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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."
Sure about that? I can't find a PS3 anywhere in SF and have resigned myself to picking one up with one of the expensive bundles. It will be worth it to finally get to play Resistance, VF5, and Motorstorm.
Wiis are everywhere I go these days. There was a stack at the local BestBuy that was gathering dust just a few days ago. I asked the manager and he said they had even more in back. Sales have fallen dramatically after the holidays apparently.
Most funny, or sad, is the local Fry's still has remnants of the gigantic pile of 360s Microsoft dumped on stores last November. You can still see 360 Premium boxes sitting untouched at the bottom of the once gigantic pile. Have to wonder if it was really worth it for Microsoft to ship so many to try to meet their yearly sales targets. From the looks of it, Microsoft isn't going to be shipping very many new 360s to stores over the next few months.
Oh yes, I think I remember that class Nintendo went to:
1) Make grossly underpowered game console
2) Strap on a gimmicky controller, making sure the novelty wears off after 5 minutes
3) Make sure there are no interesting games
4) Start viral marketing campaign and plant fanboys on blogs sites
5) Profit!!!
Where I come from the PS3 isn't released yet, but it's still outselling the Wii (in pre-sales) by a considerable margin.
Hell, the Wii isn't even trying to compete with the PS3. It's in more direct competition with the PS2, and it's losing everywhere. Badly.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Yes, both Blu-Ray and Cell were horrible mistakes. But then, what do you expect? The PS2 succeeded because the marketing killed the Dreamcast dead before the PS2 even came out, not because it was actually a superior platform (although it definitely has more raw power available, actually utilizing it all is a damned big task.)
Blu-Ray was of course added because the parent company said THOU SHALT PLAY BLU-RAY. It was obviously not because HD-DVD didn't hold enough content for games. The only reason any developer has filled up a Blu-Ray is that they wanted to say the game was huge. Given the low transfer rate of the first-generation Blu-Ray drive as compared to a whateverth-generation DVD drive, the data transfer rates are WORSE than a DVD, even the DVD-ROM in the original Xbox. So the only thing Sony really brought to gaming with Blu-Ray is longer load times.
Cell was added because it's the most powerful thing going. But like the PS2, it makes programming insanely more complicated. It makes code less portable; the whole architecture of the game must be designed for cell (again, just like it had to be designed for the EE, only moreso) in order to get good performance. And it's horribly expensive. It looks as though Microsoft made a vastly better decision by going with three symmetric processors.
In spite of all its many shortcomings, I think Sony has sufficient credibility among gamers and enough money to spend on marketing to keep the PS3 afloat - to the detriment of the gaming community. But it's not like they give a shit. I do not however believe that they will be able to pull this shit off for another generation, or skip the next generation like they obviously believe they will with a console that costs this much. I think Microsoft will push another generation of consoles, and Nintendo will be right there, and Sony will again be left holding their dick looking like some kind of reject from the brain-installation factory.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
*please mod informative, please mod informative*
Do you need karma this bad?
(I would mod you "Insightful" if I had mod points, anyways...)
So say we all