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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 actually only have around 20 units that they shipped back and forth 50,000 times
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.
Have a look at http://nexgenwars.com/, the numbers on that site appear to be pretty believable.
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 - }
When will companies start saying how many units were sold, instead of shipped?
You misunderstand how the whole manufacturing chain works. In auto sales it's easy to determine how many cars a company is selling because they control the important end of the chain to determine sales to consumers - car dealerships. Companies like Sony and Microsoft do have their own online stores but the majority of their sales are through retailers that are 3rd parties. Those 3rd parties aren't likely to report sales of a specific product, especially in the timely manner that manufacturers need. So as a result, they're forced to say how many units they've shipped in order to report how strong a product is. The theory is that it's hand in hand with sales since most big-box retailers use Just-In-Time inventory and other methods to keep consoles from piling up. Retailers aren't stupid - if the product isn't selling they won't order it. However, there may be contractural obligations built into sales contracts that says they have to stock so many units or buy in blocks.
This timely manner for sales reporting, by the way, can be blamed on everything from the console war to the fact that Wall Street demands quarterly reporting from public companies.
The fact is, a bunch of 2+ year old systems wasn't any "saturating the market" or providing any competition at all.
Oh, I know, I know, when you said competition, you meant "real", "serious" competition. Not, in other words, the Saturn or the Sega CD or the CDi or the 3DO or the Turbo Duo or the Neo Geo. You meant the real, SOLID systems. Just like when you were saying that no Scotsman eats porridge, you were only referring to the true Scotsmen, not like, Angus. Sure, Angus eats porridge, but think about it -- he can't even play the bagpipes!
It really wasn't that hard to see where the market was going a few months after launch, even 10 years ago.
I know. The past is rather predictable like that.
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They have a single unit that can be in all places and in all times at once. Sometimes it looks like a big scary black bird.
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We have a good idea that the CPU and GPU are very similar architecturally to their predecessors. If Nintendo really had made extensive changes to the chips, they would've done things like boost the amount of 1T-SRAM on the system. The fact that they boosted the amount of external DDR instead indicates that they didn't try to muck with the memory controller to much. The fact that they didn't enlarge the EDRAM on the GPU indicates that they worked on the GPU die conservatively, not wanting to change the load-store pipeline too much.
So while it's possible that certain effects on the Wii are much faster, I'd still say it's a stretch to call the console much more than twice as fast when it still basically has the same design. And of course 2x the raw theoretical power (which would be achieved if they increased the clock by 50% and say increased the number of pixel pipelines by 50%) still doesn't translate into anywhere near 2x the actual performance.
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