But how is Sony going to handle the price cuts? If they want to sell as many PS3s as they did PS2s they need to get the price down to $200 or less. But they won't be able to sell it for that low until nearly the end of its lifetime. Based on the pricing history of the PS2 we can expect a year before they cut the price on the PS3. And by the same reasoning, it'll be roughly 3 years before it gets to half its original price. So until then they can only sell it to rich kids and single men with too much disposable income.
The PS2 sold as much as it did because it was moderately affordable at the beginning of its lifetime and as the price dropped it became relatively easy for almost anyone to afford one. I just don't see how the PS3 can be as successful as the PS2 if it's going to be forever until it gets cheap enough for most people to buy it.
I'm not sure that there's that much demand at the current price point.
And the majority of those PS2s were sold to middle-class and even some lower-class families. These families can't spend $500 on a console. A good chunk of them can't even spend $300 on a console. You can talk about the hard core gaming market all you want, but the numbers say that it's a tiny market segment. Most of their sales have to come from the largest market segment, middle class families.
From what I can see, the PS3 can't match the PS2's sales numbers until the price drops about $300.
He brought up some very serious criticisms that incline me to agree with his assessment of the device:
The installer failed and the tech support page directed him to install a DLL himself. An installer requiring this level of user intervention means that a significant number of Zune buyers will have severe difficulty getting the software installed.
The Zune does not synchronize with Windows Media Player or any other popular desktop media player. It only syncs with its own media player that has fewer features than Windows Media Player or any other popular media player.
The Zune uses a DRM scheme that is incompatible with Microsoft's previous DRM scheme meaning that you'll have to rebuild your music collection for the Zune.
The "squirting" feature is so restricted as to be essentially worthless.
Mythic's previous game, DAOC, allowed you to design your own interface. I'd be very surpised if they didn't allow even more modding in their next game.
Skaven aren't in the starting lineup of races but I'm betting an expansion will add them. Chaos, dark elves, and orcs are in the game and playable from the beginning.
The difference is that Games Workshop borrowed from a lot of different sources while Blizzard borrowed from just one. It's like they say: when you borrow from one source it's called plagiarism but when you borrow from many it's called research.
The reason why DAOC's PVP is so great is because it strikes a compromise between pointless fighting with no repercussions and "oh my god that dick just stole all my stuff."
Bleh. I didn't mean to post that as a reply to another message. I meant to post it at the top level. I guess I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing.
Given how much Sony depends on its game division these days, if the PS3 fails to sell as much as Sony expects, Sony's stock price is going to go down the tubes.
One aspect of the GPL is that it ensures that the author of the software gets to make use of all of the modifications other people make to the software (well, except for changes which aren't distributed, but that's no big deal). This is a more selfish approach to the GPL, but I think it's a completely valid one.
I don't think this is just early adopter pricing. Due to low yield on cell processors and the cost of the first generation blue ray drives this thing is supposed to be costing more than $600 to make so it's not like they can just drop the price to $300 after a year. They'll lower the price as their costs come down, but it's not something that will happen immediately. Based on the way console makers have handled price reductions in the past I wouldn't expect to see the PS3 for under $300 for about 5 years.
Speaking of which, I've always thought that someone should write an opera based on FF6. The libretto practically writes itself and the game's score could be adapted for an opera.
You could just put the score in a big font across the top display with some sort of colorful/distracting background. It wouldn't really add to the game, but you might be able to come up with something that's aesthetically pleasing.
I think it would be extremely odd if the people who were promoted didn't have aspirations of getting into game development. I just had a recent example of people being moved into development from another department at a game company so I thought I'd mention it as a counterexample to the article.
Just a few days ago Mythic announced a couple of job openings in customer support on the Dark Age of Camelot news site. They say the jobs are open now because they promoted two people in the CS department to development.
If people can go straight from customer support to development then I can't imagine they would have any qualms with moving QA people into development.
And that's the point. Puzzle Pirates could support a vastly larger player population with relatively simple hardware upgrades. It is not entirely certain whether or not it is possible for Second Life to support a vastly larger player population without a complete redesign.
Something is said to be scalable if it is relatively simple to make it able to handle larger loads. By all of the available evidence, Second Life does not seem to be very scalable.
Slashdot Mirror
I found that when I was finished that I had cut the cord to the headphones inside.
But how is Sony going to handle the price cuts? If they want to sell as many PS3s as they did PS2s they need to get the price down to $200 or less. But they won't be able to sell it for that low until nearly the end of its lifetime. Based on the pricing history of the PS2 we can expect a year before they cut the price on the PS3. And by the same reasoning, it'll be roughly 3 years before it gets to half its original price. So until then they can only sell it to rich kids and single men with too much disposable income.
The PS2 sold as much as it did because it was moderately affordable at the beginning of its lifetime and as the price dropped it became relatively easy for almost anyone to afford one. I just don't see how the PS3 can be as successful as the PS2 if it's going to be forever until it gets cheap enough for most people to buy it.
I'm not sure that there's that much demand at the current price point.
And the majority of those PS2s were sold to middle-class and even some lower-class families. These families can't spend $500 on a console. A good chunk of them can't even spend $300 on a console. You can talk about the hard core gaming market all you want, but the numbers say that it's a tiny market segment. Most of their sales have to come from the largest market segment, middle class families.
From what I can see, the PS3 can't match the PS2's sales numbers until the price drops about $300.
This doesn't sound like something I want.
Mythic's previous game, DAOC, allowed you to design your own interface. I'd be very surpised if they didn't allow even more modding in their next game.
Skaven aren't in the starting lineup of races but I'm betting an expansion will add them. Chaos, dark elves, and orcs are in the game and playable from the beginning.
The difference is that Games Workshop borrowed from a lot of different sources while Blizzard borrowed from just one. It's like they say: when you borrow from one source it's called plagiarism but when you borrow from many it's called research.
The reason why DAOC's PVP is so great is because it strikes a compromise between pointless fighting with no repercussions and "oh my god that dick just stole all my stuff."
When you consider that they rate games on a scale of 7.5 to 10 that isn't such a great score.
Bleh. I didn't mean to post that as a reply to another message. I meant to post it at the top level. I guess I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing.
Given how much Sony depends on its game division these days, if the PS3 fails to sell as much as Sony expects, Sony's stock price is going to go down the tubes.
Step two is put on a Broadway flop.
It must be really hard to be a futurist when your first name means "never" in French.
Things are going to be REALLY, REALLY bad when either legislators or the RIAA find out about Usenet.
One aspect of the GPL is that it ensures that the author of the software gets to make use of all of the modifications other people make to the software (well, except for changes which aren't distributed, but that's no big deal). This is a more selfish approach to the GPL, but I think it's a completely valid one.
You might see this sort of thing replacing fountains. I can imagine hotel's having them set up to display the hotel logo.
I don't think this is just early adopter pricing. Due to low yield on cell processors and the cost of the first generation blue ray drives this thing is supposed to be costing more than $600 to make so it's not like they can just drop the price to $300 after a year. They'll lower the price as their costs come down, but it's not something that will happen immediately. Based on the way console makers have handled price reductions in the past I wouldn't expect to see the PS3 for under $300 for about 5 years.
I prefer the Locke/Celes subplot from FF6.
Speaking of which, I've always thought that someone should write an opera based on FF6. The libretto practically writes itself and the game's score could be adapted for an opera.
What bias? How do you expect him to report anything good about the PS3 when there isn't any good news about it available?
The internet isn't made of pipes you fool. It's made of tubes.
You could just put the score in a big font across the top display with some sort of colorful/distracting background. It wouldn't really add to the game, but you might be able to come up with something that's aesthetically pleasing.
I think it would be extremely odd if the people who were promoted didn't have aspirations of getting into game development. I just had a recent example of people being moved into development from another department at a game company so I thought I'd mention it as a counterexample to the article.
Just a few days ago Mythic announced a couple of job openings in customer support on the Dark Age of Camelot news site. They say the jobs are open now because they promoted two people in the CS department to development.
If people can go straight from customer support to development then I can't imagine they would have any qualms with moving QA people into development.
I'm not debating the fact that SL is vastly more complicated than Puzzle Pirates.
The point is, the fact that it is more complicated may prevent it from ever becoming a large scale success.
And that's the point. Puzzle Pirates could support a vastly larger player population with relatively simple hardware upgrades. It is not entirely certain whether or not it is possible for Second Life to support a vastly larger player population without a complete redesign.
Something is said to be scalable if it is relatively simple to make it able to handle larger loads. By all of the available evidence, Second Life does not seem to be very scalable.