laser shortage.
Given the fact that the Samsung player is already running into Blu-Ray discs it can't play, and the Sony Blu-Ray player is going to need at least 2 firmware updates to play certain discs and to use the Java interactive features when it does finally launch, I'd say there's not much competition for the PS3 in the current market.
But then I'd be surprised if a $500/$600 dollar game machine can be a better BD player than a dedicated $1000 machine, too... I'm sure the PS3 will have its share of BD problems.
That's because C64 games are free these days. Just grab a floppy drive, a few dozen double-density floppies, and have at it.
Now if you want to talk about Atari 2600, Intellivision, and Coleco cartridges, I probably have over 300. They're a pain in the butt to store, but they're so cheap to get ahold of these days.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
You have some valid points but Gears of War is definitely in the category of compelling games. Personally I would put Oblivion in that category as well but there are people who prefer to play it on PC because of all of the community-added content available.
I don't like Sony either, but I think their system will be moderately successful after a few years. The current shortages and reported difficulties of developing for the system will hurt them in the short term. After there's more of an install base and developers start taking full advantage of the hardware the PS3's outlook will improve.
I still see Nintendo as the winner of this generation. I don't know how many hours I spent playing Oblivion on the 360 but I haven't touched it since I got Zelda. The new controllers for the Wii make it incredibly fun to play. If they continue to release good games at a lower price point I think it will be very difficult for both Sony and Microsoft to compete.
"Seek first to understand." - Socrates
Okay, how many fewer games are being bought because of the low supply/high demand/eBay mark-up trend? The money to purchase games for the console has to come from somewhere, and I'd suspect it is all going towards just getting a PS3 console into a home.
Should Sony go after eBay resellers for damages? Could they?
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
No you can't.
Character animation -- the illusion of life -- personality --- distinctive movement --- is what separates the men from the boys.
Low resolution makes the problem all the more difficult.
Sony's launch wasn't very good, but at least give them the credit they're due... They released an estimated 83,000 units in Japan, and 200,000 more in the US.
Never mind the fact that the 360 outsold the PS3 in Japan in the month of November, and during that same period, roughly 3x as many 360s were sold in the US.
Considering that the PS3 has been in production (according to Sony) since October, they didn't even manage to ship 300k PS3s during the month of November? Yet Sony is still confident they'll hit 1 million by the end of the year, which would require a 400% increase in production! Even if this miracle occurs, Microsoft is going to sell more than 1 million consoles this holiday season which is only going to increase the lead they already have over Sony.
Personally, I think Sony will be lucky if they've sold 700k PS3s worldwide by the end of the year.
Not to sound like a fanboy or antifanboy, but "cutting edge games AND BlueRay movies" is quite a stretch. Right now, their best game is, Resistance: Fall of Man, which unfortunately won't blow away anyone familiar with normal PC FPS's. The rest of their lineup are either ports from existing 360 games (EA Sports), or minor updates of existing games (Ridge Racer 6 to 6.1... I mean 7).
Which is not to say that as a launch lineup the PS3 is terrible. All systems launch with a terrible lineup. The 360's best game at launch was Geometry Wars, a 5 dollar download. The PS3 may not seem more powerful than 360's lineup NOW, but in a year once people have learned to harness the hardware and the development tools are more mature, I have no doubt that the PS3 will be stronger. But for now, Gears of War just seems more impressive than resistance.
Sony was aiming to conclusively knock one out of the park, and they failed to do that in a very big way. The launch lineup has no killer app. Blu-Ray movies are far from a DVD killer. They wanted to be all-pervasive, but only managed to get MAYBE 400,000 units out there, and now it looks like they actually sold 200,000. Their Xbox-live killing online service has basically failed to materialize. The Sixaxis is too laggy to be a primary input, and is no Wii killer. The extra texture space afforded by blu-ray so far appears to have gone to... umm... The renderers seem to all be very low-contrast, and so aliased as to destroy detail. If your nice-but-cheap 1080i or 1080p system won't go down to 720p, the PS3 will render at a low-rez 480. And lots of other growing pains keep the system from being all that was promised.
Play the system at a friend's house. Or if not, play it at a Best Buy. It's nice, but it's not earthshattering. Certainly, it's not 1,000 dollars-on-ebay great.
Contrast this with Sony's brash bragging about being so great that people will want to get a second job to afford one, and you see why they are considered "in trouble." The game is definitely not over, but they did not come out nearly as strongly as they have been promoting. They didn't come out anywhere near strongly enough to clinch things, and arguably they have stumbled repeatedly.
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