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How the PS3 Hit $600
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun May 28, 2006 04:38 PM
from the i-blame-mudflation dept.
from the i-blame-mudflation dept.
Joystiq has up an interesting article today, gathering together information from a couple of places to discuss why the PlayStation 3 is so expensive. From the article: "Kutaragi was demoted after being passed over for the role of CEO and, when former Sony Pictures head Howard Stringer assumed the position, the relationship between the content and technology divisions of Sony became even more intimate. Stringer "quickly dubbed the PlayStation 3 as one of the company's 'champion' products." Kutaragi's desire to stratify the console market with Cell technology in effect wed Sony to the unpalatable prospect of charging an unprecedented price. Coupled with Sony's desire to not only push their own content on HD discs, but to control that medium with their proprietary Blu-ray format, the final price was escalated by two very advanced (and very expensive) pieces of Sony technology."
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Ken Kutaragi's Famous Last Words 527 comments
When we look back on this E3, I think one of the moments we're most clearly going to remember is the dead silence in the Sony press conference following the price announcement. Eurogamer and GameDaily has coverage of Phil Harrison's spin work, trying to recover from that moment, discussing how Sony is not ripping off Nintendo and Microsoft probably won't meet their 10 million units goal. More interestingly, they discuss an interview with Ken Kutaragi conducted by a Japanese website. From that piece: "SCEI president Ken Kutaragi has defended the PlayStation 3's high price tag once again, declaring that not only will consumers be prepared to pay the cost but that the console is 'probably too cheap.' In an interview with Japanese website IT Media, partially translated by IGN, Kutaragi said: 'This is the PS3 price. Expensive, cheap - we don't want you to think of it in terms of game machines ... For instance ... Is it not nonsense to compare the charge for dinner at the company cafeteria with dinner at a fine restaurant? It's a question of what you can do with that game machine. If you can have an amazing experience, we believe price is not a problem.'"
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Sony Pushes Back Release For Blu-Ray Players 262 comments
Sony has announced that their first model of Blu-Ray player will release in August, not later this month as originally announced. The BDP-SP1, retailing for $1000, will now ship on or about August 15th. Bad news for fans of the new format, and even worse news for the PS3. Since Sony's lackluster E3 showing, a string of bad news has seemed to conspire against the company's next-gen console. From the Gamers with Jobs article: "With the PS3's high-end model coming it at a whopping $400.00 less than a stand-alone Blu-Ray player, Sony needs to release these players as soon as possible. If they wait too long, the PS3 will begin looming on the horizon, causing even devout early adopters to question the intelligence of buying a stand-alone Blu-Ray unit. Sony also needs the largest possible installed base, come launch-time for the PS3. For the Blu-Ray player to be the PS3's version of the PS2's DVD player, casual technophiles need to be able to see the virtues of the Blu-Ray format. If there are few players, and few titles, this might not happen."
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holy CHRIST. Article is wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Associa
Its board of directors consists of:
* Apple Computer
* Dell
* Hewlett Packard
* Hitachi
* LG Electronics
* Mitsubishi Electric
* Panasonic (Matsushita Electric)
* Pioneer Corporation
* Royal Philips Electronics
* Samsung Electronics
* Sharp Corporation
* Sony Corporation
* TDK Corporation
* Thomson
* Twentieth Century Fox
* Walt Disney Pictures
* Warner Home Video Inc.
Not so proprietary now, is it?
Re:holy CHRIST. Article is wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Proprietary software is software that has restrictions on using and copying it, usually enforced by a proprietor. The prevention of use, copying, or modification can be achieved by legal or technical means. Technical means include releasing machine-readable binaries only, and withholding the human-readable source code. Legal means can involve software licensing, copyright and patent law."
Just because a bunch of companies get together a support a format doesn't mean that format is not proprietary. Is it open? Is it controlled by a common standards body? Can a reader/writer of the format be created by anyone for free?
Not so non-proprietary now, is it?
Man, bullshit. (Score:4, Insightful)
Being "owned" is not the same as being propreitary. MP3 is similarly controlled by a commonly licensed patent pool, but nobody tries to pretend Mp3 is propreitary.
By claiming Blu-Ray is "proprietary" in the fashion the article does, it is implying this is something special about Blu-Ray, some quality that HD-DVD and DVD do not share. This is at best misleading and at worst a lie, since Blu-Ray is identical in this respect to other formats.
You're wrong, and the moderators are only moderating you up and the other guy down because they hate Sony and will reward anyone who can make them look bad, whether they're right or not.
Re:Man, bullshit. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Man, bullshit. (Score:5, Informative)
It requires a CSS license, but nobody wants to pay for one or release a binary-only player (which would go against the community's philosophies).
Re:it is proprietary (Score:5, Informative)
proprietary
adj.
1. Of, relating to, or suggestive of a proprietor or to proprietors as a group: had proprietary rights; behaved with a proprietary air in his friend's house.
2. Exclusively owned; private: a proprietary hospital.
3. Owned by a private individual or corporation under a trademark or patent: a proprietary drug.
It all depends on which definition you're using. You are assuming definition #3. But it seems clear from the context that the article itself (written by Joystiq?) is using definition #2.
The point is Blu-Ray is no more proprietary than HD-DVD or even regular DVD. The fact that Joystiq used the word at all is implying that Blu-Ray is somehow proprietary in a way that those other formats are not. Otherwise, there'd be no reason to describe it in that manner - I mean the Xbox 360 is using the "proprietary" DVD format and it only costs $300-$400. So this is not a differential between these two systems, and implying that it is is at best biased reporting and at worst just plain incorrect.
It is almost definitely true that the BD drive is one reason why the PS3 is so expensive, but that's just because it's new technology. It's got nothing to do with it being proprietary or not.
This will haunt them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This will haunt them (Score:5, Insightful)
That's right, nothing. (Okay, somewone will post another reason to upgrade in a second or two, just to prove me wrong. Bastards. :-) ).
HD-DVD/Blu-Ray will have all the widespread adoption and universal acceptance that the post-CD physical audio media has had : Limited use only by the most discriminating users. MP3's rule the music world now (and/or WMA's/AAC's, depending on your choice of online music store); You buy a CD and what's the first thing you do? Rip it onto your computer. It won't be too long until purely digital media takes over video/movies as well, leaving BluRay and HD-DVD in the dustbin of tech history.
Re:This will haunt them (Score:4, Insightful)
That's right, nothing."
And your point is? It's "High Definition" video, it's intended purpose is to improve picture quality. If you want it to make toast, buy a toaster.
You can question how many people want HD video, but don't expect it to have any benefits other than what it's designed for.
Re:This will haunt them (Score:5, Insightful)
Vinal brought us long playing times or smaller size depending on the particular record. tape brought us home recording and a reduction in size, CD brought US automated seeking, a further reduction in size (at least if you don't keep them in jewel cases) and much greater logevity.
similarlly in home video since the original format wars, the only major success so far has been DVD which brought to video the automated seeking,longevity and small size that CD brought to audio.
Vinyl vs. CDs (Score:5, Insightful)
Please don't start this bullshit again. This argument is based on an entirely specious argument, that vinyl is supposedly "analog" while CDs are "digital". Well, repeat after me: "THE UNIVERSE IS QUANTIZED".
Vinyl records are made of individual molecules, the pick-up stylus is made of individual carbon atoms, electric current is carried by individual electrons. The final consequence of this is noise. Any good electrical or electronics engineering curriculum will have a course on probabilistic modelling where you learn how to calculate the noise resulting from the discretization of electric charge.
When the CD standard was created, one simple question was made: which level of quantization noise in the encoding will be low enough to be irrelevant, considering other sources of noise and distortion?
I have a Shure V15 type 4 cartridge, which was near to the top of the line in vinyl reproduction technology when I bought it. I don't remember the exact specs for it, but the distortion value was something around 1%, excellent compared to other models, but just terrible if compared to digital technology. If you take a look at the specs for the newest cartriges [shure.com] from Shure you'll see the don't even mention specs for things like distortion or noise. Try to google [google.com] for distortion specs on audio cartridges, can you find any that comes close to CD quality in fidelity? It's hard to find anyone that actually gives measured specs for noise and distortion, they just say it's "amazingly low" or similar marketese.
If there is any objection to CD quality, perhaps it's that it's too good. Most people are satisfied by the inferior specs of mp3. However only ignorant people, based on faulty reasoning, would believe that something is better just because it's labeled "analog" instead of "digital".
OTOH, I agree with you on what you say about lossy video encoding. But that's not a result of being digital, it's a result of compression. In the analog world, 8 mm film has lower quality than 35 mm film, is that so surprising? Put enough lines in the video, use a better encoding, and the artifacts will disappear.
Differently from CD audio, digital video today doesn't have standards that comply with the best possible quality, because the needed data volume is too big for current technology. Color depth of 8 bits per channel are insufficient, the human eye can see much more than 256 levels of any color. The eye has a variable resolution, but the video cannot count on that. Since you can look at any detail with the best part of your eye, a perfect video encoding should have each part of the scene encoded at the best resolution of the human eye.
A digital video standard designed like CD audio was specified, to comply with the full sensitivity of human eyes, would be something like 16 bits resolution for each primary color, 30 frames per second, 4800x2400 pixels. Without compression, that's 2 Gigabytes / second.
Re:This will haunt them (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry in advance, but...
I think the sphere where one or the other (or both) will really take off is in computing devices. True, there are still a lot of people out there who don't even have DVD burners (nevermind dual layer DVD burners), but I can see the need for very large offline storage capacity by computer users ensuring that one or both of these standards does indeed take off. Who wouldn't want a single disc that can store up to 200GB of data (which, according to WikiPedia [wikipedia.org] is the current maximum achieved thus far -- whether or not such discs will be available to the general public anytime soon at a reasonable price is anyones guess)?
We'll quickly get to a point where a variety of device types will be manufactured and released that use either standard -- computer optical drives, game consoles, video players -- and it only takes one of these to really take off for the others to follow (as there is a certain cost savings and end-user convienence in the long run to have all of these devices using compatible storage technologies). Indeed, assuming production of the 405nm blue-violet lasers really ramps up, we may get to a point where the red lasers needed for DVDs and CDs is actually more expensive to manufacture, at which point people needing to replace older equipment will simply go with the newer standard (particularly if the units in question are backward compatible, or in situations where backwards compatibility is unnecessary).
I personally don't care about BlueRay or HD-DVD for video at this point -- I have a very nice Standard-Def TV, and don't really have the spare cash laying around to replace it with an HD unit. I likewise don't currently care about them for gaming -- my PS2 still works just fine, and has a ton of really good games I haven't finished exploring as it is (as I rarely have time to sit down and play much of anything as it is). However, being able to dump 25GB (or more) of data to a single optical disc on my computer does appeal to me quite a bit, and I'm looking forward to the day when Apple starts including BlueRay drives in their MacBooks (hopefully that day will come before the next time I need to upgrade my system :) ).
Yaz.
Yaz.
Re:This will haunt them (Score:3, Interesting)
But for video, I think I'm smack dab
Re:This will haunt them (Score:5, Interesting)
it already takes ages to burn off 4.4 gigs onto single layer dvd-rs.
how long will it take for 25-45 gigs?
then once you get it off.. all your eggs are in one very fragile and irrepairable disk.
dogs step on it and *snap* its gone. oh you wanted to update that rough draft of a book you backed up? too bad, you now have to burn back 45 gigs of data!
I'm going with firewired hard drives or multivolume parity based raid arrays when my needs exceed the bounds of traditional dvd-rs. at least then i can maintain, alter, and repair my data once it's moved off my main system.
Re:This will haunt them (Score:4, Interesting)
You can get scratchproof DVD-Rs already.
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=dvd+scratchpr
I bought some under $1 a piece online after I found out that 1 out of every 3 backup DVDs didn't work because of scratches (not because of faulty burning nor age).
Up to now, it works fairly well. Now, they claim it stands up to screwdriver or steelwool, I don't know about that, possibly.
But none of those extensively used backup DVD-Rs are even scratched slightly (40+ of these DVDs). And there are no fingerprints because I can take a paper towel and clean them - good as new! On a normal DVD this would definitely cause scratches.
Now I only wish they covered my DVD movies in this stuff. Why the industry doesn't is beyond my guess. Perhaps they want to force me to buy their movies multiple times (which I won't). Someone gave me Pirates of the Carribean brand new a while back and that just died of a multitude of scratches - don't even know how it got on there:(
Re:This will haunt them (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone will know that the quailty is better but most people won't care, at least common people who buy the large flat panel TVs and watch content with the wrong aspect ratio on it.
Videophiles will buy it along with the $80 HDMI cables but I don't ever seem to remember Wal*mart carring any title on laserdisc in their stores.
I thought I was going to buy into the HD formats but it is a mess right now to the point that I just don't care anymore about it.
As somewhat of a purist, I was waiting for SED units with 1080p but at this point, if I have to buy a new TV (because my color is starting to fade), I will settle for 720p and stick with regular DVD's.
ZOMG! (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know about everyone else but I've been holding out on HDTV's simply because there wasn't much I could do with one. HD gaming and cinema changes all of that. Half the reason most HDTV's don't look so good in stores is that a good portion are playing on dvd's with 480 lines of resolution. About 40% of the HDTV's in sam's are getting an actual hdtv feed.
In summary a blu-ray drive will give you the following:
1) Longer Movie Runtime
2) Maxed out HDTV Resolution
3) Scratch resistant coating that will alleviate one of the biggest longevity issues with dvd's.
I'm not sure what more I could want with a new format.
#1 reason (Score:5, Interesting)
The DRM Rootkit seemed like a good idea in "theory".
A $600 game system seems like a good idea in "theory".
In theory I'm not going to buy the PS3, and neither will billions of other humans because of the price.
Re:#1 reason (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:#1 reason (Score:5, Interesting)
Something that works both in theory and in practise would be nice...
Re:#1 reason (Score:3, Insightful)
2) It comes with their system because businesses buy it and people want to take work home.
3) Businesses buy it because it is the only OS that runs their software.
4) For an increasing number of busines
Re:#1 reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, $600 will buy you a fair amount of fish and will feed a bunch of people once. However, you could also buy a PS3 and SimFishing then invite all the starving over to have a competitive game and, in the process, teach them how to fish which is infinitely more valuable.
Poor management (Score:5, Interesting)
-- n
How the PS3 REALLY Hit $600 (Score:5, Funny)
Let's face it, they've figured out that without a girlfriend, we've got money to burn.
Low yields on vital PS3 components (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Low yields on vital PS3 components (Score:5, Funny)
My previous employer boasted the best yields in IC manufacturing, but I never heard what any competition got. I don't know if anyone could tell me if yields this low are somewhat normal, but I'd like an idea.
Re:Low yields on vital PS3 components (Score:3, Informative)
Nobody really talks about it, but it appe
Agendas (Score:3, Insightful)
Pasting for the PS3 because it invents not copies (Score:5, Interesting)
But what got me most was this
Coupled with Sony's desire to not only push their own content on HD discs, but to control that medium with their proprietary Blu-ray format.
If the PS3 gets reasonable marketshare then this could be considered its master stroke in 2 years time. While the XBox 360 will need a revision to support HD discs, the PS3 won't.
But what irritates me most is the phrase "their proprietary Blu-ray format". I must have missed the bit where the MS Supported HD-DVD was an open standard with no strings attached. So Sony created an HD disc standard, just like they worked with Phillips on CDs and have created several other professional and consumer format standards, some which flew, some which didn't.
Its a sad state of affairs when Slashdot articles don't even celebrate the invention and the investment, but bitch just about the price and want LESS gadgets in the box, and when the MS supported standard is implicitly suggested to be a more "open" option.
Re:Pasting for the PS3 because it invents not copi (Score:5, Insightful)
What percentage of people actually use their consoles as a primary movie player? Electronics manufacturers are always dreaming of using convergence as a way to take over the world, but the reality is people are used to spending ~$200 or less on a DVD player, it won't take long for HD players to reach that sort of price range, and the ability of a console to play HD disks will be irrelevant to most people. Can't really see it being seen as a "masterstroke".
Doesn't change the fact that the format war does nothing for the consumer whatsoever, hence the pointed tone about proprietary format. The same tone would be taken with HD-DVD, the point is the consumer gets f@#ked again.
Re:Pasting for the PS3 because it invents not copi (Score:5, Insightful)
People who don't want to buy two? Students? No idea, I just know that we coped for several years with a PS2 as the DVD player.
Doesn't change the fact that the format war does nothing for the consumer whatsoever, hence the pointed tone about proprietary format. The same tone would be taken with HD-DVD, the point is the consumer gets f@#ked again.
So what should Sony be doing, trying to get a large industry group behind their standard to help it.... oh hang on they are doing that... how about trying to use a non-proprietary (not yet Open Source) technology such as Java for the interactivity bits... oh hang on they are doing that.
Let's put it this way. If Microsoft, who had an open choice like Intel, had backed Blu-Ray... do you seriously think there would still be a discussion? Can you think of a SINGLE technical reason to back HD-DVD over Blu-ray if you were Microsoft making that decision, BEYOND considering Sony to be competition?
It isn't the same, and it isn't right to say that consumers always get fucked by these standards wars, often they lead to decent competition that drives the price down, and either leads to a dominant standard (VHS v Betamax) or total compatibility (DVD-R+R etc etc). Monopolar approaches tend to work in markets with lots of standards that need to agree(e.g. WiFi with 802.11x).
Microsoft pushing HD-DVD isn't the same as Sony pushing Blu-ray, one company put energy and investment into inventing and creating something, the other made a political decision.
Re:Pasting for the PS3 because it invents not copi (Score:5, Informative)
I can think of a few off the top of my head:
1) HD-DVD drives are less expensive
2) HD-DVD has a mandatory managed copy requirement
3) HD-DVD doesn't have region coding
4) HD-DVD discs are less expensive to produce
5) HD-DVD discs can be produced with DVD9 content on one side and HD-DVD content on the other (ie: good upgrade story)
6) HD-DVD discs are more fault tolerant than blu-ray
7) Hi-def Movies don't need more than 25 of storage space with modern codecs
Re:Pasting for the PS3 because it invents not copi (Score:4, Informative)
They do now.http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060526
Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
The game (and music and movie) industry is bizarre, deal with it. If the PS3 is fun and gets a sexy reputation, then people will buy it. If people think it's lame, then they won't buy it. I don't think the price has very much influence.
For me, the fact that they added "motion sensing" at the last minute sounds much more worrying for Sony. It sounds like they realized the Wii was going to beat the PS3 and they had to copy it. I think I will get a Wii, not because it's cheap, but because the controller has great potential for fun gameplay.
STOP USING LOGIC! (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a great desire among slashdotters to see Sony fail. They can't really fault the hardware so they got to focus on the price and common sense be damned.
The PS3 not having as innovative a controller as the Wii. Neither does the 360. You don't hear people about that.
The cell is actually a really powefull piece of tech so you can't make claims that it is underpowered or something.
The PS3 will fail or succeed based on wether it can have games that are worth the price. Can the hardware be put to real use and can we get games that blast anything on the 360/PC away? So far nothing is showing up that impresses me but then none of the consoles impress me.
The games don't really have to innovative. Give me F.E.A.R and just use that massive CPU to put 60 ai's in the game at the same time. That would sell me. Well if I can use a mouse with it.
Oh just give me a PS3 with linux and an open spec to the hardware.
PS2 will likely be Sony's "Next-Gen" console (Score:5, Insightful)
Sony is really heading into a direction that may land them back in the current generation. The PS2 is still going strong, the only reason that next gen systems are so quickly adopted is because their predicessors are so quickly dropped. It wouldn't surprise me if, after an extremely terrible launch, Sony's only option is to continue with the PS2 for another couple of years. I think that the PS2 could easilly take on the 360 in the next generation, not in power, of course, but in how entrenched the software framework is. Many developers will, obviously, jump ship and opt for the most powerful system. But depending upon the success of the Wii (which, unless the big N makes any huge mistakes, is looking pretty positive), this next generation may turn out to not be about horsepower at all, but about innovative game design. As much as I love the concept of the Wii, it doesn't require having a new gadget to be innovative, Katamari taught us that pretty directly. Sony doesn't make any money on their consoles, they'd probably be more than happy if they could continue selling current-gen games at the same rate as they have been, since licensing is where the money comes from. The dirth of so many great last minute PS2 games may insure the success of the PS2 for a while yet to come. It may be that Sony is planning on a slow adoption rate, and a slow drop in price until the system can really take off in 2 or 3 years.
I'm sorry, I'm still diggin Dragon Quest 8 so much, I'm not sure I really see the need for a generational change in horsepower. Nintendo "gets it", the Wii is only about twice as powerful as the XBox, yet is looking to sell like hotcakes.
Thing is, I'm 25, I have a decent professional job (as a TV commercial producer), and I love the games the Playstation line has given us, yet even I can't justify $600 for a next gen console. If people in my position aren't going to buy it, who will? I think the writing is already on the wall for the PS3, at least for the moment.
Re:PS2 will likely be Sony's "Next-Gen" console (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're forgetting that there are a lot of people in situations similar to yours who have no problem paying $600 for the newest shiny toy, even if said toy has no games available for it. These are the ones who have bought the 360, and they will be buying the PS3 as well.
Price Premium for Being a Sony (Score:4, Interesting)
What Sony management does not seem to realize is that the American middle class will pay a premium only if the product offers premium quality. Nowadays, I do not see much difference, in quality, between a Sony electronic gadget and, say, a Panasonic electronic gadget. I refuse to pay the Sony premium. Increasingly, other potential and current Sony customers refuse to pay a premium without a corresponding premium in quality. For the year ending on 2006 March 31, the electronics divison of Sony lost $0.6 billion ($1.1 billion - $1.7 billion). [iht.com]
If Sony maintains the $600 price tag, Sony will lose the gaming console market to Microsoft. Armed with a well-funded research division, Microsoft poses a formidable threat to Sony.
P.S.
Curiously, with the fading away of Bell Laboratory as the premier industrial laboratory, Microsoft's research division now assumes the mantle of America's #1 industrial laboratory. It is certainly the coziest laboratory, funded by an almost limitless supply of money from Microsoft.
eBay 'em (Score:5, Interesting)
Just set a price. A DECENT price. $400.
Then say "the first two shipments will be sold all on eBay by us. Bidding starts now."
The fanboys and early adopters who are willing to shell out will drive all the systems up to $900 or more. Sony will sell 'em all, they'll make a profit (surely PS3s don't cost THAT much to make), and those of us who will wait for a more reasonable price will get it later.
Instead, they're charging EVERYONE $600. They will sell fewer to "normal" people, and they won't get any of those insane profit margins that eBaying the first two shippment would get them. Sony is worse off, the average joe is worse off.
It's simple economics. If you have a hot product, why fuss with stores and go straight to a market decided price (with a minimum, of course) by eBaying them for a while. I'm sure eBay would cut you a huge deal on the auction.
Heck, you're Sony. You can auction them yourself off your site.
But instead of charging $400 and getting tons of proffit from the people willing to pay $1500, you're charging $600 and getting a large loss.
Genius.
Sony are on crack (Score:5, Insightful)
Does any game developer need a BR disc to provide a gameplaying experience that right now they can't fit on a DVD-9? Exactly what groundbreaking new gameplay paradigms are they introducing with the PS3?
Just a glance at the PS3 release schedule on IGN (or other sites) doesn't fill me with the desire to open my wallet to experience TeH aweSome. Turok? NHL 2K7? Sonic? WWE Smackdown? NBA 2K7? Rainbow Six? Madden NFL 07? It looks like the same old piss in a new hi-res bottle. And as much as I want to play MGS4, I'm not going to pay the better part of £500 to do so, no matter what resolution I can now watch Stealth in as a side benefit.
Calm down.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think Sony will pull it off (Score:4, Interesting)
I've said this before, but I'll say it again. If Sony really wants to get early adopters on board they should try to get the IMAX catalog converted to 60fps 1080P as quickly as possible, that and start shooting new movies in 60fps in an IMAX-lite version -- it would be fairly easy to adapt 24fps cinema equipment to 60fps. Pans would loose their jitter, double vision look. Action sequences would seem more realistic.
Now it maybe that some future hyper-internet will support HDTV on demand, but for the next 5 years Blu-Ray will offer the best cheapest delivery system despite what Bill Gates has to say on the subject -- that and Hollywood's reluctance to distribute on anything other than a physical medium.
One last note about visual quality, I recently watched "Passage to India" (shot in 70mm) in HDTV. The quality was glorious. This because the graininess of standard 35mm confuses HD compression and robs the final mpeg of the resolution it is really capable of. Films shot either direct to HD, with HD-video cameras, or converted from 70mm prints really show the real potential image clarity of HD. Hollywood will soon have to start factoring image quality of HD viewing into account when shooting new content.
Cheap bastards. (Score:4, Insightful)
Name some other source of comparable entertainment (non-console) that costs less than that. Drugs? Hookers? Gambling? Booze? No, hell no, no, and no. As far as I'm concerned, $600 is nothing for the amount of entertainment I'm buying - I think the other companies are stupid for not charging more.
Plus, truth be told, the people who are complaining the loudest aren't the people the console companies really care about - if you can't dig up $600 for a console, then you're certainly not going to be opening your wallet to buy new controllers, new games, etc.
You can complain all you like about being poor or whatever sob story it is this week - face it: you own a computer, and you obviously know enough about it to post comments on Slashdot. You're not doing too bad - save the complaining for the kids at the orphanage (and even then, pretty soon they'll have more PS2s than they could ever possibly use).
Re:Cheap bastards. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, though I don't have much extra income right now, I could "dig up $600 for a console" if it was that important to me. But you're kind of presenting it as this all-or-nothing thing -- "this is how much entertainment you get, it is worth $600." Well, maybe. I'm actually inclined to say no, since you didn't factor the overpriced games into your hourly estimate, but it doesn't matter. In deciding to spend $600, I don't pretend that this is some segmented portion of my life and ask whether the entertainment justifies the expenditure -- I compare the entertainment I would get from the console to every other way I could possibly spend $600. Such as on an X-Box 360 and some games, or a Wii and even more games, or hell, a used PS2 and a box full of old games. Each of those choices would give me a better hourly entertainment rate than your "buy a PS3 because you can technically afford it" scheme.
Maybe a console would be worth $600 if that was the only option, but considering the many alternative ways to spend my $600 + $70 every month or two, many of which have as much or more longevity than most consoles, I'm going to pass.
(I am thinking about getting a Wii, though. I haven't bought a console since the SNES generation, but $200 for a system focused on actual entertainment, with plenty of downloadable nostalgia factor, is about my speed.)
Sony is incompetent at technology (Score:4, Informative)
The original PS3 design called for 3 Cell processors and no GPU. Each Cell CPU was to have 1 logic unit and 8 SPE's, and graphics would be done in software mode. Sony ended up with egg on their face and had to run to nVidia to bail them out.
Originally nVidia was called in for "consultation" purposes, and both parties denied a GPU was in the works. But inevitably, Sony's lakluster design forced them to purchase nVidia's PC GPU to overcome the Cells graphical inability. Turning to nVidia costed Sony much more than they planned to spend, and buying the PC GPU's costed them even more.
To add insult to injury, low yields forced Sony to cut the SPE's down to 7 operational SPE's per Cell, and costs forced them to cut 2 Cell processors away completely. Now we have an over-engineered, overpriced, and underwheliming architecture. Don't let Soy's infalted numbers fool you, the X360 was brilliantly designed, PS3 was botched, so for all the hype and price, you pay 2x the money for the same quality system, and Sony loses assloads of money. It's a lose-lose situation for everyone (except nVidia, who will walk away from this with a really fat bank account.)
Assume the position! (Score:5, Funny)
I think they could have phrased that more tastefully.
Re:High Definition (Score:5, Insightful)
When first adopters are accustomed to spending $300 for a console launch (later adopters get it at the $150-$200 price point), $600 is quite a lot. Double, in fact. As for the price of a TV,
Then again, most early adopters will already have an HDTV, so they're not factoring that price into the equation. A $200 difference is a lot when you're comparing $400 to $600.
Not necessarily true. Aside from the fact that there are games on 360 that you simply can't play on Xbox or PS2 (like Oblivion or PGR3), just because you don't have HD doesn't mean you won't benefit from the newer system's extra horsepower. More actors on screen, more particle effects, better physics and AI, better frame rates (especially imporant in racing games -- PGR3 on 360 at 60fps is much smoother than Forza on Xbox at 30fps), etc. Sure, you don't get the benefit of higher resolution textures, and you may have to sacrifice some vertical resolution for letterboxing, but outside of first-person shooters where pixel-level accuracy counts you're not going to miss it all that much.
Re:HD Adoption (Score:3, Interesting)
What Sony realized was that 1/3 of its target market already had HD. Moreover, well ove
Re:$600 (Score:5, Insightful)
Both PS3 and XBOX 360 are going after a shrinking market. There just aren't that many people out there who give a rats ass about either of them; the gaming market has gotten more and more narrow.
Normal people don't spend $400-700 on a video game console with a game or two. That's enough to buy a fully-loaded PC. And let's not forget the $60 games they expect you to continue to buy to go along with it, many of which suck and you feel like a big chump for spending your hard earned dollars on it.
Budgets on these games keep going up, they get more convoluted (not specificly complex), the control schemes are so whacked that it takes 10 hours to figure out just how to play some of them, and so many are simply rehashes of each other with pretty new skins. The audience for these titles is dwindling, not growing.
And among those that do want it, the easy-to-impress-with-pretty-things 12-17 year old market, they won't even be able to afford it. "Gee, Mom and Dad, can I have a $600 game system for Christmas? Oh, and I'll need a few $60 games too!" I don't know many kids in that age bracket that aren't from wealthy families who can save up that much cash from their after-school jobs.
People want fun, easy to play, but hard to master, games. Sony and MS are going after their shrinking audience, and the rest of the world is waiting for something like the Wii, which will be affordable, accessable, innovative, and it looks like will have some hella fun games.
Let Sony and MS fight over the dwindling "hardcore" market, and watch as Wii sells numbers that neither company can possibly imagine. Hell, even my parents want one - and they haven't touched a console since the NES let them play DuckHunt. I'm no Nintendo apologist, but I've got to tell you this time it really looks like their innovation is going to pay off.
AE
Re:I made my decision already (Score:3, Insightful)