Game Publishers Pressuring Sony For PS3 Price Cut 232
Bloomberg is running a story about several video game publishers and developers who are pushing for a long overdue price cut on Sony's PS3 console. Sales of the PS3 are lagging behind both the Wii and the Xbox 360 despite the PS2's resounding victory in sales of the previous generation of consoles. One of the creators of LittleBigPlanet, a PS3 exclusive, made similar comments in an interview with Gamasutra, acknowledging that they're looking forward to the day Sony drops the PS3's price. An analyst from Janco said such an action is necessary if Sony doesn't want to "lose support from game developers and publishers."
Not according to Kaz Hirai (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way Sony can win is if they pretend they're not competing with Nintendo, [guardian.co.uk] and say that the Xbox 360 will be surpassed in 10 years. This conveniently ignores the high probability that the PS3 will be completely dead in ten years if they don't do something now.
Kaz Hirai is a lunatic and he's going to run the PS3 into the ground.
Re:Not according to Kaz Hirai (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with your post. There's zero chance Microsoft will wait seven more years before releasing the next Xbox. Additionally, any student of MS product history will know that by version 3 of a product they've usually got the formula down and understand the market pretty well. Looking at the 360 and knowing how bad MS wants this market should keep Sony up a little later each night.
Re:Not according to Kaz Hirai (Score:4, Insightful)
The reality is that they aren't competing with Nintendo - it's not even close.
People rationalized the purchase of a PS3 by saying to themselves "well, I get a blu-ray player "free" with it" ... but now that blu-ray players are under $200, that rationalization is gone - you can buy either competitor + a stand-alone BD player for the same or less. and if you're not in the market for a BD player, then it's no contest, price-wise.
PS3 != Xbox 360 != Wii (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not according to Kaz Hirai (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually agree that PS3 would outsell Xbox360 in 10 years.
I doubt that. I don't think the system will stay alive that long, even if Sony doesn't give up on it the moment the PS4 releases they'll have a hard time gettimg more games for a system that is no longer a new system but not a huge market in the old generation either (and no more games support = no more sales). The PS2 received support for so long because it sold so much, it just made sense to put games there even with the new consoles taking off because the PS2 market is huge but the PS3 won't have that advantage, if anyone will then the Wii. Sony could artificially force a 10 year lifespan by making games for it themselves but the dev teams working on that are dev teams who won't be working on PS4 games in that time. Of course Sony can say "there's no point in a PS4, let's keep the PS3 going instead" and they might actually be right but if they're thinking like that their competition can do the same and the PS3 will remain away from the top while the competition keeps accumulating sales. I think by now Sony is like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, asking "when could we have said 'stop' and walked away?" Their situation is FUBAR by now and all they can do is hope they do better next time.
Then again their leadership is the kind that gets described as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the Wii came."
hypocrisy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not according to Kaz Hirai (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not according to Kaz Hirai (Score:5, Insightful)
People rationalized the purchase of a PS3 by saying to themselves "well, I get a blu-ray player "free" with it" ... but now that blu-ray players are under $200, that rationalization is gone - you can buy either competitor + a stand-alone BD player for the same or less. and if you're not in the market for a BD player, then it's no contest, price-wise.
Yes, just like the PS2 and DVD. The problem is that everyone HAD to have DVD, and everyone HAD to have a PS2 - the original Playstation having been the most badass system ever, right? (It was pretty fantastic.) The PS3 had a lot of competition, and it has failed to compete. Xbox 360 is just as fast, if not faster. Wii is cheaper and, you know, innovative. Like we always said we wanted, and we got it, and guess what? We did want it. And while we could all benefit from DVD, not all of us have the 1080i/p display that is necessary to derive any actual benefit from it.
Kicking fanboys when they're down (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the creators of LittleBigPlanet, a PS3 exclusive, made similar comments in an interview with Gamasutra, acknowledging that they're looking forward to the day Sony drops the PS3's price.
I look forward to the time when "exclusives" are no longer even pretended to be a good thing, and those who make those Faustian bargains are recognized as chumps.
Re:Not according to Kaz Hirai (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah sure whatever you say...
Microsoft typically doesn't understand most of the markets they enter AND don't know how to compete? I suppose you think it was just falling ass backwards into luck as the reason that MS-DOS was installed on EVERY SINGLE IBM PC CLONE...
If they can't use their OS monopoly, they usually fail hard? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Monopoly. Last I checked there are at least 5 commercial Linux distributions, AND OS X... Not to mention that Xbox360 and Wii have all but crushed the PS3 out of existence.
They typically didn't understand the videogame market and made a console catered to hardcore gamers only? Yeah, Flight Simulator is HARDCORE!@#! I seem to also remember that Microsoft put up a lot of money to make one of THE MOST SUCCESSFUL and long running MMORPG's to DATE. Asheron's Call 1 anyone?
They went after Sony? Duh? Would you also be amazed to find out that McDonald's is going after Burger King? Or that Dairy Queen was going after Baskin Robins?
Whoever the fuck modded you up obviously mis-clicked the -1 Troll or Flamebait...
Oh, for crying out loud... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sony can't afford a price cut. Frankly, they can't even afford the current price, as evidenced by their having squandered almost all of the profits from both the PS1 and PS2 just keeping this train wreck afloat. That's the problem with predatory tactics like loss-leader hardware: sometimes you get burned by the risk, and Sony has gotten burned big time.
Ultimately, the core problem is that people won't pay $600 for a game console. Truth be told, they don't really even tolerate $400 at launch, if the 360's sales are any indication (for all that we -rightly- speak of the PS3 as a failure, it still consistently outdoes the 360 at corresponding points in its lifetime). This is because people understand that the value of a console derives not from what the devs put into it, but from what the gamers get out of it, and that there is really only a small section of the market that can actually be swayed by "better value through bloat" marketing Kool-Aid. The proper response, therefore, is to make sure that you can afford to release your console at a price people are willing to pay for it en masse -$300 at launch seems to be the limit- and if you can't do this, then you need to scale your technology back until you can. Sony failed to do that with the PS3, and their current situation is nothing but a natural consequence of that.
Truth be told, the 360 really isn't faring too much better. Neither market is large enough to sustain third parties on its own anymore, thus the glut of cross-platform games: the increased sales from being on both platforms can be just enough to eke out a profit despite the additional cost of porting. If anything, the real benefit of Microsoft's year-long headstart may be that it hasn't benefited from the marketing fallout of its failure due to there being no real basis for comparison. The PS3 has faced that in full measure.
But the real problem that faces both consoles, really, is that the self-described "hardcore market" is dying (and no, Netcraft has not confirmed it). This fanbase's obsessive pwn-the-n00bs mentality and fetish for gratuitous complexity have between them driven away most of the new gamers who might otherwise be interested, ensuring that there a healthy influx of new players. Meanwhile, many of the existing gamers in that market have frankly grown up, and in the process have either gotten bored with gaming altogether or started wanting more from their games than the generic "hardcore" formula; these have sought greener pastures and found them elsewhere.
But then, the attitude of the so-called "hardcore" has never been a gamer attitude anyway; it was a domination fantasy and nothing more. They've poisoned this market for far too long, and as a gamer I'm frankly relieved to see them being pushed back to the margins. If the 80s and early 90s were gaming's golden age, then let this generation be the start of a renaissance of gaming for everyone. The market will be so much healthier.
Re:I don't see how a PS3 price cut is "long overdu (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually you're wrong.
The PS3 is absolutely not outselling the 360 overall, nor is it doing so in Europe or North America. It is only outselling the 360 in Japan but only by around 10,000 units a week, whilst it's losing out to the 360 by around 20,000 a week in Europe and around 50,000 a week in the US.
The reason the AC parent has the stats he has (although they're rounded in favour of the PS3- the real stats are 21mill PS3s and 29mill XBox 360s) are because the PS3 had a period where it was outselling the 360, about 6 months into it's lifetime for around a year. It wasn't outselling it for the first 6months of it's life however and it has not been outselling it for the last 6, furthermore it's actually losing ground week on week in terms of the units shifted, so not only is it losing ground overall, it's losing ground at a faster rate week on week as an average trend across the last 6 months.
MS were cherry picking for a while for sure, but they're not now. They've got a healthy gain on the PS3 and it's almost certainly because the 360 is so cheap now whilst the PS3 remains too expensive.
It's also worth pointing out that MS is also selling over twice as many games per console as the PS3 so is making even more money than Sony in that repect too.
Go check the facts for yourself if you want at:
http://www.vgchartz.com/ [vgchartz.com]
Re:Not according to Kaz Hirai (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't buy tons of DVDs. I check out DVDs from the library. I don't own an HD TV. I get a satisfactory DVR from the Dish Network thrown in as part of my satellite TV package. The PS3 has little to offer me and the many others out there like me.
I don't think that the PS3 is a bad deal for EVERYONE (it does seem like it has served you splendidly) but it has a relatively small market compared to those who just want a reasonably priced game system. The PS2 had a huge market. If ALL the game systems out there had a PVR and cost in the $400+ range then the PS3's market would be pretty broad. But considering that they are competing against a much cheaper game system that didn't throw in everything and the kitchen sink their market has considerably narrowed. The wii basically stole a huge chunk of the market that Sony was previously counting on (or if they weren't counting on it, then they decided to throw away a large chunk of the market they used to have with the PS2).
Re:Speaking as a game developer (Score:2, Insightful)
As a graphics programmer, I must say that it's not so clear cut. Back in the day, the XDK-tools were much better. But nowadays, the PS3 has some really, really good tools. API-wise, I think it's a matter of taste. I prefer libgcm to DirectX, but the latter surely comes with more features "out of the box".
All in all, my experience is that you get stuff working so-and-so on the Xbox faster. But to get it up to maximum speed, you spend just as much time. So the 360 clearly wins in the prototyping department, but that won't necessarily get you to submission faster.