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Where the PS3 Stands Now
Phil Harrison and 1up's Luke Smith had a chat about the current positioning of the PlayStation 3, and it makes for some interesting reading. A quietly confident Harrison discusses the future of game distribution online, their attitude towards competition in the console market, and clarifies a few things about the potential for PS3 price cuts. The previous discussion about price cuts was apparently a big misunderstanding. "PH: Well, do you know what [Takao Yuhara] said was, cost reduction, not price drop, and there's a big difference between cost reduction and price drop. So, that I believe is where the confusion came from. Obviously, we are investing our money in making PlayStation 3s cheaper to manufacture -- that's part of our business plan. 1UP: You're not going to pass the savings along? PH: When we can, when there are savings to pass along to the consumer, we would obviously choose to do that. That's the business model. 1UP: Wait? You guys are doing this to make money? Really? PH: That's videogame hardware 101."
Sony is selling the PS/3 at a loss. I've seen estimates as high as $300 (loss) per unit. Clearly their strategy is to get the manufacturing cost down ASAP and recover some of the loss via higher game royalty payments. They MAY even be limiting production - at least till they can further lower manufacturing costs.
A risky strategy, when you consider the deep pockets of Microsoft (also selling their console at a loss), and that Nintendo is actually making a profit on their consoles. But it's still early in the cycle for this generation of consoles. Personally, I'm cheering for Nintendo. But it's MUCH to early to count Sony out of the game.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Rock solid defect free hardware - compared to the nightmare failure rate Microsoft still has going on with the 360.Really? I've seen a pair of them at a UPS Store being shipped back to Sony. I've also read reports from people back in December being told not to expect replacements for two months. Of course, I would assume that this estimate has since been revised, what with supply and all...
Absolutely silent operation - bravo Sony engineering!
Ah, yes...Sony engineering, which also gave us the Square button on the PSP and told us that we were wrong for not liking it. Also, the analog nub on the PSP freaking sucks. I'm glad there's only one, because the one that's there isn't very sensitive at all. You try making a circular motion with it sometime - it doesn't work. There are two speeds possible with it (all the way out and part of the way out), and the angular refinement is pretty shoddy. It's very hard to go from, for example, W to WNW to NW. You'll generally skip straight over WNW. Ever try web-browsing on the thing?
BluRay has won the format war with only a couple months after the PS3 release BluRay already outselling the dying HD-DVD format 3-1. And one of the remaining HD-DVD studios just jumped ship to BluRay today. Pretty much all that remains is for Universal to throw in the towel.
Nice for you not to provide a link here where you did everywhere else. Also, describing this as a format war is like calling the Falkland Islands War a war. The remaining 99.99% of the world didn't even notice it was happening. Also, Sony dumping its crappy back-catalog of movies into Blu-Ray, causing a large chunk of new titles to be made available, is not what I call winning - it's what I call "stacking the deck". Despite it's apparent capacity advantage, Blu-Ray is getting lower marks in the picture quality department, which, if you weren't keeping track, is kind of important to the people willing to drop $2000+ on a TV and $500+ on a high-def DVD player.
PS3 has the top selling game in Japan now - Japan will be a fierce battle between Sony and Nintendo. Nintendo really needs to work on their release schedule. Wii owners are getting restless as the novelty of games like Wii Sports is wearing off.
"Top-selling" is hardly the way to put it. With over double the install base of the 360, it hasn't managed to come close to outselling Blue Dragon. Watch next week, as Virtua Fighter 5 drops back to the mid-20's, while Wii Sports and Wii Play continues to sell the same amount each week (which proves that the novelty isn't exactly wearing off).
Early previews are going gaga over Motorstorm with another online win for Sony with another completely lagfree game.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1103341 [hardforum.com]
No...RECENT previews are saying "Hey, this doesn't suck anymore". Early previews said it was complete and utter shit. Oh, and hey - that's the one the Japanese got! I'm sure they love the PS3!
The Playstation Network is cranking out all sorts of very cool indy games like Flow and GripShift and we are only a couple months into adding content.
No...the PlayStation Network is releasing a port of a Flash game that's been out for over a year, and another not-so-great Sony-first-party junker. Oh yeah - and the rubber ducky game.
The one issue with HD tvs and PS2/PS1 games has been fixed and PS3 owners have rock solid 99 percent backwards compatibility with the giant library of PS2 and PS1 games.
It's not 99%. Closer to 90%. Music games are still broken. Also, the "one issue" is actually two issues, one of which has been fixed. Ask a 720p-set owner if they're happy that they can't play in 1080i anymore.
Virtua Fighter just about to hit the shelves.
It did hit the shelves in Japan. It landed with a thud. See above.
GDC sounds like Sony is going to have some pretty big announcements with even more
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
Christmas was more than a few days ago.
*please mod informative, please mod informative*
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
The "Thud" comment is (reasonably) justified ... According to VGCharts.org Virtual Fiter 5 sold 49,500 in it's first week
... ... ...
... Another way to look at it is that Virtual Fighter 4 sold 367,500 in its first week. At this pace Sega will be lucky if Virtual Fighter 5 sells 100,000 to 200,000 copies in it's lifetime.
Last week Lets Make a J-League Pro Soccer Club 5 sold 108,250 and Harvest Moon: The Island I Grew Up On sold 81,000 in their first week
The week before Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold 220,750 and Romance of the Three Kingdoms Wars DS sold 81,750 in their first week
And the week before that hack G.U. Vol. 3 sold 132,750 and Wario: Master of Disguise sold 94,000 in their first week
These are very 'average' games in Japan selling 2 to 4 times as much as Virtual Fighter 5 did
You do realize Virtua Fighter 5 is being released on the XBox 360 as well though right? So I don't really see this as reason to buy it on the PS3 for $100 - $200 more than it would run you on the Xbox 360. And if the past is anything to go by, the 360 version will have nice online play and voice chat...does it on the PS3?
http://xboxyde.com/news_3903_en.html
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
The hidden contradiction here is that the top selling game in Japan this past week was Virtua Fighter, it's not just about to hit the shelves.
More importantly, it only sold ~3000 more copies than Wii Sports. Wii Sports has been on the market for 11 weeks now, and on its release week sold slighly most than three times as many copies as Virtua Fighter did. If the novelty of Wii Sports is dying, we can only assume that the novelty of the first four incarnations of Virtua Fighter is as well.
I will grant you the point that Nintendo does need to work hard to keep their release schedule flowing smoothly, but this is true of any system with or without a special controller.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!