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PlayStation 3 Delay Official
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Mar 14, 2006 04:26 PM
from the you-owe-me-five-bucks dept.
from the you-owe-me-five-bucks dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It's official! PS3 has been delayed until November in Japan. Apparently, it's because of copy protection technology issues associated with Blu-ray." From the article: "Today, Sony officially conceded defeat to the recent flurry of rumors and speculation, with Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun reporting the machine has been pushed back until November. There aren't many details out right now, but Sony says issues over the finalization of copy protection technology related to their Blu-ray disc drive is the cause of the delay. As the news is coming out of Japan, that creates a worrisome scenario for America and Europe."
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PS3 Delay To Have Little Impact? 79 comments
According to analyst firm Strategy Analytics, the PS3's delay is unlikely to have much of an effect on the next-gen race, reports GameDailyBiz. From the article: "While 2006 sales will clearly fall short of previous expectations, Strategy Analytics maintains its previous forecast of PS3 sales of 121.8 million units through 2012 ... This compares to expected sales of Microsoft's Xbox 360 of 58.8 million units over the same period." Gamasutra reports that, from Steve Ballmer's perspective, the opposite is true. From that article: "In every other generation, the first guy to 10 million consoles was the number one seller in the generation ... Did we just get an even better opportunity to be the first guy to 10 million? Yeah, of course we did." This all assumes the console launches this year.
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Playstation 3 Delay Official 132 comments
Aleman writes "In this interview with Variety magazine, Sony CEO Howard Stringer confirms that the Playstation 3 will be released during the holiday 2006 season." Not very surprising given the available information.
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PlayStation 3 Delay Official
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Revolution before PS3? (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe somebody with a better memory could put out some dates they've seen.
Re:Revolution before PS3? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Revolution before PS3? (Score:4, Interesting)
And its all going to be their own fault. There are quite literally 0 customers that are concerned if the DRM (copy protection) for Blu-Ray will be ready in time.
Personally, I hope their committment to DRM blows their release date and they lose millions of dollars. Let DRM be a problem for them for something.
Re:Revolution before PS3? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think the PS3 is ready in many respects (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.dbzn.net/)
Maybe not "flagship," but maybe "most important" (Score:5, Informative)
2003 Operating Income (Yen in billions)
2004 Operating Income (Yen in billions) 2005 Operating Income (Yen in billions): Of course, Electronics (which doesn't include Playstation) has the largest portion of sales (66.5% in 2005). But Games (includes consoles) brought in the most operating income in 2003 and 2004. In 2005, Games income dropped below Pictures (movies, tv) and Financial Services, but maybe that's because the PS2 is becoming a stale platform.Dang!! (Score:5, Funny)
I hope they pay the price. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I hope they pay the price. (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's my point: If they botch the copy protection and it becomes easy to pirate games for it, lots of people will be buying the hardware, with less people buying the software. What that equates to is a major loss for Sony. I'm not a big fan of Sony, but I am a fan of them continuing to support the platform. And yes, before anyone starts whining about how people pirating games doesn't destroy a company, I agree. It doesn't. BUT -- It does cut into their profits on the system, and it does affect a developer's decision about creating games for the console.
If it's as easy to pirate games on the PS3 as it was on the Sega Dreamcast, Sony's in for a lot of trouble. They'll lose money on each console they sell, then they won't make it back because people are pirating their games instead of purchasing them. Same goes for the developers. If they lose money creating games for the PS3, they'll stop producing as many games for the PS3.
As a consumer, I'd say it does a lot more for me that they're securing their future than pushing a system out only to lose their hats on it. It does me more good for them to be producing games for this thing for the next 5 years than it does me for them to call it a failure because of screwed up copy protection that they rushed just to launch the platform on time. I'm aware of the implications this holds for Blu-ray, but personally, I don't care about HD-DVD/Blu-ray. I care about having new games to play on this console for the next many years.
Just my opinion.
Re:I hope they pay the price. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.hansprestige.com/ | Last Journal: Friday September 14, @04:25PM)
Who says Sony will lose money on each console they sell? They made money on PS2 sales.
I hope the PS3 copy protection is enough of a failure to teach Sony a lesson: next time, they should focus on releasing a game console, not on harming consumers with DRM schemes.
They don't need copy protection to be successful. As another poster mentioned, the original PlayStation was easily modded to play copied games, and yet it went on to be far more successful than its competitors. The Nintendo 64, for example, had much more effective copy protection - just try copying a rented cartridge game!
Re:I hope they pay the price. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.argn.com/)
960x540 (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://myatomic.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday November 19 2006, @12:31AM)
Not that 960x540 is half-bad:
A motion picture DVD on a progressive scan player is already 720x480 at 24fps or 720x576 at 25fps depending on TV system. Compared to DVD, 960x540 at movie frame rates is only 50% better than NTSC DVD and 25% better than PAL DVD. Is that so noticeable? Based on specs alone, it looks more like the difference between composite and S-video than the night and day that is progressive-scan DVD vs. HDTV.
Does anyone actually believe this reason? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.chriscanfield.net/)
They haven't shown working hardware.
They haven't even shown the non-terrible controller.
And now they say that copyprotection is the reason for the delay?
I'm not quite sure which emperical evidence to believe, but they were nowhere near hitting their ship for Spring. Without hardware, software, or even finalized images, what were they going to sell? The letters "3" "S" and "P" printed on little cards?
They weren't ready, plain and simple. They probably held out announcing it for a little while in order to choke off X360 sales, but it has been clear for some time now. They just weren't ready.
Revolutionary DRM (Score:5, Funny)
Shocking news (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Saturday November 18 2006, @07:24PM)
Rob
If it were true... (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6145919.html [gamespot.com]
While authoritative in tone, it must be emphasized that the Nihon Keizai Shimbun report is in no way official. Though Sony's last-minute decision to change tomorrow's event from a closed-door presentation to a full-fledged press conference augurs a major announcement, Sony is staying mum. When contacted by GameSpot, a Sony Computer Entertainment America rep declined comment, saying "we have not made any new announcements on PlayStation 3."
Thanks CNet, at least you try to be objective.
Copy Protection is the cause for the delay? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.argn.com/)
I used to consider all y'all who said SONY="privacy killa" luddites and conspiracy theorists... now I'm not so sure. PS3 just moved from "definitely an option" to "needs a killer-app to even consider".
Microsoft must be loving this... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday July 11 2003, @05:17PM)
Re:Backwards compatible... (Score:5, Informative)
Case in point: Sega GT 2002. The game runs at less than half-speed. And that's not just framerate, the game clock runs at less than half-speed, and everything responds slowly too.
Of my Xbox games that are "compatible" with X360 (about 1/4 of them, slightly less than the official list percentage), a fair number of those run unacceptably slow.
One Potential Upshot, but huge downside (Score:5, Insightful)
The downsides to this are numerous, though. Many people may discount Nintendo, but even with their declined marketshare, Nintendo is not the sort of company you want to give a chance to play catchup in any sort of way. This will also give Microsoft a bit more rope. Whether Microsoft uses that extra rope to hang its self or to help build some momentem for the 360 is another question entirely.
Another problem is that the PS2 is already in decline, due to hype over the next generation of consoles. I am damn sure that while Sony would love to wring every last penny from that cash cow, that they dont want to let their best available retail offering to be the underdog against the 360 or Revolution for very long.
Between a handfull of articles about a bunch of weak 'me too' potential features for the PS3, and the way that Nintendo is steadily edging out the PSP due to the PSP not having any high profile killer apps, Sony is looking alot weaker right now then I would have expected. And if history has proven anything in the game industry, even giants can fall.
END COMMUNICATION
DRM Ate My Homework (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://bluezhift.proliphus.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday January 31 2007, @10:25AM)
1. Will they launch first in Japan or the U.S.?
2. Will they miss Christmas in the U.S.?
In the seemingly unlikely case that they go with a U.S. launch first, a couple of things could be noted. It could mean that Sony really _is_ worried about the Xbox 360 getting too far ahead in the U.S.. To add some more pain to this though is the prospect of a Nintendo launch in the U.S. in the same time frame. Even if Sony isn't worried about falling behind the 360, Nintendo is another matter.
As for missing Christmas in the U.S., that's a real danger. But again, hard to gauge. The 3rd parties would definitely be pissed along with retailers. But Sony still has a strong brand, and let's face it, the PS3 is likely to sell well whenever it is released. So maybe they should just calm down and formulate a sane launch plan that releases the new console when it and its games are ready to go. I think we've all seen enough crap get released too early to meet generally artificial deadlines. And heck, doesn't Mr. Gates deserve a little happiness occasionally too?
Subversive thought (Score:5, Funny)
(http://lar5.com/)
Re:Subversive thought (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.clutterme.com/)
Logic? Past experience?
Re:Subversive thought (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/)
"Official?" (Score:4, Informative)
(http://bi-boy.net/)
While authoritative in tone, it must be emphasized that the Nihon Keizai Shimbun report is in no way official. Though Sony's last-minute decision to change tomorrow's event from a closed-door presentation to a full-fledged press conference augurs a major announcement, Sony is staying mum. When contacted by GameSpot, a Sony Computer Entertainment America rep declined comment, saying "we have not made any new announcements on PlayStation 3."
Report: PS3 delayed until November [gamespot.com]
Yep, a whole year later than the 360.... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday June 05 2006, @05:03PM)
I've been saying here since early January that we wouldn't see the PS3 officially launched in the States until March of 2007 at the earliest. (and to the AC who called me a 'good liddle fanboy', thpppt!)
It's now March of 2006. They do not yet have, to my knowledge, working hardware for the video game end of things. They don't have working Blu-Ray drives, and in fact the specs there are changing. (latest news: no degradation on analog HDTV sets, which is good.) They don't seem to have decided on a final feature set. I think a November launch might still be possible, but it's gonna take a lot of overtime by a LOT of people. And they'll have to decide on their final feature set _right now_ and push like hell to make it happen.
Sony seems to be in defensive mode, beset by rivals. It doesn't feel like they have a unified vision of what the PS3 should be. Rather, at least if you can believe the zeitgeist of the rumor sites, they seem to be in defensive mode, where they claim they'll do everything that all the other consoles do, better. That's not gonna happen. They don't have the time or the manpower to make it happen. If they keep trying, the PS3 is going to be the Duke Nukem Forever of consoles... because the 360 and Revolution will be moving targets. Now that Microsoft has hardware on the ground, new features are just a matter of writing code. If there's one company on the planet who's got expertise in doing that, it's Microsoft.
At this point, I'm not sure that the PS3 will make November. Whenever it does ship, it will be monumentally expensive, but the wealthy Japanese consumers will buy it in droves anyway; it will be successful in Japan. When they ship it in the US, they're not going to be willing to take the enormous financial hit it would take to sell it at $400; they're going to be priced higher than that, maybe a lot higher.
Now, this part gets _really_ speculative. They saw the EBay market for the 360 (many 360s sold at $800+), so I bet they're going to try a very expensive US introduction. And, paradoxically, I think it will be completely rejected as 'too expensive' by the American consumer, even though the _exact same people_ would turn around and spend $800 for one on EBay. It's okay, you see, for the Average Joe to be rapacious and greedy, but when corporations do it, it's "wrong". And I'm not sure Sony will get that.
Even if they're smart and take the financial hit of introducing at $400, I still think they're likely to end up in third place, this time around. The 360 is really solid; it's an excellent machine and they're doing lots of interesting stuff with it. And the Revolution is _really_ interesting; Nintendo is focused on doing stuff that's fun.
This time around, Microsoft shipped a Mustang. It's big, loud, and powerful. Sony is going to ship a Porsche; quieter, a little faster, more expensive. (if they choose to eat the extra cost, that would make it a great deal for the consumer.) Nintendo is going to ship a Miata. They don't win drag-races, but Miatas are cheap and fun to drive.
Overall, I suspect Nintendo has a good chance of being the big winner this time around. They'll do well in all markets. I suspect the 360 will place a solid (and profitable) second.. they'll do really well in the US and Europe, but will be lucky to sell 25 consoles in Japan. Sony will do well in Japan, simply from a combination of brand- and country-loyalty, but I now suspect they'll do a huge faceplant in the US and Europe.
In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
New version of copy protection. (Score:3, Funny)
(http://lp.org/)
What difference does it make? (Score:3, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Sunday November 04, @03:38AM)
Heck, even if you're sick of the same old game box, you can always run Linux on the darn thing and use it for other purposes. The way I see it, these game system makers are just taking advantage of the fact that people always want to have the newest box.
Japan and the PS3 (Score:4, Insightful)
Editor Exagerating ? (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Worrisome is when you have an unexpected tissue growth under your skin. Worrisome is when your state/country begins to write law about censorship and reducing free speech like they print bank notes. Worrisome is when your neighbour country (or nearly) starts showing the finger to everybody and go on a cruisade to develop nuclear weapon. That is the definition of worrisome. The PS3 delaying for USA and EU by a few months is at best annoying or even disappointing, but if it make you build up worry you really need a better life.
It's official (Score:3, Informative)
This is not a dupe at all. (Score:5, Interesting)
Moreover, the "dupe" you give is wrong. The article slashdot posts there claims the announcement is "official", but the "official announcement" there is nothing but a misquote. The article took a quote from Variety Magazine saying the PS3 would be out "before the holidays", attributed Variety's commentary to Howard Stinger, and made it sound like PS3 would not be out until "the holidays".
This honestly makes me a little suspicious about this article (today's article, the new article you think for some reason is a dupe), to be honest. We've already had one case where Variety implied a November release for the PS3, a video game blog misquoted it as a Sony statement, and Slashdot reprinted the misquote as an "official" announcement. What if we have a case now where a Japanese newspaper implied a November release for the PS3, a video game blog misquoted it as a Sony statement, and Slashdot reprinted the misquote as an "official" announcement? Can we get a corroborating source besides just 1UP, or an actual quote from Sony about this somehow?