Redemption Still Possible For Sony?

Gamasutra reports on the slim chance that Sony may still be able to redeem itself from its poor showing at E3. In a new 'Analyze This' column, they ask a group of analysts how things are for Sony today. From the article: "In spite of the higher than expected price points, we still expect the PS3 to be in high demand from early adopters at launch. But Sony must put more effort into differentiating its games from those of rival platforms, both in terms of original compelling titles as well as overall quality. Otherwise, later adopters will not be persuaded that the PS3 has anything more to offer. Sony must clearly also address its relative weakness in online, where Microsoft has a substantial lead."

Chicken and egg

If lots of third party developers make exclusive games for PS3 that people want to play, people will buy a PS3. If a lot of people buy the PS3, Third parties will make lots of games that people want to play.

Which has to come first though? I say it's the people buying the system. Would PS2 have so many games today if there wasn't that initial craze for it? Will PS3 be anywhere near as popular initially as the PS2? From what I'm hearing there aren't a huge number of people who are interested in it at that price, but I could be wrong.

No.

No. But for some reason people will still spend $600 on a console that has already been beaten when it hasn't even gone into full production yet.

rapid price drop- blu ray/ game

It is very likely that the very expensive blu-ray drive will drop in price rapidly as production ramps up. This should allow Sony to drop the price of the console.

It depends how may developers use the cell processor to its fullest extent and how
creative/fun the games are.

Innovative games???

"But Sony must put more effort into differentiating its games from those of rival platforms, both in terms of original compelling titles as well as overall quality."

So... EA won't be making any PS3 games?

Not really fair - everyone does it - a hit game has to have a sequel. If that sells well, yada yada. We're on Quake 4, Doom 3, but I never hear anyone complaining about id.

I think EA is going to try to change a bit, but I bet there's a whole shelf of Madden/NFS/NBA games on their way out for the PS3.

Not bashing the PS3

I'm not going to bash the PS3 directly. I have not seen it in action, held the new controller, or had any other exposure that mainly occurred through E3.

However, no one can deny that there has been a lot of backlash. First and foremost, the pricepoint. Second, the heated argument that Sony may or may not have received inspiration for their new controller from Nintendo's remote.

The second argument is almost irrelevant. As a Nintendo fan myself, I will gladly say it. Whether the controller was "stolen" or not is a non-issue. Sony either had plans to use this controller beforehand, or they did not. If they did not, it will show in the game play -- extended game play that will most likely occurr after the purchase of a PS3.

Regarding the price, that alone has alienated a number of casual fans, such as myself. I own a PS2, but I never bought one outright. I bought mine used, around 2001, when the price tag was far lower. Price is a major factor for many consumers. Many times, it does not come down to "do I want the system with the hard drive, or the one without...", but rather "do I want the system, or do I want to make my car payment".

Additionally, the PS2 was a good investment in the long run as it had an established game library. When the XBox debuted, most of the games I had an interest in were already released, or being simultaneously released, for the PS2. I did not have to spend the additional $300+ on an Xbox, new controllers, memory cards, etc. Everything I wanted was already available on the PS2, therefore negating my desire (and in fact, need) for an Xbox.

Today, the roles are reversed. The Xbox 360 is available, stock is being supplied to retailers, and the game library is slowly but surely increasing.

I believe, in order to gain sure-footing in the market, the PS3 will need not only quality games, but exclusive ones. If the game is available on a system for $200 less, how is that going to encourage someone to spend that extra $200 to begin with? The XBox 360 may very well showcase the same titles as the PS3, but the 360 has already appeared in today's market, giving it some leverage, whereas many of Nintendo's titles will be exclusive their own console, presumably.

I do not believe that the PS3 will be a "failure". It will sell units. I already know of someone who said, with a shrug, "It's almost like a computer" and seemingly resigned himself to purchasing it. I do not believe that it will be a rampant success by any means.

Depends

Are we talking about Sony redeeming themselves to normal consumers?

Or redeeming themselves to Slashdot?

Because they've got a good shot at the first one.

Getting exclusives is not going to be as easy ...

... as it was with the PS2. Simple fundamentals ate getting in the way of any developer not in Sony's (or MS's) back pocket.

As a 3rd party developer, I can say that our high-end titles are being developed for all three platforms: PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. We're doing that out of necessity; "Next Gen" games are costing 8 figures+ ($10+ million) these days, much due to content.

Now, how many Xbox 360's are there out there? How many will there be when we ship? What about the PS3 installed base? A "Hit" game can sell to well under 5% (say 2-3%) of a given console's owners. 20 Million Xbox's? Sell 500k units (2.5% penetration) and that's a hit. Unless you're a Halo or Grand Theft auto, that's realisitc.

Now, the cost of developing for both next-gen consoles (360, PS3) is not that much more than developing for just one console (maybe low as 1.1~1.2x) , but you stand to sell a lot more in total. Using an engine such as Unreal 3? Not much more effort and you have a PC version too.

Now, about that $10 to $20 million we just spent? We better sell a lot of copies, or it was a mistake to make the game in the first place. Right now, it'll be a good while before there is an installed base of 10 million on either console, but yet our games are much more expensive to make than the previous generation. To recoup advances and hopefully turn a profit means getting it out to the largest audience possible.

Oh, and there's the little matter of Xbox 360 being out first, and having signifiantly better developer tools than Sony that has developers developing on Xbox 360 as first/primary, and then porting their games to PS3. Last generation it was different, but this time Xbox was available first, and Sony's efforts to catchup to Xbox's tool and documentation quality is more than lacking.

Re:Getting exclusives is not going to be as easy .

I think the point is not that the Wii is not a viable platform, but it's not going to be the same as developing for the other 3 platforms. The other 3 will most likely share quite a bit more code, as well as art assets. The Wii will not, simply because it won't be as powerful as the others. Porting to the Wii will be more like porting to last gen systems, in that you're probably removing a lot of features or in some case creating an almost entirely different game.

Again, that's not necessarily a problem for the Wii, because it's intended to be a completely different kind of game machine. Games will be simpler in some cases, in other cases they'll be using the Wii custom controls (which no other system will be able to use, including PS3), and most likely the games that use a huge budget and really stretch the limit of the system will be exclusives.

Point being, if you're writing to multiple platforms at once, the Ps3, 360, and PC can be dealt with at once with the same kind of cost the parent poster hinted at. If you add Wii to the mix, you're porting, and the only reason it's worth doing (because of the extra effort to downgrade) is to most likely take advantage of the Wii's unique features. If wii gets a lot of marketshare, that's exactly what will happen, but it's an additional cost and throws the 1.2x cost factor off kilter.

All they need to do

Is advertize the hell out of Metal Gear Solid 4. I know many who would pay $500 or $600 for that game, and I'm one of them.

Redemption won't be an issue for Sony

but I'm beginning to have my doubts about Zonk.

Sod the game console

There's no way I'm buying one, not because it is good / bad / indifferent, not because it is cheap / expensive / reasonable but because the buggers tried to shaft us with that damn rootkit.
As it is, I'm not convinced I need to spend that much money on a console irrespective of who produced it so chalk me up as one of the angry apathetic.

Online Multiplayer

Sony must clearly also address its relative weakness in online, where Microsoft has a substantial lead.

The future of gaming is online multiplayer (not better graphics) because online multiplayer affects the core of gaming, which is gameplay. This is a big reason PC gaming isn't dead and the reason why any of the major consoles who don't make this leap will be left behind. Of course, this means way more than having an internet ready gaming console. The GameCube and PS2 are internet ready (though adapters are required). Microsoft has XBox live, which is more than internet connectivity, it is a online multiplayer/gaming community platform. What XBox live provides is an easy, well managed solution for developers who are looking for a console to make their online multiplayer games for. Even if Sony were to bring SOE to the PS3, it still falls short of providing any kind of method for third party developers to build online multiplayer games for the PS3. IMHO, for Sony to redeem the PS3, they need to not only bring SOE to the console (and fix the problems with SOE), but also allow third party developers access to its capabilities.

US-centric view on the PS3

From the US, this wave of critics and pessimism around the PS3 may look like realistic (which I doubt anyway).Sony blahblah is dead, Sony blahblah will block second-hand PS3 games, Sony blahblah puts poison in pirated games! I am not a Sony zealot, but honestly, stop this crappy FUD around the PS3, please!

From the rest of the world, PS3 gathers LOTS LOTS more expectation than Xbox360 will ever have. Have you seen the number of Xbox360 sold in Japan or even in Europe?? Xbox360 in Japan : 50000 units sold since its launch. 1242 sold this week. On the other, 20000 PS2 units (I really mean PStwo) were sold this single week! In the same week, 300000 Nintendo DS and 30000 PSP!

Yes, Sony can redeem themselves after E3

Once they announce their price point for a non-crippled P3 is $499 USD/EU, that DRM has been removed, and they realize that they won't have 80 percent of market share like they did with the PS2.

The sooner they do this, the better off they'll be.

ObClueless Quote

David Cole, DFC Intelligence: E3 really isn't that important. The buying public pays little to no attention to the news coming out of E3. It is at best a 'dress rehearsal for the big show that fall.' Sony stumbled out of the gate for both the PS One and PS2 launches. Microsoft had poor initial showings for the Xbox. The only time it matters is when a poor showing at E3 is indicative of what is going to be a poor product. If a company gets its act together between E3 and product launch, all is forgiven.

1. Sony did not "stumble out of the gate" for the Playstation launch at E3. What happened with the Playstation one at E3 is the stuff of legend. [gamespy.com]

2. Microsoft had poor initial showings for the Xbox and the Xbox ended up losing Microsoft $7 billion dollars and remains a distant second to the PS2.

3. As far as I've been able to tell, E3 is the thing among the gamer market to decide what's hip as what's not. Even if he was right about the Xbox and Playstation, the facts wouldn't support this statement.

4. Even if gamers don't pay attention to E3, the muckity-mucks at places like EA, Activision and Ubisoft do, and Sony's stumble is going to have repercussions regarding the decisions they make regarding what titles they'll produce, what consoles they'll produce them for, and how much effort they'll put into a port. The PS3 went in one week from being the likely market leader to a likely failure, and past crimes of Sony against development houses (i.e., making the Playstation 2 & 3 difficult to develop for, thus cutting into developer's margins) are going to have a substantial effect on what games are available for it. And the gamers will pay attention to what's available for their systems.

I agree with PJ of Groklaw's comment... I gotta get into this "Analyst" business. You can know absolutely nothing, spew off about things, and people will pay you to do it. How lovely!

Get your head out of your ass

Most gamers who have made Sony rich don't give a fuck about this bullshit. Why the fuck does the slashdot crowd think the eyes of the world turn to them for advice and guidance? Most gamers don't care about E3 and whether or not sony kissed media ass. Most gamers don't give a fuck about rootkits or DRM.

Will the high price of PS3 bring the platform down? Perhaps. but the rest of this is just pure bullshit according to 99% of sonys past or future customers.

All of this bickering and fucking bullshit that goes on here makes zero difference to the majority of the buying public. Stop acting like you have some great insight into the future of the company.

Why the fuck am I bothering? You guys are the same fucks who've been chanting that Linux is a MS killer for the last 10 years and still look at where we're at.

Take heed sony! the fucks of slashdot have predicted that you're going to lose big very soon, that translates into you may lose 3% of the market share to XBox in 2018.

Why Sony is in trouble.

%100 Price

The REAL problem with that 600$ price tag is that they have a LONG LONG LONG way to go down to hit 200$.

200$ is the pricepoint that every console has to eventually hit to REALLY push in units. The PS2 more than TRIPPLED market penetration when it hit that point. Its the reason they have over 100million units sold.

How long do you think its gonna take Sony to hit 200$ for a PS3....

Personally I think its gonna be a "Very long time"

And in the meantime all that has to happen is the Wii or XBox360 get to a 200$ pricepoint and launch games that people want.

That is Sony's problem. The Massmarket will definately wait (*the are used to it)...
but will the develoupers wait till Sony hits a 200$ price point for greater game sells...
will the 360/Wii have a "Killer App" AND a 200$ pricepoint in the meantime?
will 360/Wii pull greater penetration therefore atracting more devs and more games?

XBox 360 vs PS3

The Bluray concept is more like 3DO vs CD-ROM, it's nothing like Betamax vs VHS which I keep hearing. So long as players are made which support both Bluray and HDDVD (check your Asian Tigers they're already on the way) I could care less which way the wind blows on that one - maybe MS will be upset that in 4 years the PS3 can deliver a game on a single disc still while they have to package 5 of their DVD game discs (or maybe Sony will lose sales for including the expensive hardware).

I just want the best gaming experience and my goodness there are a lot of bigots spewing trash on here lately. Sony never had trouble with the number of developers willing to produce for their platform, no matter what bigoted views you might have. I'm thoroughly amused at all the fanboys running around trying to claim that MS has won the title, it's laughable at best.

Microsoft's Media Center Extension vis a vis the 360 is a miserable failure from my experience for anyone who has anything resembling a decent sized collection. The XBox Live Arcade now though, that's a huge success.

My two cents are this: when the XBox came out the ONLY reason most of us started playing it instead of our old PS2 was that in the situation where a game came out for both consoles the Xbox's hardware was better - the games had more powerful physics / reality engines and simply looked better. It was good enough to put up with the big hand crippling controller that the thing came out with even prior to the S controllers.

Now we have an upcoming release of the PS3 which if adjusted for inflation in 2006 $USD costs $50 less than the Atari 2600 did in 1978. Oh my goodness, it's so expensive it almost costs as much as the old Atari did when it was released! Pah, fanboys unite, shape of witless factless flaming Yeti!

The simple truth is that the PS3 is a 2 teraflop capable machine (the XBox 360 barely reaches 1TF), and many of the best games to come out for this generation of console will come from gaming companies that don't even exist today but will be released for both platforms. Ceterus Paribus that single statistic alone will allow the PS3 to overpower the Xbox 360 every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Clearly there's more to the competition than just computing capacity, such as gaming selection, cost to be online (what there's a COST? rofl, might as well be called AOL 360), and the quality of rendered images / framerate; but this is a resounding statistic that disappeared from Microsoft's published web stats the day Sony published the big 2TF (at least the last time I checked).

I'm not a bigot guys, I'm just tired of the preponderance of Xbox Bigots. If the XBox 360 somehow defies reality and provides better reality engines, graphics, playability, and game selection then I'll be playing the 360 for years to come. I just feel that many of you are missing the boat on this one and are lost in the hype. Sad, really, but hey if you're an XBox 360 Bigot go ahead and party, party like it's 1999, rock on with your bad self.

I thought Redemption was for something else...

Like rootkits. The issues keeping *me* away from Sony products are over things like their maliciousness with DRM. I guess I've stopped considering the consumer value proposition of the products themselves.

Re:For me.

Dude - in what way was the PS2 a disappointment? And how can the PS3 be a disappointment when you haven't even touched one? It looks a bit expensive, and still in development, but it can't be disappointing until you've played some games on it, right?

Re:Supply vs. Demand

Or if that strategy will goover with the general population. Hearing that it costs $600, even if they plan to cut it later, will permanently turn some people off of the console. These things tend to stick in people's minds. Its also going to piss off their publishers- high priced console means less money for games, which means less money for them. Charging what the maximum the market will bear is not always the smartest option.

Re:WTF?

Sony's problem is they've just made a playstation Mark 3. Except the Mark 2 was a huge step up from the original, where as the third step is all but unnoticable as it is.

Actually, I think the Mark 3 is a huge step up. It's just that people aren't so impressed with that - what they want is a step away.

Re:They're schizophrenic and have been for years.

Shoot you'll be able to surf the web with the Wii for much cheaper. The way they've been talking Opera is going to come standard with the Wii and it will be connected to the internet 24/7 (if you let it).

Re:For me.

PS2 was a disappointment.
PS3 was a disappointment.
SOE is a disappointment.

Three strikes, you're out. Not suspended.

Yeah it's disappointing to see how poorly Sony understands the origins of gaming. They really need to hire some old-school table-top/PnP gamers as consultants. The nerdier the better.

Actually, the entire board of directors should attend gen-con and dragoncon annually...that'll learn 'em.

Re:For me.

PS2 was a disappointment for a number of reasons. The two main things for me were, I've had horrible experiences with the DVD player in both my and my friend's PS2, and that the remakes of PS1 games seemed to be much, much worse. My opinion, though. PS3 is overpriced. That's all I need. I'm not going to pay about as much as I'd pay for a PC just to game, and maybe watch some videos in a format I won't buy. SOE is a disappointment. I don't think this needs further detail.

Re:For me.

Well more than 100 million users weren't disapointed in the PS2, and the gross tonnage of games bears that out (compared to - say - the Jaguar which had enough retruns to effectively put Atari-Trammel out of business).

Sometime in the next 6 years I'll be looking to upgrade my entertainment system to something 1080p capable - and then I would be disapointed if my console / movie player didn't make the grade. I used (and still use) my PS2 as my prime DVD player (I have having a stack of boxes piled around the TV among other arguments) and will be curious how Blue's debut compares to the 1st gen HDDVD players. The picture from HDDVD is so robust (given that it has the highest throughput of any HD format available) you can see film grain. The boot and load times are staggering however.

Between that and capacity, I'm looking to get a cheap HD player as much as a game box, and considering my (sluggish) mac-mini was the same price, I think the capablilities are a bargin.

And if Rockstar gives me full-on chainsaw enabled goodness in 1080i to 1080p - oh - I'll be quite happy. Quite happy indeed.