Slashdot Mirror
Gamers Don't Know Their Own Consoles
deadmantyping writes "Ars Technica reports on a survey of 6,260 responses which indicates that only 40 percent of PS3 owners knew that their console included Bluray. Apparently a large portion of gamers aren't aware of the non-gaming capabilities of their systems. Ars speculates that this might help explain Nintendo's apparent dominance in the console market since their introduction of the Wii."
Blu-Ray isn't ubiquitous, no HD format is yet. There's nary a Blu-Ray market out there at this point, not something most people even know exists unless they go looking for it.
If blockbuster all of a sudden is half full of Blu-Ray disks, people will become very aware of the PS3's capabilities, just as they did with the PS2.
PS2 was a huge driving factor in the final surge of DVD uptake...but DVD's were known to all by that point.
People certainly read on the box that the PS3 supports Blu-Ray, but it means nothing except to very few. The HDDVD addon for the 360 is in a worse boat as that is it's ONLY function.
Me, I'm just waiting for Blu-Ray to catch on (or not). If it does, I'll buy a PS3, and it'll be my HD player of choice...just as my PS2 has been my sole DVD player for years now.
No Comment.
While I LOVE all the things I can do with my 360 and my PS3 in terms of extra stuff beyond gaming, gaming is why I bought a GAMING CONSOLE. Yes, I do use them for things other than gaming, but honestly I would be very very happy if Microsoft and Sony had spent more money and R&D time in making their systems better gamingconsoles, and less of a multi-use piece of hardware.
It raises the functionality of the consoles, but I would much rather be paying less for less functionality. The less I shell out for the console, the more I can spend on the games...which is exactly why I want a gaming console in the first place.
Living With a Nerd
Of the three current "next gen" consoles, it's kind of ironic that the most popular one with the party gamers is the one that *doesn't* do HD. Considering that the Wii's the one most geared towards groups of people standing in front of a large TV screen.
one thing interests the majority of consumers: games
Of course games are the primary reason people buy gaming system.
not only are people not using these functions, they're not even aware of them.
the higher cost of entry may be helping the PlayStation 3 in this respect.
Considering many games are cross platform, the PS2 is still on the market with new titles, and the PS3 is the most expensive system available, there is little justification to buying one at the moment.
the higher cost of entry may be helping the PlayStation 3 in this respect.
Since when does higher cost mean higher quality, regardless of what it can do?
...however I sure would like to have more information about things like:
- can the controller be used wirelessly to control the playing?
- does the ps3 have an IR receiver so I can program my existing remote to control it like a stand-alone blue-ray player?
- does the ps3 support blue-ray profile 1.1 (with dual decoding)?
- how is the quality compared to a stand-alone player?
- does the ps3 have a digital out to feed to my receiver? (coax? optical?)
these are questions that right now have prevented me from purchasing one in favour of waiting for a combo blueray/hddvd player (if not I'd just get a ps3+x360 since they'd cost me the same in total and I'd have two consoles to boot). I have also found things like the following by perusing sites, things that should be made clear somewhere on sony's site
- the ps3 does play dvd movies
- the ps3 does NOT upscale dvd movies to 1080i/p
- the ps3 supports 1080p/24 starting from firmware 1.9
I think sony is trying hard to not position the ps3 as a blueray player with gaming capabilities, and holding back information like this is part of the game.
-- the cake is a lie
If we assume that these figures apply to the population at large as Ars did when they speculated that this explains the Wii's dominance, then this means that 40% of the population is aware of PS3's BluRay capabilities. Yet they're not choosing to buy a PS3.
Because knowing the PS3 has BluRay doesn't cause an extra $350 to spontaneously appear in your wallet.
"Good value for what you get if you can/will use all of its features" does not translate into "I can afford to spend that much on a toy".
It's not complicated.
The enemies of Democracy are
Correction: Most people who buy a Wii don't care what the differences in the hardware specs are between the systems. They only look at the gameplay.
I've been saying this all along. With many stories here on /. people say "But no one will care about the Wii because it can't do HD" and this kind of thing was my answer to that (although I'm surprised the numbers for HD game playing are THAT LOW). I submitted this myself yesterday (although this write-up looks better and sources Ars). I have a Wii plugged into my HDTV and love it. I don't have a 360 yet (thinking of getting one) and the PS3 doesn't have any games I care about yet (except for MGS4, but that won't be out for a while).
This shouldn't be surprising. The TV ads for the 360 and PS3 don't mention HD, and Joe Bob buys an HDTV and watches over-the-air analog stations and thinks that's HD.
Mostly, I'd say this is a failure of marketing. That said, it's a good shot against the "no one wants non-HD stuff" argument.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Microsoft and Sony don't know their customers.
This is wide spread problem and it's as old as the VCR, most people I know that bought iPhone-like costly phones don't know about or simply can even use most of the features in their devices.
I just found out a few days ago that my grandmother, who is in her 70s, used a Nintendo Wii at my brother's house. She is a golfer, and she played Wii Golf for her first time, and she proceeded to play extremely well, and easily beat my brother.
So, Wii is full of win because my non-gaming grandmother can play, and succeed, at a video game without a bunch of hassle.
It wouldn't matter to her if it could play movies or dispense kittens, and I'd imagine those things don't matter much to others, either. Though, kittens would be cute.
I don't know how much more they could've said it. Every time their PR people open their mouths it's "Blu-ray" this and "computer in your living room" that.
Trick is, it's a Playstation. Playstation is now synonymous with 'games' they way Nintendo is. You could print in big block letters "THIS THING DOES NOT PLAY GAMES" and people would still buy the PS3 to play games and nothing more.
It goes back to the 'don't care' portion of your rhetorical. They simply don't care. Regardless of how you position these boxes, gamers just want to play games.
Similarly: Nintendo isn't winning because they stayed away from HD and next-gen disc formats. They stayed away last-gen and that didn't help them any. The Wii is selling like gangbusters because it provides a social game experience that's unmatched anywhere else. Nintendo focused on what gamers were focused on: the fun. If the Wii did HD video it'd still be selling like gangbusters: and their HD cables would be just as under-utilized as those of the 360 and PS3.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Most iPod owners don't know that you can play games on their iPod.
Most iPod owners don't know that you can load Linux on their iPod.
The the primary function of a device is the the most important function for the people that buy that device.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Does anyone doubt that Nintendo is currently winning this generation console war? Saying that Nintendo is apparently dominant is like saying that the US is apparently occupying Iraq.
Correction: Most people who buy a Wii are seeing overwhelming positive press coupled with an effective advertising campaign. Adding to this is the fact the Wii has proven most successful at engaging people in local multiplayer gaming, which improves word of mouth advertising.
Correction: people buy the Wii because it's fun, pure and simple.
Username taken, please choose another one.
Not necessarily - people will be sold on "Super Crazy Ninja Vista Ultimate Media Center Laptop" sales at Best Buy due to the "uber-enhanced media capabilities", and then when they go on a long flight and want to watch movies, how many of these people do you think will take the laptop but forget they can play movies on it and go spend an extra $300 to 400 USD on a standalone portable DVD-player device?
It's not just a case of pot-head room-mates, less technically apt-people seem to associate certain functions with devices advertised to to just that and go purchase it when they already have a much more powerful/useful device already (Vista or not, just about any laptop is going to be more useful than a standalone DVD player)
A handful of early adopters is not a sizable market. You're just subsidizing manufacturing line refreshes and ramp-up that will give the rest of us the same stuff for half as much in two years or so. Thanks for that, BTW.
I didn't know my Blue-ray player was also a game machine!!!
I know someone who bought a PS3 without realizing it had...
well...
anything other than hype.
I'm not kidding. I swear to God, this kid brought the PS3 home, plugged it in, hooked it up to his standard-definition TV, and used it to play a PS2 version of Tomb Raider. At least, I think it was PS2 -- it might have been PS1. He was crowing about his "next-generation game console" experience, but hell, he wasn't even using the "internal memory card" (store PS2 savegames on the hard drive) because he didn't know how, and thought he'd have to buy something. The only conceivable improvement in his experience was the wireless controller, but with such a short cord (for when the battery dies) and no rumble, the advantages are kind of dubious.
This is someone who already had a PS2.
Every now and then, his brother rents a PS3 game and brings it home, but he mostly uses it to play PS2 games.
Now, the one thing I will say in his favor is that he is actually retarded. He actually does have a real, physical, chemical imbalance in his brain. So in a way, I kind of can't blame him for being such an absurd Sony fanboy...
But looking at him kind, I kind of have to wonder, what do the whole, sane, and intelligent people who bought a PS3 have to say for themselves? Especially if they didn't realize it had blu-ray?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I don't know. If they had called this thing something else, would more people really have bought it for bluray? Anyone who's interested in Bluray can easily do a minimal amount of research and discover that the PS3 plays them, and is one of the cheapest players out there. And in addition to a bluray player, you get this game console that does a bunch of other stuff. If I was in the market for a Bluray player, I'd have probably purchased a PS3 already. People aren't getting scared away from this bluray player because it's called a playstation, they're not buying it as a bluray player because they don't care about bluray.
The mass market doesn't seem to want the media center that Sony has set out to create. There are a bunch of people out there that want a playstation to play games on. They're not sure that they want to pay $500+ for it though. Bluray hasn't been hurt by being bundled in the PS3 (although it hasn't been helped nearly as much as sony hoped so far), but the Playstation name has suffered because of it. Playstation used to mean a game console with bazillions of games, many of which were excellent. Now it still means that to some degree (PS2's are still moving off the shelves pretty heavily), but it also means a $600 video game console.
Bluray doesn't even enter into the equation for most of the potential customers, except in the form of a couple hundred bucks added onto the price. When I bought my PS2, it was $250 which seemed normal for a game console to me. It also included a DVD player(the first I ever had), which was completely a bonus to me, because in my eyes it wasn't causing me to pay more for a video game console than I expected.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Because the N64 was a big letdown, and people didn't want to be burned again.
Seriously, a large part of a console's success is owed to how well the previous generation was recieved. In actuality, the GameCube was recieved VERY WELL, even if it didn't sell very well. It cleared up about 90% of the mistakes that Nintendo had made with the N64 (which lost them control), but it was going to take another generation for sales to really reflect that. Hence the popularity of the Wii.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Mario Party 8 and Rayman look pretty damn good on my 30" 1080i CRT, this however has everything to do with the "art" and not the "graphics". Not to mention after everyones had a few drinks they could be sprites and it would still be just as fun. Super Paper Mario looks gorgeous, especially at 480p, and its all thanks to the artwork. Really though, i'm playing a GAME, if i want realism i'll go outside. Do we really want all games to be photo-realistic? Resident Evil 4 for the wii looks pretty damn good, expecially since the cut-scenes and things are rendered so they can be displayed in the native 480p, it may not be Resistance on the PS3 with HDMI, but if i'm killing zombies for a couple of hours, do i want it to be that realistic? I'd probably be sick.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I don't buy a gaming console to be all sorts of other crap; I buy it to play games.
Nintendo's success comes from their decision to sell a good toy at a reasonable (albeit sorta high) price for a toy, while their competition is trying to sell a toy at a ludicrously high price, claiming that it's a really good deal for the incredible general-purpose computer and movie machine that it really is... But since the market is the toy market, that's sorta running into issues.
Maybe they shoulda called it the MovieStation.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Hows this: "I'd rather play this game than Motorstorm, Need For Speed Carbon, GranTourismo, or any other racing game that the PS3 has to offer." Now, granted, I'm not a fan of racing games, and that's sort of the point, Excite Truck *IS* more of an arcade game. Is it the kind of game I'd buy a $600 console for? Absolutely not. But neither is Motorstorm. At least Excite Truck has the Wiimote control scheme (which is REALLY FUN, I might add).
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
What? People buy Wiis because it reminds them of the Arcades? That's the most absurd theory I've ever heard.
And Excite Truck was a good game. Owning both the Wii and the PS3, I put about three times as much time into Excite Truck than Motorstorm.
With the risk to be modded flamebait and/or troll I'd say that the survey was in USA only.
Mostly because here in Europe and especially here in Sweden they are really expensive.
With a price of $860 (cheapest price) they have to make the potential buyers aware of EVERY function... if not, I don't think people really would buy one.
Did you slap her face and tell her to get the fuck back into the kitchen where she belongs?
Or did you quickly deflate her and put her back in the cupboard before your mom came down to the basement?
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Yeah. It's a good thing that they don't teach reading in school these days - some people write dreadful things! Only last week I saw a paper proposing that women be given the right to loosen their headcoverings on especially warm days! I almost blew up my binary liquid explosive Optimus Prime tanker toy in surprise.
Now if you position a device like the PS3 as a Sony's PlayStation Media Center, suddenly it looks like a good deal. It can play BluRay, PS1 games, PS2 games, and games "designed for the BluRay format". All for less than competing BluRay players.
It's too bad that Sony didn't do this. They might have had a better response if they had.
Man, companies have been trying to come up with ways to sell people additional computer setups since the slowdown in 2000. Mostly they've been trying to do it with talk about "digital convergence" and the computer for their A/V setup. And it seems like a reasonable idea since the advent of the big flatscreen TV has pretty much doubled the price of a television in the "pretty nice" catagory (at least that's the way it seems to me).
But people just don't give a crap about digital convergence. Computers are computers, and television is television, and consoles are consoles. Companies everywhere are trying to cross these lines and penetrate new markets, but it's a product that nobody wants. One of two things will make this actually come true:
1) Someone will make the killer computer/tv/console cross-genre app
2) Hardware gets cheap enough that the digital convergence device and the cheap VCR/DVD/whatever device cost approx the same (~$100 or less).
I don't know if 1 is even possible, and every time hardware prices drop for 2 the computer vendors move to a more expensive hardware platform to keep margins up.
Kutaragi: "PS3 is not a games machine"
the press, the consumers, parents, PTA, RIAA, LAPD, the world, etc.: "Whatever, stupid."
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: NOBODY WANTS DIGITAL CONVERGENCE, EXCEPTING THE PEOPLE WHO SELL IT.
-- "Oh. This guy again."