Gamestop Managers Worried Over PS3 Launch 93
The Opposable Thumbs column has commentary today from some managers who attended the annual EB/Gamestop preview event. The reaction from the attendees to the PS3/Blue-ray presence is not inspiring. From the article: "The difference between HD DVD and Blu-Ray was striking as well. 'Blu-ray had a tiny presence in the very back of the show floor, while Microsoft had large displays and surround sound systems in their hospitality suite so you can take a look at what their HD DVD drives would look like. It was impressive, and gave the feeling that HD DVD was real and Blu-ray wasn't ready for the show.' I asked him his feelings going into the PS3 launch with no word on allocations or preorders, and no news on what will happen towards the holidays. 'It's going to be ugly, there is no way this launch is going to go well.'"
Very Relevant (Score:2, Funny)
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Look In The Mirror (Score:2)
But that's retailers fault more than Sony's. Even if Sony supplies enough quantity, and it does what they say it will, Gamestop and EB have been selling the short game, what they have on their shelves, all year long, and as a result, consumers have been hearing mostly baseless FUD about a potential $600 purchase.
In addition to that, Microsoft fucked up whatever trust the retailers ever had in suppliers int he industry.
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It clearly says there will be a $600 configuration and a $500 configuration.
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1. He said "potential;" He did not indicate alternatives to this potential
2. PS3 is shipping 80/20 [slashdot.org] $600 units to $500 units
3. Since Sony is planning on shipping 400K units to North America, only 80,000 $500 units will be available.
4. Therefore, the vast majority of Gamestop customers will "potentially" face a $600 purchase.
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Re:Look In The Mirror (Score:4, Funny)
Wow. You mean to say that Gamestop has been trying to sell real products that exist instead of trying to sell products that don't? They must really be crazy!
Re:Look In The Mirror (Score:4, Funny)
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Yeah that makes sense. Because retailers have a habit of downplaying hype for products they hope to sell for potentially huge profits. For no reason. Gamestop are just more sony-haters. They're
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Yeah dude, there's like dozens of news stories every week about how all retailers love HDDVD and hate Blueray. I wonder how anyone will be able to buy Blueray, I mean 'cuz all the retailers hate it so much there's no way in hell they'll stock it.
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Information on the PS3 has been fairly scarce. There's been almost no playable demos at tradeshows, and people still doubt they've actually seen a "real" PS3 in action.
About the only thing we DO know is that there is a $500 and a $600 model, and that approximately 100,000 $500 models and 400,000 models will show up in the US for launch day.
With Sony using every available blue laser diode they can get for the PS3, there aren't even a lot of Blu-R
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Dude, it is going to be a $600 purchase - that isn't baseless FUD, that's straight from the horse's mouth. In fact, once you tack on games and accessories, sales tax, etc, I would not be very surprised if some people break the $1,000 mark just at launch.
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Retailers dug their own graves on this one.
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I think what the GP meant is that it's impossible to be an educated consumer regarding the PS3. There is so much spin that it's really hard to make any sort of informed choice. Let's look at the major players.
Sony's being arrogant, elitist cheerleaders. Of course, they're always this way, it's just that they usually don't say much after their systems launch. We were promised the stars before (PS2 will do Toy Story!!), so it's hard to know
This is like Microsoft last year (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember last year? Remember Microsoft botching the XBox 360 launch? Booking too much retail shelf space and not delivering product? Furious retailers? A product with heat dissipation problems? A weak selection of games at launch?
That's where Sony is this year.
2007 for the PS3 will probably look like 2006 for the Xbox 360. The PS3 will slowly launch over the next year, and finally start to sell in volume for the Xmas 2007 season. Probably at a lower price. This will give developers another year to get the Cell processor figured out, so the games will be better.
This is the price of increasing console complexity - the launch phase has more problems.
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One concern on a lot of peoples minds is "But the XBox360 had no competition, while the PS3 will have to compete with the XBox360 which is much more established, and the Wii."
I'm not sure if this is an issue, because you could also say "The XBox360 had the PS2 and GameCube to compete with". Yes, the XBox360 was the first "NextGen" console, but the PS2 is still going strong (THIS year) with lots of great ga
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Still no Pre-Ordering (Score:1)
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Re:Still no Pre-Ordering (Score:4, Interesting)
GameStop is taking the sensible approach of waiting to do pre-orders until Sony (and Nintendo) give them guaranteed allocations. Nintendo is likely to be able to restock all retailers pretty quickly (relatively speaking). However, I expect if you don't get a PS3 on launch day, you will not see another one until January. Unless of course for some reason they can't move 100,000 systems at the midnight launch in Japan. If THAT happens, the US will get the next batch rather than Japan, I expect. Either way, the 360 launch was smooth sailing in comparison to what Sony is facing. I just hope we aren't reading about murders or deadly stampedes on the morning of 11/17.
A lot of people who would otherwise buy a PS3 are turned off by the sticker shock, especially since the general expectation for so long had been that it would be close to the 360 in pricing. No doubt the first 2-3 million units will fly off shelves without problem. It's May/June of 2007 that we start seeing real indicators of public reaction to the system. If sales aren't surpassing the 360 by that point (presuming production volume is high enough), then it's time to start really questioning the ability of Sony to retain that #1 spot.
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Inside Out (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well part of the problem they have (Score:4, Insightful)
That I think is the real concern here. It's not that the launch has to meet up to some certain standard of Sony quality, it's that it has to be good enough to convince people to hold on to their dollars and wait for more PS3s to come out rather than get a 360. I'll bet you MS drops a $100 price reduction and Halo 3 on the launch as well.
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This is the very place I am sitting right now. I am getting a Wii on release day. At its price and potential, it is an easy buy for me. But for my hardcore system, I'm going to have to wait.
This is no small statement. After purchasing a playstation halfway through its lifecycle I was hooked
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I'm not defending Microsoft here, because this is exactly what they are doing. However, you are aware that Sony was doing the same thing with the Playstation, right?
It's really a moot point, though, since any new console maker will be trying to "buy into" the gaming market. (You have to spend money to make money.) The recent trend of the loss leader/razors and blades business models in gaming is even more evidence of this.
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Actually, Sony was trying to get back at Nintendo for a business deal gone bad. Sony was actually in partnership with Nintendo to make a disk based gaming system. Nintendo decided to drop it and left Sony holding the bag. Sony was like "ok fine. Watch this shit" and dropped the technology as the Playstation. Kicking Nintendo out of the top dog slot and making them regret the decision ever since.
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The whole thing with Sony and later Phillips came long before the term "Intellectual Property" was coined. Nintendo's lawyers didn't seem to have the understanding that Mario, Link, Samus and crew were important and valuable assests that shouldn't be thrown around. The contracts they drew up (both times no less) would have granted Sony complete control over everything released on the new systems
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But it still makes me wonder how Nintendo reacted internally when they saw their group effort used against them. They were the king at that point and lost their position to a spurned conspirator.
Nonetheless, My original point was how I, as a loyal and fanatical Sony fanboi, have changed into a more objective consumer based on multiple events that individually don't create a significant opportunity for competition, but in the aggregate are worth more than the sum of their parts.
If Sony really does ha
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Not a chance. Maybe if the ps3 were even $100 less (400-500), Microsoft might think about a $50 price drop. But at the currently stated prices, they have a $100 to $300 lead already.
At the very best I can see a $450 bundle of premium system, extra controller, and a 2-fer pack in like the one in '04 (NCAA 05 / Top Spin). And thats if we sacrifice forty two virgins to the gaming gods...
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Do they need to drop the price? No but it'd really fuck Sony and I'm betting they are thinking along those lines. Wait until Sony commits to a release date, make sure your sources have confirmed that everything is go, the units are going to distributors wareh
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Perhaps related to the first point, we should also remember that there is often one product or implementation of something that is seized upon and becomes synonymous with it, no matter if it's the "best" or anything like that. Cases in point: Microsoft Windows, Kleenex, and the Ipod. These things are near-synonymous with the ideas they repre
Sony will not mess up that bad... (Score:3, Interesting)
They might lose a lot of ground to the 360, but they are not going to be wiped out of the market. The console race will just be more of a split, instead of Sony dominating everything like the last generation.
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This sounds so familiar
"Nintendo has a huge mindshare... there is a whole generation of children who use the word 'Nintendo' interchangable with 'Game Console'. There is a huge Nintendo fanboy presence on the internet. Nintendo is in decent shape."
The fact is th
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Actually, this isn't true. While I do agree with your first statement that there's a whole generation (my generation or parents of my generation, 1979 baby!) who grew up with Nintendo and uses or used "Nintendo" interchangably with "video games".
Anyway, back to point. Nintendo's golden age, the '80's, was the Microsoft of the game industry. They strong armed retailers and forced the
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But then again, I also thought the 360 was going to utterly fail. Realistically, there are ome pretty cool games for it. I really
Three things to think about with the PS3 rollout (Score:1)
2. If you don't have a really big HDTV that currently uses 1080p, you probably won't care one whit about Blu-Ray for at least three years - by which
Re:Three things to think about with the PS3 rollou (Score:1)
Re:Three things to think about - sharks? (Score:1)
Are those the ones with the frickin Blu-Ray lasers on their heads?
Even 720p far superiour (Score:2)
However people have been buying sets for some time capible of at least 720p, with 1080i input allowed and downsampled.
Even at 720p HD content looks WAY better than DVD's. So there are a lot of people who are going to benefit from the new content, even if the displays they have are not the latest thing. For those that do have 1080p... well I envy them. But I'll not have to for long as display prices are dropping pretty rapidly.
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They slashed the number of units being delivered because they can't produce enough units. Sony is still in their magical Kutaragi bubble where everybody will get a second job so they can buy a PS3. If it was just a matter of anticipated lack of demand, Sony would be full spe
Re:Three things to think about magic polygons (Score:1)
Agreed, but I just can't see an ad for the PS3: "Now, with extra polygons!"
Yet another FPS or sports
Different trends among consoles: Sony picks badly (Score:4, Interesting)
(I'm ignoring the PS3's attempt at their own network service, as they haven't really talked much about it, or their own motion-sensing controller, as those don't really distinguish themselves apart from the others
Network services for the 360? Big hit for a lot of folks, especially considering broadband penetration in the US is rapidly increasing. New control scheme for the Wii? Very popular, particularly with gamers that are becoming disillusioned with the current type of games (more graphics, less gameplay, and less fun).
The trend that Sony is focusing on, unfortunately for them, is something that the vast majority of users won't care about. They don't have an HDTV, much less one that does 1080p or perhaps does HDMI.
What Sony SHOULD have done is just focus on their massive developer support, and on the games themselves. They've certainly talked about it with the PS3, but that message is diluted too much with the rest of the Blu-ray, 1080p, SIXAXIS talk going on. If all they did was thump their chest and focus on the games, they would have sold a lot more people on the PS3 (myself included).
Artificial shortage = FUD (Score:2)
I agree with your last two statements. But the first one? FUD!
It's the same thing folks threw out with the 360 launch. They couldn't imagine that peopl
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After all, WalMart is saying they can't even do well because gas prices are too high, and they have some of the cheapest supply contracts in the industry
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I mean crap, people have already been talking like you about HDTV for over 10 years and it's still not even slightly popular.
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The PSP is also superior to the DS (I've changed my mind since the first time I saw it because the game I saw had crappy 3D) yet the DS is out-selling the PSP by a huge margin. The Gamecube and Xbox had superior graphics over the PS2, yet the PS2 was (and still is) king of the market. Better technology doesn't equal b
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I don't want hi-def graphics if they look like today's systems. The Xbox 360 graphics look pretty much the same as the graphics on the Xbox (but in hi-def). I do agree that the PS3 seems to be the real winner as far as "next-gen graphics" go, but I'll wait until I see a real unit running be
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Have you ever actually played a Nintendo game? (Score:2)
Okay, three options here: You have never played Nintendo games and simply don't know what youre talking about; you're a Sony/MS fanboy who choses to ignore reality; you're insane.
Take your pick.
Nintendo generally doesn't actually do sequels. They do franchises.
Now, first of all, let's get the sequels out of the way: there are Nintendo published sequels. Pikmin 2, Metroid Prime 2, Super Mario Bros 2 (Lost Levels, not the US/EU doki doki panic
HD allows more useful draw distance (Score:2)
In high definition, the player can see farther away without having enemies turn into a blob of pixels no bigger than a micro-goomba from Super Mario Bros. 3. By similar triangles, a screen that's twice as tall (1080i vs. last generation's 480i) should allow over twice as much useful draw distance.
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However, I'd rather have 640x480p graphics of better quality than hi-def graphics of about the same quality as the previous generation of consoles.
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"This launch is not going to go well" (Score:2, Interesting)
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KFG
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I am shocked--SHOCKED!--that when an employee of a game store is on the clock, that he would recommend that you spend $300+ on a product that he has in stock instead of spending $0 on a product that he does not have!
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I guess it's easy to understand why they thought this at the time, but they've really done an about face now, and it's nice to walk in there and be able to buy a DS game without getting a bunch of dirty looks from the employees.
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I see a CSI episode coming on: (Score:1)
"The room was filled with geeks drinking Rum-and-Jolt, ready to participate in the console unveiling ceremony. At last, the moment arrived: a giant mecha burst through the styrofoam wall, and walked in a straight line until it met the side wall where it could walk no more. The top opened: and inside was a dead nerd., clutching a bloody joystick. Our intrepid investigators arrived mere minutes later."
Playing the PS3 (Score:1)
http://www.psm3mag.com/page/psm3?entry=ps3_power_u p_pics_and [psm3mag.com]
http://www.psm3mag.com/page/psm3?entry=ps3_meets_p sm3_the_aftermath [psm3mag.com]
They talk about impressions, heating, noice output and stuff like that. Given that it's a Playstation magazine site, it is a pre
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There is a lot of cool technology at play in the PS3 and the games I care about (Final Fantasy, M
Violence possible (Score:1)