Sony And The No-Confidence Vote

Sony continues to spend the goodwill it has achieved over the last generation of consoles. As widely reported over the weekend, last Friday CEO for SCE Europe David Reeves spoke to the press. "We have built up a certain brand equity over time since the launch of PlayStation in 1995 and PS2 in 2000 that the first five million are going to buy it, whatever it is, even it didn't have games." This 'you'll buy it anyway' attitude has further annoyed gamers already rankling from the announced pricetag. Next Gen and IGN talk about the two sides of the coin, with IGN laying into the company for the lack of HDMI output in the cheaper model, and Next Generation saying that Sony is far from defeated.

Pride Goeth Before A Fall

Tying to sell a console without games is like trying to sell a gun without ammunition. Reeves' blithe assertion that their 'brand equity' will induce gamers to shell out 600 clams for their console, despite the dearth of available games, is pure fantasy. There are other consoles out there, that are far cheaper, and have games now. I personally can't imagine how Sony's going to move any of these consoles before the games become available.

That said, perhaps Sony would have a better chance of moving said consoles if it didn't take its customer base for granted in such a shockingly flippant way. The $600 price tag is bad enough, but Reeves' interview with Computer and Video Games probably cost Sony a lot of business from spite alone.

Also, from the IGN article:

In word, Sony downplayed the disparity between the $499 and $599 PS3 versions, citing the primary difference between the consoles at the time of the announcement as the difference in built-in hard drive space, namely 20 GB for the low-end and 60 GB for the high-end. Within minutes, however, journalists homed in on a variety of factors that placed the lower-end PS3 into contention for the dreaded "tard-box" classification of crippled-console.

Sony, if you've got so much frelling 'brand equity' that you can try to sell us a console for $600 without any games, why do you feel compelled to market a separate, 'tard-box'?

Re:Pride Goeth Before A Fall

Basically, Sony is making many of the exact same mistakes Sega made with the Saturn. Given that Sony was Sega's "$299" antagonist at the time, you'd think they'd know better.

Yeah, you'd think that being famous for "winning" E3 merely by uttering a price that undercut the competition by $100 would make them realize that price does matter.

narcissism

Etymology

After Narcissus, the fictional Greek hero who became obsessed with his own reflection.

Pronunciation

• 'när-s&-"si-z&m

Noun

narcissism

1. Egoism; egocentrism.
2. Love of oneself.
3. Sexual desire for one's own body.

--

I grew up on a farm. If there's one thing that pisses me off, it's people who walk around with their noses in the air. Yuppies, politicians, etc. are prone to this behavior.

Sony's elitism sure is getting underneath my skin. I enjoyed their console but anymore of this "only-the-rich-are-worthy-of-experiencing-this" attitude and I'm going to take my ball (money) and play elsewhere.

They do realize that many of their customers also buy their competitor's products, right? By stomping all over Nintendo and Microsoft, they may be alienating a large selection of their consumer base.

Let's be fair, it's true..

"We have built up a certain brand equity over time since the launch of PlayStation in 1995 and PS2 in 2000 that the first five million are going to buy it, whatever it is, even [if] it didn't have games."

So? It's true.. everyone likes to think they aren't suckers for the latest piece of kit, but aren't we all?

Yeah, everyone will buy one. Suuuuure.

In 2000, everybody wanted a PS2 even though it didn't have any real "must have" games. That might have been because of DVD (but DVD in 2000 was a lot more popular with the mainstream than Blu-Ray in 2006) Or, it might have just been the next "must have" item and people wanted it because people who had one were "cool"

Granted I don't have my finger on the pulse of the entire world, but the people I hang around have nothing but bad stuff to say about the PS3. Sorry the market's so fickle, Sony, but 2001's "xbox is heavy" and "Gamecube is for kiddies" is this year's "PS3 is expensive"

Re:Yeah, everyone will buy one. Suuuuure.

But in 2000, most people had not seen DVD in action, players were ridiculously expensive, and more importantly, so were DVD movies. It had barely entered into the equation in PCs.

Not true. I built a computer with a DVD drive and MPEG decoder card in 1998, and quite affordably. By 2000, consumer DVD players were in the sub-$200 range and DVDs were already taking significant amounts of shelf space away from VHS in retail stores and video rental outlets. And at no time did the typical DVD movie EVER sell for about $30 or so.

By 2000, Circuit City's DIVX experiment had already failed.

Re:Yeah, everyone will buy one. Suuuuure.

You've hit the nail on the head. A lot of the playstation generation (despite what they may claim) were not around for the sega/nintendo years.

Nintendo were full of themselves, sublimely arrogant and they snubbed everyone around them, released very expensive games, and were convinced they could do as they like. Sega was the same, pushing out cookie cutter games and walking around like nothing could hurt them.

Sounds familiar?

Within one generation their empires collapsed. Sega went bust (effectively) and Nintendo fell to 3rd place in the home console market.

There is no reason this cant happen to Sony, and as you say it based purely on popular opinion. Sony became cool and shot to number one, and now - they seem anything but.

The real question is, not whether they will fall, but if they will survive it. I doubt they will go bust (but financially they are no where near the shape the public thinks they are) but I do expect them to lose a large amount of market share.

This is the best thing that could happen to them, whilst sega dropping out of the hardware market has crippled them, Nintendo's 3rd place is the best thing that could happen to us the cosumers. The amount of innovation and free thinking thats come out of them, now they know they have to try, is outstanding.

I think Sony could do with its own wake up call.

True up to a point

I find the entire discussion as to wich console will win a bit amusing. Price is the funniest since it seems to never have had an effect before.

But what is even more amazing is how unbalanced fanboys can be.

For totally nuts check this out. A lot of 360 owners slam Sony for not having the cool controls of the Wii. Hello? Doesn't the 360 have zero innovation in its controller? So you slam Sony for adding only 1 small feature vs Nintendo redesign while being the proud owner of a console that has that same old controller that been used for the last decade?

Pot calling kettle black?

I seen a lot of complaining about 360 not being fully backwards compatible. Both the PS3 and Wii promise to be different so how come MS ain't slammed for that?

It seems that a lot of people got something against Sony. Perhaps it is just a David vs Goliath syndrome, we love to see the big guy taken down a notch and perhaps it has to do with the root kit (then again if you run windows surely you gotten used to be rooted by now)

However fanboys vendetta's do not make accurate sale predictions.

So far as I can see the consoles all got their weaknesses.

• The Wii is simplest, it is underpowered. How long can it last in the years consoles are supposed to stay current. It is not just about CPU, it is the only one to lack a HD (People who buy the lesser version of a console like the 360 core are like people who buy Celerons, not worth talking about) and that means it can't do games that require data storage. I am curious where the Wii is supposed to store all those downloadable old games.

  Will it matter? We will know in 2010 when the next-next generations consoles will start to be talked about.

• The 360 weakness is that it is the most boring of the three. Not the supposed power beast that is the PS3 and not as innovative as the Wii. It is just x-box version 2. Games look pretty but not earth shattering and not really all that different from what came before. To me the console seems to have lost a lot of its luster and even the fanboys are now just talking about actual upcoming games rather then having wetdreams about what might happen.
• The PS3 weakness to me seems that the Cell just doesn't deliver its hyped power. There are some nice demos out but they all seem to be cutscenes. Even if they are rendered live this mean little. When you know where the camera is going to be you can optomize a lot. Actual gameplay footage is rare and what is out there just doesn't tell me "supercomputer in your living room". With so many cores why am I not seeing thousand unit air battles?

  In short the real weakness of the PS3 is that it might just not be able to actually produce any games that are richer then the 360 or even worse, the Wii. Rich for me means AI, Physics, unit count, size of area etc etc. NOT resolution.

Not that any of the console companies are likely to care but I predict that PC gamers will once again look at consoles and go, "nice game kid". Pat the player on the head and go play a real game.

Or put another way. Console fanboys eat my keyboard!

Woah, that's weird

I looked up the word "hubris" in the dictionay, and there was a picture of the Playstation 3.

Crown isn't hereditary, really

You know, it used to be that Nintendo then Sega owned the game console market, but it didn't prevent them from losing position when their next interation of console was an overpriced crap.

Don't think for a moment, that it's something completely different with Sony. The attitude they present toward their customers is just ripe for detronisation. And it's a good thing...

Nothing to see, move along.

Robert

Goodwill equity does not exist in a market

It is false to believe that a free market offers any value in "goodwill equity" of any sort. I'm a businessman, and every time I provide a product or a service for my customer, the only equity that exists is the expectation that I will perform exactly as I am supposed to for a given payment, and that customer will pay me for my performance. The believe otherwise is a quick way to end up out of business.

I see it every year -- some kid takes over pop's huge business because the old man had a heart attack. The kid (usually in his 30s or 40s) drives the business into the ground and below within 2 years. He believed that the business didn't need to constantly re-win back old customers solely because they'd been around for years. Sony is no different than the businesses I see failing every year, even ones who have been around for 100 years and are now gone.

Every time a customer makes a purchase, it is with an expectation. No law is needed to protect the customer, because the customer can destroy a business in no time -- if each and every customer who is "hurt" by a previous transaction refuses to make a future one. Does "goodwill equity" give a customer a reason to buy again? Certainly. Does it mean the customer will be willing to accept one grievance or one mistake? Absolutely NOT.

To think that previously happy customers will forgive a mistake is to think that life is all happy-happy puppy-love bubble-gum and kisses. It isn't. This is business. You give the customer what they're paying for, or you go away.

Sony, go away. Please go away. You made too many mistakes, and the only goodwill you should be seeing is the clothing charity.

They Had My Money

They had my money. They built up brand equity. I was ready to buy it. Even if they pulled a 360 and charged $400.

Then they announced it would cost $600. And did I mention that there aren't really any games I really want to play? Just MGS4 and maybe Assassin's Creed.

Nice try Sony. You lost your brand equity. It was alredy eroeded with the PSP (how about some good games for once?). I was full-on Nintendo before all of this. I still like Nintendo best and will buy their console.

But I won't be buying a PS3 for over $400. I may even wait for $300. I won't be buying a 360 for over $300.

Three consoles, two shot themselves in the foot (as far as I'm concerned). Who will win? The expensive one, the MORE expensive one, or the reasonably priced one with about a dozen games that I want to play?

Hmmmmmm......

Re:They Had My Money

Maybe the PS3 is reasonably priced compared to previous consoles if you take inflation into account.

But Nintendo is still only charging $250 or so

And $600 just strikes me as WAY TOO MUCH. Even if it is not that bad historically. I could buy a decent laptop for that. I could buy a new HDTV. I could pay 2 months of car payments on a VERY nice car.

If MS wanted $400, Sony wanted $600, and Nintendo wanted $400 then I might be willing to pay more. But if Nintendo can sell their console (that I REALLY want) for $250, then Sony won't get me to buy their "ultra powerful do all" console (that I'm somewhat interested in) for 2-3x that.

And that assumes Nintendo doesn't go with $200 (1/3 the price of a PS3) or $150 (1/4 the price).

HDCP not needed for HD?

Now that both the 360 and PS3 will offer HD DVD/Blu-ray drives without HDMI, there's a LOT of rumors going around that hardware manufacturers have brokered a deal with studios to delay turning on the ICT flag until 2010. If so, that would make the $500 PS3 more viable, IMHO.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060521-6880 .html [arstechnica.com]
http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/22/studios-wont-do wngrade-hd-video-for-now/ [engadget.com]

Could Sony ditch the Blue-Ray?

If sony ditched the Blue-Ray they could potentially drop the price but $200 or more. I wonder if they have considered doing it. There is no reason to expect games to need Blue-Ray for a few more years and Sony could even get away with providing it as a cheap addon in a few years. If they push out a few AA titles that require it then people will buy it too. But making people buy a blue-ray drive when noone wants one now is just stupid. Sony! Either GIVE AWAY blueray drives if its that important to you, or provide it as an option. Forcing the cost of blueray into your next gen system with be the death of both..

What does Grandpa Sony cry about every night?

What does Grandpa Sony still cry about every night? About losing the VHS vs. Betamax war back when he was a lad.

The way to understand Sony's otherwise inexplicable behaviour is this: games on PS3 are just a means to an end. For Sony (and for MS/Xbox), the prize is not to control gaming; the prize is to own every home's entertainment computer, and the format it uses to show movies.

As they say in the interview, Sony have clearly decided that they will still sell five million PS3s, even at this price. And let's face it, when you count the Japanese market, they're probably right.

Sell 5m PS3s and they establish a user base for Blu-Ray - and kill HD-DVD. Thus they hope to win this decade's version of the Betamax vs. VHS war. Thus Grandpa Sony can stop crying at last and young Mr. Sony feels heroic.

That may be the strategy - but of course that doesn't mean it'll work. Sony's repeated desire to corner the market with a new content formats (UMD etc) has led them to disaster before, and may do so again. Perhaps in years to come young Mr. Sony will be crying every night about destroying the PlayStation franchise...

Big ships keep going by momentum

Even with the engine blown. A brand name keeps getting revenue, even when the brand by itself turned from a bleeding-edge world leader to a mediocre copycat. It takes a while 'til customers get peed off enough to dump a brand they trusted. But they eventually do.

Sony's engine is blown. Yes, they'll sell this generation of consoles. No matter what. People loved their PS, they loved their PS2, they'll buy the PS3. No matter what. But, and here is the problem Sony has to solve, the PS4 sales will rely on the PS3 results as much as the PS3 sales will benefit from the PS2 experience.

Because a ship that's dead in the water takes an incredible amount 'til it gets going again.

"No Confidence Vote"?!

This isn't "politics". Sony is making a product that will sell or not.

Lest our gentle readers forget, a few weeks ago an analyst pointed out that Microsoft could've sold XBox360's for nearly $700 last year and the market would've purchased them all.

The XBox360 doesn't have HDMI at all! (Of course that's coming this year)
The XBox360 was supposed to have HD-DVD and it doesn't. (Of course that's coming this year though who knows what port it'll hook up to. If I'm using the wireless adaptor and have two wired joysticks I have no spare USB ports for an HD-DVD player... oops, guess I'll have to get an XBox360 branded hub.)

Given what tech they were showing at E3 (very little), the truth of the matter looks like Sony can't build enough units to meet demand at an XBox360 competitive price point. So up the price which will cut down on the demand and also maximizes revenue generation. Then, in January, if sales are sluggish (and you've weeded out the production run kinks) drop the price to match the XBox360. If sales are still strong (and they could be) keep it at that price because the market will pay that much for it.

Am I ticked about that? Yeah. I have enough spare cash floating around that I could be an early adopter, but I won't. $500 for a video game system (plus $40 for one more controller, plus $60 for ONE game so you're really looking at $600) is just ludicrous.

But then some people pay $100/month for cable TV with all the frills (not including broadband support).

But I'll pre-order a Nintendo wee-wee at $200 (maybe $250)...

But "No confidence" vote? Sony could be making the *perfect* video game system here and I still wouldn't buy it at that price point. On the other hand, if they make some really cool games for it and don't drop the price, maybe I will...

But that's what capitalism is all about Charlie Brown...

Crippled PS3 will display 1080p

From the article:

The $499 PS3 model will be able to transmit games in full 1080p High-Definition via component cables without a problem, and far more surround sound receiver-amplifiers support optical-audio than HDMI.

Where the pain will set in, however, is when Blu-ray movies begin making use of HDCP/AACS copy-protection and the infamous "Image-Constraint-Token" (ICP). At the demand of the major Hollywood studios, both HD-DVD and Blu-ray standards have been developed to support this next-generation copy-protection scheme that protects Hi-Def movies from piracy and illegal digital distribution. While AACS is more or less innocuous from the standpoint of a general consumer, HDCP is destined to rain frustration and disappointment upon the masses, or at least those who purchase the $499 PS3 package.

so there you have it. 1080p, sure... Blu-Ray support...sorry I can't see how that is going to sell.

ps3 will be on top again

It will be 2 years before all the hardcore sony fans get done buying their PS3s, by that time sony will lower the price and all the casual gamers will buy it, nothing is going to change this generation. Sont sold 103 million PS2s compared to 22 mil xbox and 20 mil GC, anyone who thinks Sony is magically going to lose this gigantic market lead is fooling themselves.

Re:ps3 will be on top again

Atari lost a near monopoly on the console market. Nintendo lost a near monopoly on the console market. Anyone who thinks it's impossible to "magically" (for values of magic equal to misjudging the market) lose a gigantic market lead is fooling themselves.

Reminds me of President Bush in 2004...

Remember, after the 2004 election:

"I have political capital, and I intend to spend it."

And his approval rating just keeps going down. This post is not meant to be political or anything, just it sounds rather similar. From my personal experience in the world, it seems that whenever someone is bragging about things they did *before* it's usually because they don't have anything to brag about now. maybe i'm wrong.

after reading both FAs...

I came to a conclusion.

IGN has some very solid points about this.... Sony might respond to some of this and salvage the "gimp-end" of it's box offering.

And Mr Colin Campbell is a Snooty McFancyPants who doesn't realize that being "next-gen" will help you for naught if your product is also "not-purchased". There are some terrific consoles out in the mothball fleet to attest to this fact and he probably owns every single one of them.

Sadly, Sony may be right...

When I was in Gamestop last week, the sales rep told me he had received many more people asking if they could reserve the PS3 than the Wii. Not only that, he claimed that a bunch of people were willing to put up the $600 now (plus some kickbacks to him) if they could get one promised the day it comes out.

Ironically, he said that gamestop as of this time has no plans to allow preorders for PS3 due to the limited numbers they expect to receive (he said they estimate 1-2 per store on release day).

If he wasn't lying, there's apparently a strong calling for it, at least in my neighborhood.

I thought Sony's price point was ridiculous, and I have no plans to buy the PS3 when it's anywhere near $600, but perhaps Sony is right in believing their fans will buy anything with the "Playstation" name, no matter what the cost.

Xbox 360 price cut

Fry's in Palo Alto just announced a price cut on the XBox 360. The base machine is still $299, but the higher-priced bundles just dropped over $100. This makes sense; some of the accessories were way overpriced, and there's a huge glut of unsold XBox 360 accessories left over from the holiday season. eBay prices are now slighly below retail.

With that happening to the XBox 360, Sony is going to have real trouble at a higher price point.

On the developer front, the general reaction to the Cell processor is "groan". (Except for audio guys, who finally get their very own CPU.) The Xbox 360 is a 3-CPU shared memory multiprocessor driving a conventional graphics chip, something well-understood by developers. Porting from an x86 PC (or an original XBox, which is an x86 PC) to an XBox 360 is straightforward. The Cell is a new, wierd architecture, little limited-memory CPUs with bulk DMA access to main memory. (Architecture people will remember unsuccessful supercomputers of the past organized like this.) In fact, Sony already has had a huge architectural disaster. Originally, the Cell was supposed to do the rendering. That was a dud, and Sony had to put a conventional graphics chip on the back end, running up the cost.

It's certainly possible to develop good games for the thing, but the extra work required means the games willl be out later. It took about two years before the PS2 hardware was really being used effectively. The PS3 is completely different from the PS2 and will require new techniques. So Sony is launching late on a machine you can't just port to. Not good.

What's really going to happen is that the early PS3 games will be doing most of the game work in the main CPU and the graphics engine, mostly ignoring the Cell processors. If the game talks to the network, one of the Cell processors will be handling that. Audio work will be in a Cell processor. PS3 games will probably have really good sound, because there's plenty of extra Cell CPU capacity to devote to audio. As Lucasfilm people like to point out, good audio will compensate for lousy graphics, but the reverse isn't true.

Sony will never get a dollar from me again

After the rootkit fiasco, and the downright abuse of players and Mad Magazine worthy mis-management of SWG by SOE, I wouldn't buy a dollar for a nickel from them.

Sony and SOE both are collapsing from incompetent management and their complete disregard for their customers.

They're forced to issue this statement

They're forced to issue this statement. We already know that there won't be many high quality launch games because according to SEGA and THQ [joystiq.com], most developers haven't received PS3 devkits yet. Many developers may choose to release their games on the PS2 instead of doing a half-assed attempt at converting it to a PS3 game because they'll simply make more money on the PS2's larger established user base than they would by making it a lackluster PS3 title with a small installed base at launch.

And he might be right.

This is like the old slam on Apple fanboys, where Steve could crap in a box and call it iShit and people would buy it in droves. Please don't flame on whether this is 'accurate' or not about Apple users, it's just the insult that immediately came to mind when I read this.

He's basically saying they could crap in a box, label it PS3, and you'd pay $600 for it.

And he might be right.

And thus history repeats itself...

I seem to remember another big game company that had unbridled consumer loyalty and ruled the video game industry practically uncontested...where are they now? Oh yeah, last.

Guess what Sony? Your don't have near the success and loyalty Nintendo did in it's hayday. If Nintendo can go from "taking over the world" to last place in the console race in a mere decade, then your in a position now to be completely shrugged off within a few years. Your arrogant and your screwing over what a good thing you had going, not unlike Nintendo in the past, and if you keep going this way you'll be doomed to repeat your competitors mistake. Nobody's invinicble in business, and there's no such thing as a permanent success.

Next-Gen = Sony Fanboy?

From the Next-Gen article:

What Sony needs are a couple of games that really stand out, and that are guaranteed for launch. Over the next six months, an elite set of PS3 launch titles will begin to emerge that puts the product back on the radar of all those people you just know will be lining up on PS3 day.

What, like the titles announced for the Wii? Or titles that are currently coming out for the 360? This entire piece read like a fanboy article in favor of Sony. Not just a pro-Sony article, but a fanboy's glossy-eyed stare. The only concrete evidence given for why the author thinks the PS3 will win out or at least do well is because he wants it to. Hell, the Wii is also six months out, but consumers aren't waiting for its elite list of games, because those games are already announced.

Also, his 18-month claim seems to backfire for him. He claims that Sony won E3 2005, but then goes on to say that 18-months later the real E3 champion is realized? I hate to break it to him, but 18-months after E3 2005 is PS3 launch day, and if Sony wasn't the real winner a year ago, who will be the real winner in November 2006?

"Brand Equity": Rootkit

That's all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Not buying the Sony defenders.

A lot of people taking Sony's side on this one - including Next Gen - seem to me to be missing the point. "The price will eventually go down," they say, "and this allows Sony to profit off the early-adopting suckers in the meantime!" Everyone predicts that in a year or so PS3 will be competitively priced and widely available, and Sony hegemony shall be restored.

But... isn't this kind of a competition for third-party developers? A year from now, if Xbox has 10 million installed users and Sony a fraction of that because not many people are willing to pay $600 for a console, won't developers migrate to Xbox? Won't GAMERS migrate to Xbox, because that's what their friends play? And if everyone's on Xbox, who the heck is going to spur this widespread late adoption of PS3?

Next Generation 3 Sony

I remember a Next Generation cover that was a beautiful, if slightly low-polygon count, scene. Full-page bright color, every line flawless. No jaggies. High-resolution textures.

Headline: With playstation graphics like this, can 3DO keep up?

Now, the thing is, those weren't playstation graphics; they were at least 100dpi, putting us up to about 850x1000 pixels; a tad larger than the PS1's standard display. They were higher resolution than anything the PS1 could do at any speed, and indeed, the PS2 can't do it either.

NG just loves to pimp Sony. They're crazy.

(It's true, of course, that the PS1 generally had better 3D support than the 3DO. But it wasn't THAT good.)

Sony already lost me...

Honestly, I see all the crap that Sony is saying as even more reason not to buy one of there consoles. I bought a PS1 back in 97 because FF7, what can I say I loved 4 and 6. The first one I got didn't work out of the box and I had to return it(never a good thing). About year after the PS2 came out the second one stopped entirely(so it lasted about 3 and a half years :P). I had been saving for a DVD player at the time it died... I ended up spending the money on a PS2 so I could watch DVDs and play my PS1 games. My PS2 stopped playing DVDs within 6 months... 6 MONTHS! I payed $300 to have the thing break on me in half a year. I had to scam Wal-Mart to get a new one. If Sony thinks they will get me to buy another POS when they cost in $500+ I say "HA!" I've already given them enough of my money for shitty hardware, why give anymore of it away?

I have 4 consoles sitting in front of my TV now: NES, SNES, Gamecube, PS2. Can you guess which 3 I haven't had problems with? And if Sony thinks I'm gaga over blu-ray they can sit on their thumb and twist! I have around 50 DVDs sitting on my shelf. I could care less about blu-ray when all the movies I actually want to watch are sitting in my entertainment center already. I'm getting a Wii once they come out, no doubt. I might even get a 360 if the price ever drops... But, I will not get a PS3!

Thump! Thump!

Sony sounds ripe for the the picking!

Sony's Gambit

The predictions of doom surrounding the PS3 (especially with regards to the very high launch price) are, of course, flooding the Internet. Nevertheless, I think they are very premature.

In a historical context, the PS3 is somewhat like the Neo-Geo home system [wikipedia.org], or the 3DO [wikipedia.org]: It is a console with vastly more raw processing and graphics power than its contemporaries, but also a significantly higher price tag (although, it must be said that 50% over the 360 pales in comparison the the massive price difference between, say, the 3DO and a Super Nintendo). The Neo-Geo and the 3DO were, for all their technological superiority, failures. SNK, the makers of the Neo-Geo, only had experience in the arcade market prior to the introduction of their home system, and were used to selling very expensive arcade boards, since a steady stream of quarters could be counted on to offset the initial purchase cost (unless you charge your friends to come over and play, this model doesn't work for a home console). Although SNK supported the Neo-Geo with a number of excellent first-party titles, their history as a proprietary arcade supplier and tendency to keep the system's design very close to their chest meant a dirth of third party developers interested in writing games for the console. The 3DO, on the other hand, was made by a group of licensors with little to no background in the video games industry, and only a few publishers made any effort at bringing a few games to the system. Many 3DO games simply weren't very good, and of those handful that were, several were ported from the PC, or were later ported to more mature systems that followed like the Saturn [wikipedia.org] and the original Playstation [wikipedia.org].

I believe, however, that Sony has the ability to avoid the collapse suffered by the Neo-Geo and the 3DO. Those two systems were the first home consoles from the companies who made them, who had no prior relations with 3rd party developers whatsoever (and in the case of 3DO, no first party development studio and no street cred with gamers, either).

Sony, on the other hand, is right about their own momentum. They did not come out the clear victors in 2 console generations by luck: they did it with games. Even then, I'm hard pressed to remember many launch titles from either system that really stand out as excellent. But, over the lifetime of PS1 and PS2, a library of thousands of games, most from 3rd party developers, and hundreds of them excellent, built up. The reason for this, in the beginning, was that Sony gave developers what they wanted: a CD-ROM drive offering vastly more storage space and multimedia capabilities than the competitors, and a good C-based API for writing games (and an assembly-based devkit later on to really max out the system). Sony managed to woo away many developers from Nintendo and Sega by providing them with a better canvas on which to create their visions, and the accumulation of amazing titles on the PS1 caused gamers to purchase it in droves.

Fast forward to the PS2: it's a more parallelized system, it's a bit harder to program for, but on the other hand, it has a DVD drive (just when consumer interest in DVD movies was skyrocketing), and is backwards-compatible with almost all PS1 games. The PS2 managed to sell extremely well even without any truly great launch titles, if only because people were drooling over a device that would play a library of hit PS1 games AND the hot new movie format. In the meantime, developers who had witnessed the runaway success of the PS1 were already writing a new generation of games, banking on similar success for the PS2. And they were right: the PS2 was a great success, and their investment paid off (and their games also helped to drive sales of the PS

Let's not forget the $70 games and small selection

All the fanboys who think BluRay is good for games because it allows for so much more content - I hope you enjoy paying $70+ for the games.

PS3 is already so late to market and so difficult to develop for, it is going to end up with a much smaller game library than the Wii or X360. PS3 will not enjoy the position of being the "target system" like PS2 did. Now X360 is the target system and PS3 will get the watered down ports. That's the advantage of being the first console to hit critical mass.

Wii of course has the advantage of low cost development, and true next-generation gameplay due to innovative interface. EA and other developers have already made special Wii teams (something not done for GameCube), and are more willing to take risks on innovative ideas since the costs are dramatically lower.

In the end, whatever exclusive support remains on PS3 will end up raising costs to $70+ to cover their extreme costs and low distribution.

Unlike M$ and nintendo, Sony does not have any other significantly profitable ventures to sustain them. And assholes like me will be ther every step of the way to remind people of the ROOTKIT, the stolen Walkman, crappy manufacturing defects, and ridiculous prices.

Damn it feels good to see Sony choke on their own shit.

Corporate Arrogance

They must have training seminars for executives of all Sony divisions in how to show the proper level of contempt for customers. From DRM'd CDs installing rootkits to its failure to acknowledge it's a non-factor in portable music players to how it handles its online games (my personal pet peeve) to this?

What's good for Sony is good for the rest of the world. Just give them your money and don't ask any questions.

Goes to show

Outsourcing is bad.

Particularly outsourcing your marketing department.

Particularly outsourcing your marketing department to Hell.

The price point is the true killer...

My major roadblock at this point with getting an Xbox 360 is the cost. I can't drop 399$ on a console. It's ludicrous. To shell out that much on a console with only a handful of playable games is disturbing, almost. Some of the most hyped titles - Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, for example - apparently aren't even worth the plastic the disk is printed on from a playability standpoint.

Bloody hell, I'm consdering just stretching my PS2 until it dies, and then giving up the console gaming entirely. Unless the Wii can blow it all away, then I might keep one of those around, but the Xbox 360, and the PS3 are just too damn expensive.

I really don't care about Bluray, or HD-DVD or this that or whatever. Just want to play some games.

It's the games, stupid!

Polygons mean nothing if the game sucks. Let's face it: all the fancy hardware in the world doesn't make a crappy game a great game. If Sony gets some developers exclusive to the PS3 that will publish the next Grand Theft Auto 3 or other mega hit then they will win. Of course, Microsoft was able to squander away having Jade Empire, Halo and some other decent exclusives...

Re:I'm confused...

Yeah... that's hyperbole for you. But Sony does sell its consoles at a loss with the intention of making that money back (+ lots more) with game licensing and prehipherals. Ever wonder why an 8MB memory card costs $25? Because $15 of that goes to subsidise a PS2 purchase.

I find it funny that the author immediately uses that as a reason to charge more. I would've used it as a reason to make your consoles out of affordable materials.

Re:Oh shut up y'all!

Allow me to be the first to say, "Nice troll!"

Seriously, with some practice and fine-tuning you could be the darling of the Sony marketing team!