Bobby Kotick, President and CEO of Activision, one of the largest game companies in the world, has come out with a none-too-subtle warning to Sony that they need to seriously consider a price drop on the Playstation 3. Rumors have been circulating for months that such a drop was forthcoming, but Sony has staunchly denied that they had any plans to drop prices, Kotick said, "The PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don't make it easy for me to support the platform. It's expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better. ... They have to cut the price, because if they don't, the attach rates [the number of games each console owner buys] are likely to slow. If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony." While it's unlikely that Activision would follow through with such a threat, it definitely adds to the pressure Sony is feeling to lower the PS3's price. Sony issued a brief response which said nothing of consequence.
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Sony execs aren't dumb. They aren't going to announce price cuts until they happen.
Especially with a slim model on the way. Anyway its fairly likely what Sony will do since they've done it before. When the new model appears they'll dump the price on the old model, bundle the new model with some goodies and sell at a premium. Then when the old are cleared out, unbundle the new model and continue selling at the new lower price.
The wikipedia article you point to has Sony benefiting from the reverse-Osbourne effect. When they announced the end of PS2 hardware emulation in the PS3, sales of the 60 GB PS3 with PS2 Hardware soared.
Yes. As I said, Sony execs aren't dumb. They leak info that helps them.
Osbourne effect: company: Next generation models are going to be faster, cheaper, and better! consumers: We should definitely wait for the next one.
Reverse Osbourne effect: company: Next generation models are going to slower and less featureful! consumers: Oh shit! We better get while the getting's good.
It's not so simple. While being concerned about power inefficiency is fine and dandy, home electronics really aren't as big of an issue in terms of inefficient "carbon" use as you'd think. If it becomes a question of whether to buy a separate Blu-Ray player or put the money towards a more efficiant car, you are better off with the car. Why? Check the engine power ratings. A 200kW engine (roughy 267HP) makes 175W look like a pittance. Your car takes a lot more power than your home electronics, and ofte
Really, the wattage of the device as a BluRay player is all you've got left now that the games are out for the PS3 and there is a sustainable userbase?
No, again, there is the price. I can afford it. Its just not worth it when there are equal devices out there that do a better job, are more efficient when it comes to power consumption, and has the added bonus of having more titles and online features. Playing netflix watch instantly on a 360 is a huge feature. Frankly the one or two titles that i would want to play dont justify the addition of a 3rd console beyond the wii and the 360.
Some people are just so anti-microsoft that they cant see past their bia
by Anonymous Coward
on Saturday June 20, @02:51AM (#28399989)
This may have more to do with their recent releases being outsold by first party titles on the platform. Infamous outselling Prototype, Killzone 2 and Resistance 2 outselling World at War. Add to that Rock Band outselling Guitar Hero and bar Modern Warfare Activision are struggling for a top selling IP.
Oh well Activision wanted to have every game being a multi million dollar franchise which should sell a butload of copies every year, I guess they failed their way!
Agreed also true in the sense they could also bundle more games with it. For instance, I got my 40Gb with a $100 gift card to a large international retailer.
Off Metacritic.com, the same games have higher scores for the 360 and average top 20 games are 2 percent better.
Generally, me thinks (and this is no secret) the developers just hate Sony and their hardware.
The majority of the cost of writing a game is in media creation, not programming. Media = textures, videos, 3D objects and animations, maps, structures, music, sound effects, etc.
The media can be reused across different platforms - typically 360, PS3 and PC. A Wii version might use scaled down versions of the same media.
On top of that, you usually develop a game on top of a game engine, so if you re-use that engine across titles, the per-platform development cost goes down even further.
The PS3 has plenty of games, many of then unique to its platform. Its sales rate is the same as the 360 across the world, and if you exclude the USA it's outselling the 360. The 360 does have a year's headstart on its side, hence its 7m extra sales. Most game developers have got the hang of the PS3's hardware to the point where the games are now no worse than the 360, with promises of more improvements to come.
If anything, this entire article says more about the standard of programmers at Activision.
However I do think a price drop on the PS3 hardware would benefit everyone. I do suspect that they're creating a slim-line version using 45nm components. This is when the sales will take off (as with the PS2 slim), especially if GT5 launches at the same time. Right now Sony must be making a profit on the hardware, given how much the price of BluRay drives has dropped.
Actually while the source media can be the same, the final media on the disc can and is different. More compressed or in a different format that is more amenable to getting the most out of the consoles hardware.
We have a lot of *fun* getting the PS3 to perform at the same speed as the 360 on the same real world scenes, mostly due to two factors1) the GPU in the PS3 is not as good as the 360s, 2) The Cell processor is a ~#&$ to get performance out of without a lot of additional work... additional work th
My typical procedure is to pick up a console when I come across a game I really want. I think that while the PS3's game lineup is hardly the best history's seen, it has some pretty good stuff. But every time I think "oh maybe I should just get it", the price of the console itself smacks me in the face and I end up thinking I'll just wait.
There's a vague price threshold below which I buy stuff without worrying too much about the price, and the PS3 is comfortably above that threshold. It isn't a impulse purchase, and I think that in many cases, that's the kiss of death.
Actually I could justify the price if there was a PS2 backwards compatibility but the way I see it I probably if I ever buy a console the next two years will end up with a ps2 there is a handful of excellent games I really want to play, while the PS3 lineup so far only has two of them if at all!
I use one of those "cinderblocks" as my gamepad for my PC. It works great and it feels comfortable. So I'm not entirely sure where you're getting the whole "cinderblock" argument from anyway.
High console price doesn't lead to a low attach rate. It leads to many other problems, but it doesn't lead to a low attach rate.
I think the problem in question is that the high price keeps the console sales down which means there are fewer owners for Activision to sell copies of their games to.
Attach rate is the number of games sold per console sold, not total number of games sold for a particular platform.
Exactly. I don't understand why a publisher is babbling (incorrectly) about attach rates. Make a really good game for a console - the console owners will buy it. If there just aren't very many of those customers, sure, that's a valid complaint and a reason not to support the console. But the only one who should be worried about the sales PER CONSOLE is Sony (who makes a licensing fee from every game sold...)
"Attach rate" should sound quite scornful to the customers. It is remarkable that these guys even have a technical term for the rate with which vendor lock-in progresses.
When the other consoles were released the 360 was arguably the most expensive - it was outright more expensive than the Wii, and when you compared like for like it was more expensive than the PS3.
Yet it had a much higher attach rate, by far the highest of the three.
Since then it's dropped to offer the cheapest system out the lot yet still has the highest attach rate (http://kotaku.com/5222086/ps3-attach-rate-overtakes-wii-attach-rate).
There has not been any period at all where the PS3 has had a higher attach rate than the 360 and it's only just very recently managed to overtake the Wii.
But it really doesn't make any sense, attach rate is number of games purchased per console, not number of units of certain cherry picked titles sold per console. I suppose if you're completely unobjective and a total Sony fanboy you might take away from that in your mind that Sony has a higher attach rate, but if you step back and be objective and look at the first link you'll notice that regardless of what Sony says and how they twist a few figures the cold hard truth is that they do have a lower attach rate even when adjusted for console lifetime on the market. Nintendo could play a similar game to Sony taking games that were really built for the Wii but ported to other consoles anyway and suggest they have a higher attach rate, but still, the reality is that they don't. Effectively what Sony is abusing is the fact they have a much lower selection of titles on their system, so the good titles get a higher ratio bought for their console than for the other consoles, but this makes no sense because attach rates aren't about specific individual titles. It also ignores the fact their system has sold much fewer of the titles they've cherry picked overall too which should be the real measure of per-game success on each platform. If they have sold less of a specific title because they have a smaller install base that doesn't mean anything in terms of how well they're doing, in fact, it only exagerates the problem of having a smaller install base. If you can make up for that smaller install base with greater profits from game sales (i.e. real attach rates) then you may be able to live with that, but the problem is Sony is struggling in terms of both install base AND attach rates. It looks like they're improving things on the attach rates front, but they're certainly nowhere near Microsoft and they're certainly even further from having a big enough lead on attach rates against Microsoft that they can make up the profit differences from a lower install base.
At the end of the day all a publisher like activision sees is the amount of profit gained per console they publish for, and the fact is, Sony's mangled statistics don't change that one bit, it's simply an attempt at improving PR.
Really, if you have any sources that show the PS3 really does have a higher attach rate than the other two consoles rather than a bunch of cherry picked mangled stats that actually have nothing to do with attach rate because attach rates are game neutral I'd love to see it, but I've yet to see anything that shows this and certainly nothing from independent and product neutral sources like NPD.
I don't expect you to change your mind and accept that Sony doesn't have the highest attach rate, because the fact you came out with that unsourced and clearly untrue comment in the first means you're probably not open to the idea that the PS3 isn't doing as well as it should be but it seems silly to leave such an incorrect comment uncorrected. Still, if you can somehow prove your comment then I'll step back and accept I stand corrected but mangled statistics that are effectively meaningless from the marketing department of the company you're referring to don't really count for obvious reasons, it needs to be objective 3rd party stats that really tell us something about profit from games sold per console.
Here's a tip Xest, if you feel personally attacked when someone else says something nice about their favorite console (even incorrectly), you are a fanboy.
by Anonymous Coward
on Saturday June 20, @02:59AM (#28400023)
As someone who's been around since the Atari 2600/Intellivision/ColecoVision days, this is the first generation of consoles that I've skipped buying. And as a prior owner of a 3DO, that says a lot. Why? Two reasons.
1) This generation of consoles feels like too small of an improvement over the last to justify the purchase.
2) With the enjoyment of seeing a generational leap in graphics being non-existent, I feel like, for the first time, I can turn to any one of the billion casual gameplay sites out there for a quick 10-minute to an hour gaming fix at no cost.
Sure, I still play an Oblivion, a Half-Life, or a Fallout once in a while, but for the most part I like getting a quick fix and moving on to something new the next day, week, or month. Casual gameplay sites (for now, anyway) let me do this extremely cheaply.
I'd probably look into getting one of this generation's consoles for $100. Money isn't the issue, the enjoyment:money ratio is.
I think you missed a few years of game business. Currently, PC gaming is pretty much dead except for specific genres like RTS and MMORPGs, and nearly all new games are made for the consoles.
I think you missed a few years of game business. Currently, PC gaming is pretty much dead except for specific genres like RTS and MMORPGs, and nearly all new games are made for the consoles.
Well most of the stuff is ported since the PC still is about 1/3rd of the revenue market, the funny thing is thanks to the consoles the hardware upgrade cycle has slowed down so much that pc gaming nowadays is cheaper than the average console if you count in the games as well which on the average are 30% cheaper!
That's a misconception originally promoted by some to feel more elitist, I guess, and nowadays mostly to point fingers at consoles and yell "they dumb down our games!"
There are also "hardcore" (as you put it...whatever that means) games for consoles. And there was more of them in the past. As is the case for the PC.
Simply an effect of marginalizing early and "mid" adopters, now that both types of platforms have became much more mainstream.
Also, thank MS for bringing them so close together that it's "obvious" for publishers to aim games for both. Which means: the need to be compromise on both platforms, cutting out things that work great on one, but are not really doable on the other. "Jack of all trades..." and all that...
Seriously? You're going to swallow the $99 argument? Try taking a look at the TCO of the iPhone [jacobpierce.com]. The FCC is even looking into [informationweek.com] this anti-competitive bundling crap. IPhone manufacturing costs put it just below $200 [cnet.com], and yet AT&T will only sell you one for $600 w/o a contract.
What this has to do with the PS3 is left as an exercise to the reader.
Why does everyone just say 'Activision'? Uneasy about dragging your beloved WoW into this? It's Activision Blizzard, and that 'Blizzard' along with Call of Duty and Guitar Hero are why Kotick can afford to be the huge raging prick he is.
He's got a long history of being a total @#$hole to squeeze profits, and it's worked. He's the reason you're going to be paying for Starcraft II three times instead of one, no matter what lame excuses they feed you. He's got no compunctions about selling you multi-hundred dollar overpriced plastic controller sets to go with his games while he complains about PS3 prices. His unbridled douchebaggery works quite well, at least in the short run, and it might work in the long run because Blizzard can get away with anything.
Now of course he knows that Activision Blizzard paid Sony $500 million dollars last year in per-game royalties and other crap, and I'm sure he's looking to shave some of that. That's what this is really about. And Sony is vulnerable - just the suggestion that a major publisher could drop the PS3, even if they wouldn't, is hugely damaging when they're in third place in the largest markets. I'm sure fanbois will sneer that they don't need Activision, but someone's sure buying their stuff on PS3.
I'm not giving them any money because of the Brutal Legend fiasco (part of Kotick's deliberate cockmongering), but I realize that's sort of quixotic. In general you people (forgive my broad brush) will continue to bend over and spread wide for Call of Duty and WoW and Starcraft and Diablo III.
Activision like most huge companies employes teams to write middleware libraries and tools which probably means a substantial portion of title specific code is platform neutral. Games hit the middleware, not the hardware except in some timing critical places. On top of that, the PS3 would share virtually 100% of the graphical and audio assets with its PC and 360 counterparts. The upshot is developing for 360/PC/PS3 is not vastly more expensive than developing for 360/PC. Compare to the Wii where virtually all of the game code and assets would be different.
Therefore I don't accept the motivations for this statement. More likely Sony and Activision are in a pissing match over something like certification fees, PSN fees, technical requirements, 3rd party accessories or similar and this is Activision making their power play. Any way, a price cut is bound to happen sooner than later. Everyone knows its needed, including Sony, especially if the Slim is inbound as it is.
I've been to an electronics store recently, and just out of curiosity, checked the prices. Back when Wii was announced at $200, I had hoped to buy one. Now I can say FUCK YOU NINTENDO.
That's about half of an average salary too. Bastards really need to pull heads out of their asses and cut the crap with "double the price for Europe" politics.
Uhmmm...since you live _here_ you surely must know that it is, in large part, thanks to local distributors, not Nintendo/Apple/etc. (companies which, in reality, don't have a presence here; they rely on some 3rd party that takes silly cut for itself)
Somehow Microsoft and Sony get around that though - it's not like Nintendo is unfairly disadvantaged comparing to others - they all have to deal with the same market conditions, but Nintendo deals with them extremely poorly.
Actually it is Nintendo of Europe who says how much an item has to cost! Same goes for Sony Europe etc... and the 1:1 Dollar Euro price hiking is quite common, this gives companies an additional 10-20% revenue (if you count out the VAT which is quite high in Europe)
You people in the US tend to use hourly, weekly, monthly, yearly wages. Over here, when we refer to salaries, it's pretty much implicit that we're talking about monthly salaries, as it's very rare to use any other timeframe (except maybe for your hourly example, but, given the context, that's obvious anyway). I don't think I ever had the need to attach the interval when refering to salaries.
by Anonymous Coward
on Saturday June 20, @05:17AM (#28400553)
Bzzt. Try again.
Nobody outside/. cares about the fact that Sony is part of the MPAA and RIAA.
Sales are down because just about everyone that's willing to buy one at $399 has already done so. Sony is just playing chicken with the fence-sitters, because they know they can get more money if they wait it out.
Personally I plan to buy one the minute it goes under $350, and I don't care how long it takes. Longer just means more good+cheap games in the greatest hits collection.
When planning on lowering prices, best to shut up (Score:5, Informative)
Sony execs aren't dumb. They aren't going to announce price cuts until they happen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect [wikipedia.org]
Re:When planning on lowering prices, best to shut (Score:5, Interesting)
Especially with a slim model on the way. Anyway its fairly likely what Sony will do since they've done it before. When the new model appears they'll dump the price on the old model, bundle the new model with some goodies and sell at a premium. Then when the old are cleared out, unbundle the new model and continue selling at the new lower price.
Parent
Re:When planning on lowering prices, best to shut (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:When planning on lowering prices, best to shut (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. As I said, Sony execs aren't dumb. They leak info that helps them.
Osbourne effect:
company: Next generation models are going to be faster, cheaper, and better!
consumers: We should definitely wait for the next one.
Reverse Osbourne effect:
company: Next generation models are going to slower and less featureful!
consumers: Oh shit! We better get while the getting's good.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Some jerkoff always has to mention how they can watch movies on them too. Usually the same jerkoffs who slap you in the face about global warming
I have carbon-neutral hydroelectric power, you insensitive clod!
Re: (Score:2)
(The above does not mean that I necessarily believe that global warming is caused by CO2.)
Oh, I didn't realize it was a matter of beliefs...
Re:When planning on lowering prices, best to shut (Score:4, Funny)
Now you know better.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Well, over the last decade, what has the CO2 level been doing? What has the global temperature done?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Increased, both of them.
Now, over the last decade, what has the number of doping tests in cykling done?
Right, they have increased. This proves that both global warming AND CO2 level is caused by doping tests.
Correlation is not causation.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not so simple. While being concerned about power inefficiency is fine and dandy, home electronics really aren't as big of an issue in terms of inefficient "carbon" use as you'd think. If it becomes a question of whether to buy a separate Blu-Ray player or put the money towards a more efficiant car, you are better off with the car. Why? Check the engine power ratings. A 200kW engine (roughy 267HP) makes 175W look like a pittance. Your car takes a lot more power than your home electronics, and ofte
Re:When planning on lowering prices, best to shut (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people are just so anti-microsoft that they cant see past their bia
Inferior IP = Inferior Sales, lets blame someone (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh well Activision wanted to have every game being a multi million dollar franchise which should sell a butload of copies every year, I guess they failed their way!
The PS3's problem is lack of games. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Agreed also true in the sense they could also bundle more games with it. For instance, I got my 40Gb with a $100 gift card to a large international retailer.
Off Metacritic.com, the same games have higher scores for the 360 and average top 20 games are 2 percent better.
Generally, me thinks (and this is no secret) the developers just hate Sony and their hardware.
Developing for Cell Processors . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
. . . is probably a royal pain in the ass. Any /. Cell developers care to comment?
Kotick said, "It's expensive to develop for the console." Read that as time, people and money, when compared to other platforms.
I would think that Sony would be bending over backwards to support developers.
OS/2 was a better OS than Windows, but there were not enough applications for it, so folks flocked to Windows.
I'm curious to hear how the Cell development environment is: "Great, Challenging, or Run Away!"
Parent
Re:Developing for Cell Processors . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
The majority of the cost of writing a game is in media creation, not programming. Media = textures, videos, 3D objects and animations, maps, structures, music, sound effects, etc.
The media can be reused across different platforms - typically 360, PS3 and PC. A Wii version might use scaled down versions of the same media.
On top of that, you usually develop a game on top of a game engine, so if you re-use that engine across titles, the per-platform development cost goes down even further.
The PS3 has plenty of games, many of then unique to its platform. Its sales rate is the same as the 360 across the world, and if you exclude the USA it's outselling the 360. The 360 does have a year's headstart on its side, hence its 7m extra sales. Most game developers have got the hang of the PS3's hardware to the point where the games are now no worse than the 360, with promises of more improvements to come.
If anything, this entire article says more about the standard of programmers at Activision.
However I do think a price drop on the PS3 hardware would benefit everyone. I do suspect that they're creating a slim-line version using 45nm components. This is when the sales will take off (as with the PS2 slim), especially if GT5 launches at the same time. Right now Sony must be making a profit on the hardware, given how much the price of BluRay drives has dropped.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually while the source media can be the same, the final media on the disc can and is different. More compressed or in a different format that is more amenable to getting the most out of the consoles hardware.
We have a lot of *fun* getting the PS3 to perform at the same speed as the 360 on the same real world scenes, mostly due to two factors1) the GPU in the PS3 is not as good as the 360s, 2) The Cell processor is a ~#&$ to get performance out of without a lot of additional work... additional work th
Re: (Score:2)
Oh you mean the lack of gui wizards? /ROFL
Re:The PS3's problem is lack of games. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm, not sure I agree.
My typical procedure is to pick up a console when I come across a game I really want. I think that while the PS3's game lineup is hardly the best history's seen, it has some pretty good stuff. But every time I think "oh maybe I should just get it", the price of the console itself smacks me in the face and I end up thinking I'll just wait.
There's a vague price threshold below which I buy stuff without worrying too much about the price, and the PS3 is comfortably above that threshold. It isn't a impulse purchase, and I think that in many cases, that's the kiss of death.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Actually I could justify the price if there was a PS2 backwards compatibility but the way I see it I probably if I ever buy a console the next two years will end up with a ps2 there is a handful of excellent games I really want to play, while the PS3 lineup so far only has two of them if at all!
Re: (Score:2)
attach rate info is wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
High console price doesn't lead to a low attach rate. It leads to many other problems, but it doesn't lead to a low attach rate.
I think the problem in question is that the high price keeps the console sales down which means there are fewer owners for Activision to sell copies of their games to.
Attach rate is the number of games sold per console sold, not total number of games sold for a particular platform.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. I don't understand why a publisher is babbling (incorrectly) about attach rates. Make a really good game for a console - the console owners will buy it. If there just aren't very many of those customers, sure, that's a valid complaint and a reason not to support the console. But the only one who should be worried about the sales PER CONSOLE is Sony (who makes a licensing fee from every game sold...)
Attach rate (Score:2)
"Attach rate" should sound quite scornful to the customers. It is remarkable that these guys even have a technical term for the rate with which vendor lock-in progresses.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
To provide some evidence for your claim-
When the other consoles were released the 360 was arguably the most expensive - it was outright more expensive than the Wii, and when you compared like for like it was more expensive than the PS3.
Yet it had a much higher attach rate, by far the highest of the three.
Since then it's dropped to offer the cheapest system out the lot yet still has the highest attach rate (http://kotaku.com/5222086/ps3-attach-rate-overtakes-wii-attach-rate).
That suggests that you're right,
Re:attach rate info is wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately reality seems to disagree with you.
http://kotaku.com/5222086/ps3-attach-rate-overtakes-wii-attach-rate [kotaku.com]
From a year ago:
http://playstation.joystiq.com/2008/04/25/npd-releases-home-console-attach-rate-ratios-ps3-not-so-hot/ [joystiq.com]
There has not been any period at all where the PS3 has had a higher attach rate than the 360 and it's only just very recently managed to overtake the Wii.
The closest I could find to your claims was this:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23186 [gamasutra.com]
But it really doesn't make any sense, attach rate is number of games purchased per console, not number of units of certain cherry picked titles sold per console. I suppose if you're completely unobjective and a total Sony fanboy you might take away from that in your mind that Sony has a higher attach rate, but if you step back and be objective and look at the first link you'll notice that regardless of what Sony says and how they twist a few figures the cold hard truth is that they do have a lower attach rate even when adjusted for console lifetime on the market. Nintendo could play a similar game to Sony taking games that were really built for the Wii but ported to other consoles anyway and suggest they have a higher attach rate, but still, the reality is that they don't. Effectively what Sony is abusing is the fact they have a much lower selection of titles on their system, so the good titles get a higher ratio bought for their console than for the other consoles, but this makes no sense because attach rates aren't about specific individual titles. It also ignores the fact their system has sold much fewer of the titles they've cherry picked overall too which should be the real measure of per-game success on each platform. If they have sold less of a specific title because they have a smaller install base that doesn't mean anything in terms of how well they're doing, in fact, it only exagerates the problem of having a smaller install base. If you can make up for that smaller install base with greater profits from game sales (i.e. real attach rates) then you may be able to live with that, but the problem is Sony is struggling in terms of both install base AND attach rates. It looks like they're improving things on the attach rates front, but they're certainly nowhere near Microsoft and they're certainly even further from having a big enough lead on attach rates against Microsoft that they can make up the profit differences from a lower install base.
At the end of the day all a publisher like activision sees is the amount of profit gained per console they publish for, and the fact is, Sony's mangled statistics don't change that one bit, it's simply an attempt at improving PR.
Really, if you have any sources that show the PS3 really does have a higher attach rate than the other two consoles rather than a bunch of cherry picked mangled stats that actually have nothing to do with attach rate because attach rates are game neutral I'd love to see it, but I've yet to see anything that shows this and certainly nothing from independent and product neutral sources like NPD.
I don't expect you to change your mind and accept that Sony doesn't have the highest attach rate, because the fact you came out with that unsourced and clearly untrue comment in the first means you're probably not open to the idea that the PS3 isn't doing as well as it should be but it seems silly to leave such an incorrect comment uncorrected. Still, if you can somehow prove your comment then I'll step back and accept I stand corrected but mangled statistics that are effectively meaningless from the marketing department of the company you're referring to don't really count for obvious reasons, it needs to be objective 3rd party stats that really tell us something about profit from games sold per console.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a tip Xest, if you feel personally attacked when someone else says something nice about their favorite console (even incorrectly), you are a fanboy.
What % of people will buy with lower prices? (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone who's been around since the Atari 2600/Intellivision/ColecoVision days, this is the first generation of consoles that I've skipped buying. And as a prior owner of a 3DO, that says a lot. Why? Two reasons.
1) This generation of consoles feels like too small of an improvement over the last to justify the purchase.
2) With the enjoyment of seeing a generational leap in graphics being non-existent, I feel like, for the first time, I can turn to any one of the billion casual gameplay sites out there for a quick 10-minute to an hour gaming fix at no cost.
Sure, I still play an Oblivion, a Half-Life, or a Fallout once in a while, but for the most part I like getting a quick fix and moving on to something new the next day, week, or month. Casual gameplay sites (for now, anyway) let me do this extremely cheaply.
I'd probably look into getting one of this generation's consoles for $100. Money isn't the issue, the enjoyment:money ratio is.
Re:What % of people will buy with lower prices? (Score:4, Interesting)
Uh, if you just want casual games, gaming consoles aren't for you anyways.
Maybe you're no longer interested in nowadays' consoles because you have changed since the old days?
Parent
Re:What % of people will buy with lower prices? (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, if you just want casual games, gaming consoles aren't for you anyways.
This doesn't make sense to me. Gaming consoles *are* for the casual gamer. I always thought PCs were for the hardcore gamers.
Parent
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I think you missed a few years of game business. Currently, PC gaming is pretty much dead except for specific genres like RTS and MMORPGs, and nearly all new games are made for the consoles.
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I think you missed a few years of game business. Currently, PC gaming is pretty much dead except for specific genres like RTS and MMORPGs, and nearly all new games are made for the consoles.
Well most of the stuff is ported since the PC still is about 1/3rd of the revenue market, the funny thing is thanks to the consoles the hardware upgrade cycle has slowed down so much that pc gaming nowadays is cheaper than the average console if you count in the games as well which on the average are 30% cheaper!
Re:What % of people will buy with lower prices? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a misconception originally promoted by some to feel more elitist, I guess, and nowadays mostly to point fingers at consoles and yell "they dumb down our games!"
There are also "hardcore" (as you put it...whatever that means) games for consoles. And there was more of them in the past. As is the case for the PC.
Simply an effect of marginalizing early and "mid" adopters, now that both types of platforms have became much more mainstream.
Also, thank MS for bringing them so close together that it's "obvious" for publishers to aim games for both. Which means: the need to be compromise on both platforms, cutting out things that work great on one, but are not really doable on the other. "Jack of all trades..." and all that...
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Still, I think that Solitaire is probably the most played game on the PC.
Lots of products are overly expensive.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Come to think of it, the iPhone is almost as expensive as the PS3 (if not more so).
Pass or fail is more than about price.
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What this has to do with the PS3 is left as an exercise to the reader.
Activision BLIZZARD can afford to be dicks. (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does everyone just say 'Activision'? Uneasy about dragging your beloved WoW into this? It's Activision Blizzard, and that 'Blizzard' along with Call of Duty and Guitar Hero are why Kotick can afford to be the huge raging prick he is.
He's got a long history of being a total @#$hole to squeeze profits, and it's worked. He's the reason you're going to be paying for Starcraft II three times instead of one, no matter what lame excuses they feed you. He's got no compunctions about selling you multi-hundred dollar overpriced plastic controller sets to go with his games while he complains about PS3 prices. His unbridled douchebaggery works quite well, at least in the short run, and it might work in the long run because Blizzard can get away with anything.
Now of course he knows that Activision Blizzard paid Sony $500 million dollars last year in per-game royalties and other crap, and I'm sure he's looking to shave some of that. That's what this is really about. And Sony is vulnerable - just the suggestion that a major publisher could drop the PS3, even if they wouldn't, is hugely damaging when they're in third place in the largest markets. I'm sure fanbois will sneer that they don't need Activision, but someone's sure buying their stuff on PS3.
I'm not giving them any money because of the Brutal Legend fiasco (part of Kotick's deliberate cockmongering), but I realize that's sort of quixotic. In general you people (forgive my broad brush) will continue to bend over and spread wide for Call of Duty and WoW and Starcraft and Diablo III.
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Comment doesn't make much sense (Score:3, Interesting)
Therefore I don't accept the motivations for this statement. More likely Sony and Activision are in a pissing match over something like certification fees, PSN fees, technical requirements, 3rd party accessories or similar and this is Activision making their power play. Any way, a price cut is bound to happen sooner than later. Everyone knows its needed, including Sony, especially if the Slim is inbound as it is.
Who needs the price cut? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nintendo does. In the eastern european countries.
I've been to an electronics store recently, and just out of curiosity, checked the prices. Back when Wii was announced at $200, I had hoped to buy one. Now I can say FUCK YOU NINTENDO.
PS3: 1450PLN = 445USD
XBOX360: 850PLN = 260USD
WII: 1250PLN = 384USD
That's about half of an average salary too. Bastards really need to pull heads out of their asses and cut the crap with "double the price for Europe" politics.
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Uhmmm...since you live _here_ you surely must know that it is, in large part, thanks to local distributors, not Nintendo/Apple/etc. (companies which, in reality, don't have a presence here; they rely on some 3rd party that takes silly cut for itself)
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Somehow Microsoft and Sony get around that though - it's not like Nintendo is unfairly disadvantaged comparing to others - they all have to deal with the same market conditions, but Nintendo deals with them extremely poorly.
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Actually it is Nintendo of Europe who says how much an item has to cost!
Same goes for Sony Europe etc... and the 1:1 Dollar Euro price hiking is quite common, this gives companies an additional 10-20% revenue (if you count out the VAT which is quite high in Europe)
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You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
If the units are moving off the shelves, then they don't "need" to do anything. Here's the pictorial explanation [penny-arcade.com].
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This is more expensive than in the US, but not as much as you think.
Polish VAT is 22%, so 384USD after VAT is removed would be 384 * 0.78 = 299.
In the US, the price is actually about 249 for the console alone. (mail order prices)
Also after doing a search (see http://www.nokaut.pl/konsole/konsola-nintendo-wii.html [nokaut.pl]), the typical price seems to about 1080, i.e. 1080 * 0.307579 = 332 and 332 *0.78 = 259
So there is really not much difference.
Note, in the US, we pay sales tax on top of the purchase pric
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...well, how does that compare to XBox 360?
Re:Who needs the price cut? (Score:4, Interesting)
You people in the US tend to use hourly, weekly, monthly, yearly wages. Over here, when we refer to salaries, it's pretty much implicit that we're talking about monthly salaries, as it's very rare to use any other timeframe (except maybe for your hourly example, but, given the context, that's obvious anyway). I don't think I ever had the need to attach the interval when refering to salaries.
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Re:Politics wouldn't have anything to do with it,? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bzzt. Try again.
Nobody outside /. cares about the fact that Sony is part of the MPAA and RIAA.
Sales are down because just about everyone that's willing to buy one at $399 has already done so. Sony is just playing chicken with the fence-sitters, because they know they can get more money if they wait it out.
Personally I plan to buy one the minute it goes under $350, and I don't care how long it takes. Longer just means more good+cheap games in the greatest hits collection.
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