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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.
I was sitting at work, refreshing the Slashdot games page, and I started feeling sad. You see, I'm an XBox Fanboy, and have looked with anticipation towards the next article presenting Sony in a negative light. I thought you wouldn't provide one today, but lo-and-behold, you've come through!
And how! Not one, but four separate articles in one story about the bad times at Sony. Things are grim for them, but thanks to you, Zonk, I can sleep well tonight knowing that I'm rooting for a different team.
The most negative possible spin on a series of PS3 articles?
Sounds like a good time to use the 'zonked' tag!
These estimates of console losses Sony is supposed to be experiencing are really just guesswork.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Dare I suggest that the PS3 is more deserving of the "miserable failure" moniker than George W. Bush?
I'd hardly call a product that can't remain on the shelves a failure! Actually, I think Sony should have raised the price! Anytime that a product can not be produced fast enough to meet demand, the price should be raised. The goal is to have the last person willing to pay the price buy the very last unit from the shelves. When more units are produced, they should lower the price to whatever point it needs to be to achieve the same goal.
Don't flame me, it's economics!
Speaking of a booming economy... don't bring GWB into this. This is not meant to be a political discussion. Go to Daily KOS or DU or whatever.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
PS3s are snapped up the second they hit stores shelves
Release low enough numbers of something, and it's bound to sell out
eBay prices continue to very high for the system
Directly related to your first point - when you're 10,000 miles away from meeting demand, there's going to be a premium
gamers are raving about these epic 40 player lagfree free online Resistance matches
I'm surprised they can even find 40 plays to play with. But, let's see if there's any lag after Sony ships 10 million consoles.
going nuts over the Motorstorm demo
So, for a gamer, the compelling reasons for a gamer to buy a PS3 right now are one game, and a demo?
the reviews of the PS3's BluRay features and playback are absolutely gushing and calling it the best player on the market
Great, so at least I can buy some Blu-Ray movies at twice the cost of an HD-DVD movie and watch it on my PS3 when I've finished playing the one game worth playing, and the demo for an unreleased game.
none of the massive hardware failures people were claiming would plague the system like the 360 have come to pass.
Well, that's good news, though I think it's too early to be claiming there are no massive hardware failures. How long before the optical drives start to fail, in typical Sony fashion?
They only made 200,000 because that's all, realistically, they could sell.
Look, I know people made a big deal of this made it looked for a while like eBay prices "proved" that the PS3 was a hot commodity, but actually, it isn't. If you go into Wal*Mart outside of the major cities, you'll find most have a whole stack of PS3s, waiting to be sold. On eBay, the "silly prices" aren't working any more, a few people are willing to bid on non-BIN items up to around $750, but it's essentially all over. (Even those units usually are bundled with extra controllers and games.)
My Wal*Mart, depressingly, has had the same five boxes, sitting (predictably with one having scotch tape over the cardboard "latch"), sitting in its gaming area for the last week.
Of course the Sony fans went for it right away. They always do. They're the same as Apple users, they'll buy anything as long as it has the name on it. But this just isn't the console anyone wants. It's generated pretty much no excitement whatsoever. It is, for all intents and purposes, a dead platform.
The coming war isn't between Sony and the rest, it's between Microsoft and Nintendo. So it should be no surprise that my sources are telling me Sony will be making a surprising announcement in January. They'll be pulling out, throwing their wieght behind the Wii, ironic given the PlayStation's origins.
They'll be announcing a partnership with the first product being Blu-ray drive with a built-in Wii console. The system is already prototyped, it needs Nintendo's approval, but Nintendo are, apparently, eager to give that. The "Wii-ray" will be up against a revised X-Box 360 next year, the X-Box 360HD, which will, as the name implies, include built-in HD-DVD support, and cost around $400, which will probably be around $100 more than the Wii-ray.
Either way, 2007 will be an amazing year for games console development. We haven't seen the final forms of the real next-generation consoles this year, we've just seen the opening shots.
Go fuck yourself you piece of garbage.
Scum like you are the shit on the shoe of the gaming world.
But it is offtopic, you knob-gobbling assmaster.