Sony CEO Confirms Limited $499 PS3 Stock 167
If you were confused about yesterday's stock announcement, you wouldn't be the only one. Thankfully Kaz Harai, SCEI CEO, has clarified the situation: the $499 60GB PlayStation 3 is a limited offering. They'll only be selling it here in the states until their current stock of the system is cleared out, at which point the only SKU remaining in the states will be the $599 80GB + Motorstorm bundle. The catch is that there is probably enough stock in hand for several months of sales at this price; hence the confusion yesterday about a 'fire sale'. Hirai confirmed this to a Norwegian videogame news site, and the video of the interview is available online. For some perspective, Next Generation has a commentary piece on this strange matter. "Now Sony looks as though it's been spinning consumers. The smart thing to have done would have been to come out and say that the 60Gig version is being discounted and discontinued, and that the bells-n-whistles PS3 at $599 is better value than ever. That didn't happen, and what many have seen as a pretty successful E3 for Sony has been marred by confusion over the future of the platform's strategy. So in those meetings next week, Sony will have cause to look back and consider how things might have been done better."
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Backwards Compatibility (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Stop Saying 'SKU' (Score:4, Informative)
When a game is being developed for multiple consoles, each target platform version of the game (the PS3 version, the 360 version, etc) is referred to as a different SKU, even though it may be developed simultaneously and we aren't making the game differently for the different consoles (beyond platform-specific code and perhaps minor asset changes).
Re:Just to be clear... (Score:3, Informative)
I'd kill for a PS3 port of it, but I know I'm one of the few.
Compatibility goes down... (Score:5, Informative)
Backwards compatibility goes down with the newer 80GB US models.
As others have pointed out, the newer systems lack an in-built Emotion Engine chip, so they rely on software emulation rather than hardware emulation.
The emulation is decent, but it's far from perfect. Sony themselves quote a figure of 88 percent compatibility with the software emulation rather than 100 percent with the hardware emulation.
And, even amongst those 88 percent of titles that work there are some glitches: it's not the case that 88 percent of titles work perfectly while 12 percent have some problems or won't run, rather it's the case that 12 percent won't run at all and 88 percent will run to some degree.
You can read that many ways, but to me it seems to suggest that 88 percent is a marketing person's figure more than anything else: if a game won't get past a fixed point, it has audio or visual glitches all over the place, or if it falls over all the time then you're stretching things if you consider that game in your 88 percent.
Of course, Sony isn't exactly advertising the fact that the newer 80GB models aren't as backwardly compatible as their predecessors. Granted, it won't matter to everyone, but it will matter to some, and those people won't thank Sony for their penny-pinching and shortsightedness.
I don't know what the hell is going on with Sony. When it came to the original PlayStation they ran a flawless campaign and sucked millions of new users into the console market. With the PS2 they didn't put a foot wrong and cleaned up again. But with the PS3 it seems like they've decided to see how much they can piss away the goodwill generated by their previous two generations and opted for one boneheaded move after another.
If they're not careful they're going to end up as yet another sorry story on fuckedcompany.com.
Re:Backwards Compatibility (Score:4, Informative)
More info... (Score:5, Informative)
On March 20, 2007 Sony released a compatibility list; 1,782 of the 2,451 PS2 games (72%) released in Europe had noticeable issues, minor issues or no known issues, with the remainder being incompatible with the console.
As I understand it, the European PS3's only had software emulation. So, by Sony's own admission, backwards compatibility is at 72 percent, and may actually be even lower than that.
If I had any Sony stock I would have sold it a long time ago. These guys are finding new lows of stupidity every other day.
Re:More info... (Score:4, Informative)
Honestly, I think that the BC on the non-EE PS3s is perfectly acceptable. Most people who are buying a PS3 at this point already have a PS2. Those who buy the console when it is more mature (e.g. cheaper) will have a good library of PS3 titles to choose from, and BC may be better by then.
However, Sony's marketing is shit. The PS3 is actually a pretty damned good console. It has a lot of nice features (Blu-Ray, Linux, web browser, upgradable HDD, built-in WiFi) that the 360 lacks, but it has two problems: it's too damned expensive, and Sony's hubris has shot themselves in the foot.
It's OK to be enthusiastic about your product. But don't piss on us by doing a non-price-drop-price-drop. You're clearing out old inventory of 60GB PS3s, which is fine, but don't dick us around by pretending it's a price cut and then later "clarifying" that it's a limited time thing. This is a firesale. Don't dress it up another way because you produced too damn many 60GB PS3s and they are going to take months to sell at your current lousy rate.
Your hardware is fine, Sony. But your customers will only take so much shit.