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1 Million PlayStation 3s Shipped
The word from Gamasutra is that Sony is boasting 1 million PS3s shipped. They hope to have 6 million units out the door by the end of this year. This came from Sony's CES press conference, which only touched briefly on their new system. Hints were, though, that they'll be rolling out an IPTV system for many of their consumer electronics via the Xross GUI already in use on the PSP and PS3. From the article: "According to the company, the majority of new Sony televisions -- starting with several Bravia flat-panel LCD TVs this spring -- will accept an attachable module that can stream broadband high-definition and other Internet video content with the press of a remote control button. The module will be available this summer, and content will come from sources including AOL, Yahoo! and Grouper, now part of Sony Pictures Entertainment, as well as Sony Pictures itself and Sony BMG - however, none of this streaming video content has yet been confirmed for the PlayStation 3."
They have ohhh...
Until the end of March I'd say. All snark aside, there's some reality to that statement. The reason there is a "console wars", is because the console that makes the best business model for 3rd party developers gets the most exclusive games and the best ports. It's as simple as that.
The business model that Sony presented this generation, is one of the highest development costs, for a variety of reasons, but they hoped to balance that by selling 100 million systems again this generation. Which would work pretty well. Except for the selling lots of systems part it seems. So their whole business model they're presenting breaks down. For this reason, you'll see a sparse line-up this holiday season, which results in less sales. It's a negative feedback loop, and the stronger it is, the more they'll need to do to counter it. (An AAA+++ title or a huge price cut or both)
Just to go a bit further. The 360 has a more comfortable programming/design environment and better tools provided, lowering costs, and has a large and very active American and European fanbase, plus online handled through XBL, the possibility of demos and new content, and microtransactions (even though we all hate them). It's a good model.
Nintendo is offering a very low development cost system, that focuses more on controller interaction than pushing polygons. And it looks like Nintendo will be combining this with a very large world-wide installed base. (The Wii will probably be the #1 system worldwide by middle of the year) It's a very good model.
It all comes down to the games. Before the launch of the PS3, people were saying they wanted it because they wanted the same experience they got with the PS2 and the PS1, namely the huge library that had games in every genre and even created a few new ones. But it's looking more and more like that experience is going to be on a non-Sony system.
So if Sony can't start selling systems, it's not going to get the games. And if it can't get the games, it'll probably end up like the GameCube..making games for it's core audience, but little beyond that. And I liked..no loved the GameCube. But a lot of people didn't. (Mostly people who didn't have it..but anyway) Or they perceived it to be a failure.
So it sounds like this only works on Sony units, and only certain specific Sony units at best -- yet another Sony proprietary product to waste their resources upon. Can't they see that a seperate unit which works with any HDTV would be better for both them and customers? But, this is Sony we're talking about.
{ - Generic Guy - }