The hole Microsoft dug for itself is several billion dollars deeper than the one Sony dug for itself. Sony also now makes a modest profit on PS3, just like Microsoft. That in no way changes that fact that for both of them, the whole adventure was a complete disaster as a business proposition. No sane person would ever do a deal like that, the inevitable conclusion is that both Sony and Microsoft are run by insane egomaniacs.
To tell the truth, I do not believe a think Sony says. Sony credibility has fallen to zero, or negative even. So if Sony says their system was brought to its knees by a "console hack" I naturally tend to assume that the real cause was an inside job. And then I go on to speculate about what kind of employee abuse goes on inside Sony that might trigger such a thing, not that I condone it.
Only if you ignore the $8 billion spent to buy that not very impressive revenue stream. But hey, Microsoft is rapidly going down the tubes as an OS provider anyway, might as well just keep on shrinking down to the size of a console company selling obsolete hardware and boring games.
The refrain sung over and over by die hard fanbois, ignoring the fact that the overall finances of the XBox venture from start to finish are a deep, dark, ugly hole. And now the XBox 360 is obsolete and needs to be replaced, long before coming even close to breaking even.
Now, please don't try to redefine the meaning of "break even" on me.
No one wants to replace playing a game on a 60 inch plasma with a smartphone, not to mention a smartphone isn't even price competitive with them.
Your mistake is to assume that everyone wants to play games sitting on the sofa in front of a TV. Hard core, maybe, but hard core is a minority of the market.
While you can generate hype with an announcement you also risk grinding all console sales to a halt. How many people are going to buy new PS3s or Xbox 360s knowing a new version would be out in a year?
A lot, or do you not recall that PS2 outsold PS3 for many months after PS3 was released. Nice try.
In the case of the Wii, their potential market is already saturated with Wii consoles and less damage will be done
Whoops, did you already forget that TFA is about Nintendo's plans to release a new generation in 2012 when Sony and Microsoft will still be thinking about the idea in general terms and trying to justify to their bean counters the concept of peeing away another few billion in vanity money, this time both of them having lost their exclusive franchises?
Whoops, sorry, I should have said simply: so you argue that Nintendo's market is already saturated while sonysoft's is not, and that means a good idea for Nintendo is a stupid idea for sonysoft? Sorry, Nintendo is still selling 120,000 consoles a week, I do not think that the word "saturated" means what you think it does.
While you can generate hype with an announcement you also risk grinding all console sales to a halt. How many people are going to buy new PS3s or Xbox 360s knowing a new version would be out in a year?
A lot, or do you not recall that PS2 outsold PS3 for many months after PS3 was released. Nice try.
In the case of the Wii, their potential market is already saturated with Wii consoles and less damage will be done
Whoops, did you already forget that TFA is about Nintendo's plans to release a new generation in 2012 when Sony and Microsoft will still be thinking about the idea in general terms and trying to justify to their bean counters the concept of peeing away another few billion in vanity money, this time both of them having lost their exclusive franchises?
Epic recently demoed an idea of what the Unreal 4 Engine will look like. Both id Tech 5 and Cryengine 3 are fresh technologies that have yet to be fully exploited, and Valve likely has something up their sleeve to replace the aging Source Engine.
These are all PC technologies, with console ports as a watered down afterthought. Also, note John Carmack's port of Tech 5 to the iPhone. I do not imagine Android is far behind. That is where the future of the game market lies, not with dinosaur consoles.
While Sony and Microsoft pursue their high end vanity projects (not at all clear either will escape the axe before making it out of concept stage) the market is massively migrating to smartphone and netpad gaming. Believe it.
In the post-PC gaming world, only the cheap will prosper. Hard core gamers will move back to the PC. Don't believe me, believe all the formerly exclusive console franchises that walked out on "sonysoft" over the last few years with no replacement in sight.
The age of the high end game console is over, I am sure of that.
Why yes they do, the answer is "we have not yet begun to engineer" and they mean it.
By the way, the top engineers like Seamus Blackley they signed up for the original Xbox walked out long ago and aren't coming back. Nice move. With its "highly compelling" work environment, Microsoft manages to put itself in a position where it has to rebuild its engineering department from scratch each generation, the previous gang variously having walked out the door holding their noses, or being pushed. Bungee has walked and signed with Blizzard. Goodbye most important franchise, now what?
They (Sony & Microsoft) may not have announced anything, but it's asinine to think that they haven't already gone through engineering and R&D processes. They are likely experimenting now, and waiting for the price of hardware to come down.
So you think they both have highly secret engineering projects at an advanced state? Let me break it to you: we would have heard about it, this is the age of the leak. I say, this silence is the sound of moratorium imposed by corporate beancounters.
First, your assumption is wrong: "high-end" consoles do not use off-the-shelf PC components.
Disagree. The vast majority of components in both PS3 and Xbox are off the shelf, ranging from hard drive to USB support chips. Main components such as graphics chips are only slightly modified off the shelf PC components. Both flavors of Cell processor are only slightly customized from IBM's other Cell offerings. Sony's vector units are the only major components you could call nonstandard and even they are standard Cell components, just not commonly used. And look at what a disaster that was for Sony in terms of convincing developers to expend significant resources designing around the quirky vector units.
Without making a detailed list I would say that the proportion of standard components increased greatly in Sony's latest generation and stayed nearly the same in Microsoft's - XBox 1 started off with nearly all PC components. This was of necessity. Even an international megacorp can no longer custom engineer every component of a modern computer, and that is exactly what a high end console is trying to be.
Well, too bad you aren't in a position to decide what Sony or Microsoft will do next. I wish you were, I am really enjoying the show my ringside seat on this epic fail.
Neither Sony nor Microsoft has breathed a word about a substantive upgrade to their console offerings. By substantive, I mean memory, processor and graphics competitive with a modern PC. Why the silence? In my opinion, because it cannot be done economically. Both Sony and Microsoft currently sit deep in a multibillion dollar hole of losses from the current generation fiasco. How can either justify a new cycle of hardware engineering, manufacturing engineering, SDK development and product promotion? Another round of impossible engineering choices trying to stuff PC class hardware into a consumer electronics form factor? It is anybody's guess whether either will attempt it, but this is sure: neither is anywhere close to taking the plunge. Game publishers and developers have heard nothing but silence in regards to possible specs of a follow on high end console generation. This strengthens my belief that the high end console has died and will not rise again. Cutesy and cheap like Nintendo is the only economically viable choice for a console vendor today.
Personally I am happy to see Sony get raped like it rapes it's customers.
Well put. And to think, I used to admire Sony. I believed what they told me about supporting open standards, that's why I bought a PS3. It's amazing what a difference a few years of abuse can make.
Of course, I myself am partly to blame for ignoring the evidence of Sony's moral and ethical bankruptcy from such incidents as the root kit fiasco.
Personally I am happy to see Sony get raped like it rapes it's customers.
Well put. And to think, I used to admire Sony. I believed what they told me about supporting open standards, that's why I bought a PS3. It's amazing what a difference a few years of abuse can make.
Each day I see things come about that makes the "fictional" big brother tracking technology shown on movies and tv like Enemy of the State and 24 look a little less like fiction.
Interesting, now that you point it out... iPad really is the embodiment Orwell's TV that watches you and can't be turned off. More irony... it would seem little brother grew up and became big brother.
The way to be sure we don't end up living in a world where our (Apple) tvs are watching us is... run only open source software on your media device. Obviously.
It's completely true that Android's UI is a blatant attempt at copying iOS. It's also true that the Android fanbois are every bit as irrational and rabid as any other kind...
I do not think that we Android owners will ever succeed at sounding as brainwashed as a typical iGroupy, even if we try. I do take issue with your use of the word "attempt", it is not an attempt it is a fait accompli. And it is not a copy, Android is better as far as I'm concerned, I like it more. And I am not rabid, but you are.
If you are an iOS developer you can install whatever you can compile on it. How locked down is that?
Very. If the only way to run the application I want to run is to install the developer kit and compile the app myself, I call that very locked down. Or ridiculously locked down, take your pick.
Sure, it could be worse, but that is immaterial, it is already an abuse that I as customer do not need to put up with because Android is available as an alternative.
Because I'm not a Unix kernel hacker who can write his own kernel. I'm just a student, whose interest in technology doesn't extend to rewriting Unix kernels, as that's too much learning and way out of may chosen career path.
I am a kernel hacker but not all my computers are running custom kernels, far from it. That is because for almost all my machines a standard kernel is perfectly adequate. However, this has not always been the case. From time to time I have had hardware issues that required kernel customization in some way, typically backport of a driver or a driver compiled from vendor source. And of course there are kernels that I compile and install for experimental and development purposes. The fact that I am able to do this is very important. For one thing it allows me to update devices that would otherwise become obsolete and useless. And the fact that other people are able to do it is even more important because I benefit from the work they are able to do.
Slashdot Mirror
The hole Microsoft dug for itself is several billion dollars deeper than the one Sony dug for itself. Sony also now makes a modest profit on PS3, just like Microsoft. That in no way changes that fact that for both of them, the whole adventure was a complete disaster as a business proposition. No sane person would ever do a deal like that, the inevitable conclusion is that both Sony and Microsoft are run by insane egomaniacs.
To tell the truth, I do not believe a think Sony says. Sony credibility has fallen to zero, or negative even. So if Sony says their system was brought to its knees by a "console hack" I naturally tend to assume that the real cause was an inside job. And then I go on to speculate about what kind of employee abuse goes on inside Sony that might trigger such a thing, not that I condone it.
Xbox 360 is a real money spinner for Microsoft.
Only if you ignore the $8 billion spent to buy that not very impressive revenue stream. But hey, Microsoft is rapidly going down the tubes as an OS provider anyway, might as well just keep on shrinking down to the size of a console company selling obsolete hardware and boring games.
Not to mention everybody is just playing sudoku and angry birds on their android.
Don't forget Plants vs Zombies.
Xbox has been profitable for several years now.
A man named Pyrrhus put it best: "one more victory like that and I am finished".
Xbox has been profitable for several years now.
The refrain sung over and over by die hard fanbois, ignoring the fact that the overall finances of the XBox venture from start to finish are a deep, dark, ugly hole. And now the XBox 360 is obsolete and needs to be replaced, long before coming even close to breaking even.
Now, please don't try to redefine the meaning of "break even" on me.
No one wants to replace playing a game on a 60 inch plasma with a smartphone, not to mention a smartphone isn't even price competitive with them.
Your mistake is to assume that everyone wants to play games sitting on the sofa in front of a TV. Hard core, maybe, but hard core is a minority of the market.
While you can generate hype with an announcement you also risk grinding all console sales to a halt. How many people are going to buy new PS3s or Xbox 360s knowing a new version would be out in a year?
A lot, or do you not recall that PS2 outsold PS3 for many months after PS3 was released. Nice try.
In the case of the Wii, their potential market is already saturated with Wii consoles and less damage will be done
Whoops, did you already forget that TFA is about Nintendo's plans to release a new generation in 2012 when Sony and Microsoft will still be thinking about the idea in general terms and trying to justify to their bean counters the concept of peeing away another few billion in vanity money, this time both of them having lost their exclusive franchises?
Whoops, sorry, I should have said simply: so you argue that Nintendo's market is already saturated while sonysoft's is not, and that means a good idea for Nintendo is a stupid idea for sonysoft? Sorry, Nintendo is still selling 120,000 consoles a week, I do not think that the word "saturated" means what you think it does.
While you can generate hype with an announcement you also risk grinding all console sales to a halt. How many people are going to buy new PS3s or Xbox 360s knowing a new version would be out in a year?
A lot, or do you not recall that PS2 outsold PS3 for many months after PS3 was released. Nice try.
In the case of the Wii, their potential market is already saturated with Wii consoles and less damage will be done
Whoops, did you already forget that TFA is about Nintendo's plans to release a new generation in 2012 when Sony and Microsoft will still be thinking about the idea in general terms and trying to justify to their bean counters the concept of peeing away another few billion in vanity money, this time both of them having lost their exclusive franchises?
Well, 9 replies to me all disagreeing and all with doubtful arguments. I guess I'm right then.
Epic recently demoed an idea of what the Unreal 4 Engine will look like. Both id Tech 5 and Cryengine 3 are fresh technologies that have yet to be fully exploited, and Valve likely has something up their sleeve to replace the aging Source Engine.
These are all PC technologies, with console ports as a watered down afterthought. Also, note John Carmack's port of Tech 5 to the iPhone. I do not imagine Android is far behind. That is where the future of the game market lies, not with dinosaur consoles.
While Sony and Microsoft pursue their high end vanity projects (not at all clear either will escape the axe before making it out of concept stage) the market is massively migrating to smartphone and netpad gaming. Believe it.
In the post-PC gaming world, only the cheap will prosper. Hard core gamers will move back to the PC. Don't believe me, believe all the formerly exclusive console franchises that walked out on "sonysoft" over the last few years with no replacement in sight.
The age of the high end game console is over, I am sure of that.
http://mygaming.co.za/news/news/10523-Microsoft-hiring-for-next-gen-Xbox-development.html
Microsoft has an answer
Why yes they do, the answer is "we have not yet begun to engineer" and they mean it.
By the way, the top engineers like Seamus Blackley they signed up for the original Xbox walked out long ago and aren't coming back. Nice move. With its "highly compelling" work environment, Microsoft manages to put itself in a position where it has to rebuild its engineering department from scratch each generation, the previous gang variously having walked out the door holding their noses, or being pushed. Bungee has walked and signed with Blizzard. Goodbye most important franchise, now what?
Because they designed a system to last 10 years, not something that would become obsolete in 5 years.
Ahem, both consoles are already obsolete and it is not even 5 years yet.
They (Sony & Microsoft) may not have announced anything, but it's asinine to think that they haven't already gone through engineering and R&D processes. They are likely experimenting now, and waiting for the price of hardware to come down.
So you think they both have highly secret engineering projects at an advanced state? Let me break it to you: we would have heard about it, this is the age of the leak. I say, this silence is the sound of moratorium imposed by corporate beancounters.
First, your assumption is wrong: "high-end" consoles do not use off-the-shelf PC components.
Disagree. The vast majority of components in both PS3 and Xbox are off the shelf, ranging from hard drive to USB support chips. Main components such as graphics chips are only slightly modified off the shelf PC components. Both flavors of Cell processor are only slightly customized from IBM's other Cell offerings. Sony's vector units are the only major components you could call nonstandard and even they are standard Cell components, just not commonly used. And look at what a disaster that was for Sony in terms of convincing developers to expend significant resources designing around the quirky vector units.
Without making a detailed list I would say that the proportion of standard components increased greatly in Sony's latest generation and stayed nearly the same in Microsoft's - XBox 1 started off with nearly all PC components. This was of necessity. Even an international megacorp can no longer custom engineer every component of a modern computer, and that is exactly what a high end console is trying to be.
Well, too bad you aren't in a position to decide what Sony or Microsoft will do next. I wish you were, I am really enjoying the show my ringside seat on this epic fail.
Neither Sony nor Microsoft has breathed a word about a substantive upgrade to their console offerings. By substantive, I mean memory, processor and graphics competitive with a modern PC. Why the silence? In my opinion, because it cannot be done economically. Both Sony and Microsoft currently sit deep in a multibillion dollar hole of losses from the current generation fiasco. How can either justify a new cycle of hardware engineering, manufacturing engineering, SDK development and product promotion? Another round of impossible engineering choices trying to stuff PC class hardware into a consumer electronics form factor? It is anybody's guess whether either will attempt it, but this is sure: neither is anywhere close to taking the plunge. Game publishers and developers have heard nothing but silence in regards to possible specs of a follow on high end console generation. This strengthens my belief that the high end console has died and will not rise again. Cutesy and cheap like Nintendo is the only economically viable choice for a console vendor today.
Personally I am happy to see Sony get raped like it rapes it's customers.
Well put. And to think, I used to admire Sony. I believed what they told me about supporting open standards, that's why I bought a PS3. It's amazing what a difference a few years of abuse can make.
Of course, I myself am partly to blame for ignoring the evidence of Sony's moral and ethical bankruptcy from such incidents as the root kit fiasco.
Personally I am happy to see Sony get raped like it rapes it's customers.
Well put. And to think, I used to admire Sony. I believed what they told me about supporting open standards, that's why I bought a PS3. It's amazing what a difference a few years of abuse can make.
Each day I see things come about that makes the "fictional" big brother tracking technology shown on movies and tv like Enemy of the State and 24 look a little less like fiction.
Interesting, now that you point it out... iPad really is the embodiment Orwell's TV that watches you and can't be turned off. More irony... it would seem little brother grew up and became big brother.
The way to be sure we don't end up living in a world where our (Apple) tvs are watching us is... run only open source software on your media device. Obviously.
Calling it the god particle is really little different than calling coffee the god drink.
It's not?
Something set you off? I don't see where you are named as an iGroupy. You are rude though.
It's completely true that Android's UI is a blatant attempt at copying iOS. It's also true that the Android fanbois are every bit as irrational and rabid as any other kind...
I do not think that we Android owners will ever succeed at sounding as brainwashed as a typical iGroupy, even if we try. I do take issue with your use of the word "attempt", it is not an attempt it is a fait accompli. And it is not a copy, Android is better as far as I'm concerned, I like it more. And I am not rabid, but you are.
Just a few small issues.
If you are an iOS developer you can install whatever you can compile on it. How locked down is that?
Very. If the only way to run the application I want to run is to install the developer kit and compile the app myself, I call that very locked down. Or ridiculously locked down, take your pick.
Sure, it could be worse, but that is immaterial, it is already an abuse that I as customer do not need to put up with because Android is available as an alternative.
Because I'm not a Unix kernel hacker who can write his own kernel. I'm just a student, whose interest in technology doesn't extend to rewriting Unix kernels, as that's too much learning and way out of may chosen career path.
I am a kernel hacker but not all my computers are running custom kernels, far from it. That is because for almost all my machines a standard kernel is perfectly adequate. However, this has not always been the case. From time to time I have had hardware issues that required kernel customization in some way, typically backport of a driver or a driver compiled from vendor source. And of course there are kernels that I compile and install for experimental and development purposes. The fact that I am able to do this is very important. For one thing it allows me to update devices that would otherwise become obsolete and useless. And the fact that other people are able to do it is even more important because I benefit from the work they are able to do.