1 Million PlayStation 3s Shipped 234
The word from Gamasutra is that Sony is boasting 1 million PS3s shipped. They hope to have 6 million units out the door by the end of this year. This came from Sony's CES press conference, which only touched briefly on their new system. Hints were, though, that they'll be rolling out an IPTV system for many of their consumer electronics via the Xross GUI already in use on the PSP and PS3. From the article: "According to the company, the majority of new Sony televisions -- starting with several Bravia flat-panel LCD TVs this spring -- will accept an attachable module that can stream broadband high-definition and other Internet video content with the press of a remote control button. The module will be available this summer, and content will come from sources including AOL, Yahoo! and Grouper, now part of Sony Pictures Entertainment, as well as Sony Pictures itself and Sony BMG - however, none of this streaming video content has yet been confirmed for the PlayStation 3."
1 million shipped (Score:2, Informative)
Re:1 million shipped (Score:5, Funny)
1 unit shipped. (Score:5, Funny)
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The interesting thing is that Sony said:
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So over the next 3 months Sony plans to ship an additional 3.5 Million PS3 systems. Now if you were to assume 1 Million units for Europe that still means that 2.5 Million PS3 systems have to be shipped to North America and Japan over the next 3 months. Personally, I wonder how many
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Re:1 million shipped (Score:4, Insightful)
To a certain extent this is correct but it is not (entirely) true.
No one will have "Won" or "Lost" until sometime in 2008 but (as far as I know) no company has recovered from a poor start when there was strong competition. The fact is that Publishers look at system sales to determine which system will get exclusive games, which system will get games ported to it, and which system to ignore; if the PS3 is selling poorly while the Wii/XBox 360 is selling well publishers will devote most of their resources towards development on the Wii/XBox 360 which will reduce the number of PS3 systems sold (because people buy systems to play particular games).
Re:1 million shipped (Score:4, Interesting)
What about the original Playstation? From what I remember, it had a slow start, in an environment where there were lots of competitors using CD media, but gradually won out.
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A
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No one will have "Won" or "Lost" until sometime in 2008 but (as far as I know) no company has recovered from a poor start when there was strong competition
What about the original Playstation? From what I remember, it had a slow start, in an environment where there were lots of competitors using CD media, but gradually won out.
The original Playstation had a great start. Battle Arena Toshinden and Ridge Racer were both launch games, and no other system had anything that could compare with either one, particularly Toshinden which was the first 3D fighting game sold for consoles. These games made the console a huge hit with arcade fans who wanted to play Ridge Racer at home and fighting fans seeking a faster, easier game than Sega's Virtua Fighter arcade game.
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The SNES int he US as well. It lagged behind initially playign catch up to the genesis. But once certain key games came otu it started stomping the genesis.
Same witht he Ps2. the Dreamcast had a year head start, a fair game lineup and a good launch onyl to see the PS2 come from behind.
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What are you counting as strong competition? At the time of the original PS, it had to compete with the Saturn, Sega CD, CD-i, Turbo Duo, 3DO, Jaguar, and Neo Geo. The point is, it was a very saturated market, and the PS didn't have much momentum initially.
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At the time of the Playstation's launch, the Sega CD, CD-i, Turbo Duo, 3DO and Jaguar were all either dead or dying in the market. The Neo Geo kept on churning out 2D fighters at the arcades, but never had any impact on the home systems. That leaves the Saturn which launched a few months earlier, but was $100 more expensive with a weak 1st party lineup and increasingly disinterested 3rd parties.
It didn't take long for the cheaper, easier-to-develop, 3D-focused Playstation to catch on.
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I actually remember that time. After the PS came out, they had demo stations in all bigger shops, showing a (for the time) amazing 3D fighting game (Tekken? Can't remember which one). I've never seen a Jaguar or a 3DO or one of these weird Amiga consoles in real life. The games magazines told people not to buy the Jag because Atari had only produced failures since the 2600. Nobody could afford a 3DO. N
Re:1 million shipped (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, I know, I know, when you said competition, you meant "real", "serious" competition. Not, in other words, the Saturn or the Sega CD or the CDi or the 3DO or the Turbo Duo or the Neo Geo. You meant the real, SOLID systems. Just like when you were saying that no Scotsman eats porridge, you were only referring to the true Scotsmen, not like, Angus. Sure, Angus eats porridge, but think about it -- he can't even play the bagpipes!
It really wasn't that hard to see where the market was going a few months after launch, even 10 years ago.
I know. The past is rather predictable like that.
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Most of the competition the Playstation faced in the early days could be compare
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Re:1 million shipped (Score:4, Insightful)
Only one console had a poor launch this generation, and it wasn't the PS3.
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Re:1 million shipped (Score:4, Insightful)
Most stores received 5-10 units at launch and the launch quantities were estimated to be between 150k and 200k... nearly double the launch quantities are sitting on shelves at any given store which means there might be anywhere between 300K to 400K units shipped but not sold... If Sony has only shipped 1 million units to the US it means it only took about 600K-700K units to saturate the market (at very least substantially less then 1 million)... that is also known as crappy holiday console sales, even worse when you consider the Xbox 360 saturated the market and sold nearly 2.4 million units in the same period of time, and the Wii is still currently sold out with over 2 million units shipped also. Using the same logic if Sony delivered the PS3 in the same launch day quantities that Nintendo delivered their Wii, then the PS3 would not have sold out at launch.
By admitting that they've met demand they're admitting that the demand isn't all that high. Because the quantities that they've reached are still very low when compared to the competition.
Two-year generations (Score:2)
It happened in the early 8-bit era: Atari 2600, Intellivision, Atari 5200/Colecovision, NES/Atari 7800. It happened within a single company in the 16-bit era: Sega Genesis, Sega Genesis with Sega CD, Sega Genesis with 32X, Sega Saturn. And it's been happening in Games for Windows for the last decade.
Re:1 million shipped (Score:5, Interesting)
So while it's possible that certain effects on the Wii are much faster, I'd still say it's a stretch to call the console much more than twice as fast when it still basically has the same design. And of course 2x the raw theoretical power (which would be achieved if they increased the clock by 50% and say increased the number of pixel pipelines by 50%) still doesn't translate into anywhere near 2x the actual performance.
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Wow. Sony ships one million consoles, and the customers' demand is already met? And we're not even talking about one million sold consoles. We're talking shipped.
Only shipping a million consoles and still meeting customers' demand is not a good thing. Shipping around three to four million consoles and still not meeting customers' demand, on the other hand, is a very positive sign for the popularity of the Wii
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Okay, first off, the Wii hasn't sold 4 million in North America, it's sold 1.2 million [gamesindustry.biz]. And that's an estimate. So now, Sony shipped maybe 200,000 (I'm pretty sure the 700,000 in the article is worldwide) in November and 1 million six weeks after, which puts them neck and neck. Where are you coming up with Nintendo selling 4 million?
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The figure for Nintendo Wii stood at 1.8 million units - despite the fact the console only launched in North America on November 19, and the first batch of stock sold out within hours.
link [gamesindustry.biz]
In addition, Wedbush is estimating that Sony sold 600,000 units (800,000 cumulative) of PS3 and that Nintendo sold 1.3 million (1.8 million cumulative) units of
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Wii vs. PS2 (Score:3, Interesting)
Because PlayStation 2 Slimline is still selling like hotcakes.
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Looks like the shortage has ended. If you want a PS3, they are now easy to obtain.
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"In the end" is a phrase which is typically used to express how the anticipated result is different than the actual result and does not actually refer to a absolute ending; at this point in time it is fair to say something along the lines of "The PS3 was supposed to be the popular system this holiday season but, in the end, th
Info.... (Score:3, Insightful)
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(Yes, I do know someone like that.)
Re:Info.... (Score:5, Informative)
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Well, there were some 20,000 available on ebay. Do those count twice?
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It also means stores have 'purchased' the units from Sony, so strictly speaking Sony has sold the units, when stores agree to receiving the shipments and paying Sony eventually.
I'm tempted to buy one just for the multiple cores and processing power in Linux.
I'll ship 10 million photos of me (Score:2, Insightful)
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> instead of shipped? We are not really interested in their
> plants manufacturing capability.
Well they kind of go hand-in-hand because they don't just ship them into a black hole, and they obviously don't build units that they don't intend to sell. If the stores are willing to accept them it's because they have "shelf space"...and that's because they've sold their last shipment already. From the manufacturer's perspective these units are
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Not so. In early November, all the stores wanted to have as many PS3 as possible knowing (or thinking) that it would easily sell out. Say StoreX ordered 100 units in november, but due to the initial shortage, Sony sent them 15, sold the 15 units (10 of them going to scalpers), and 5 of them get returned and sit
Re:I'll ship 10 million photos of me (Score:5, Informative)
You misunderstand how the whole manufacturing chain works. In auto sales it's easy to determine how many cars a company is selling because they control the important end of the chain to determine sales to consumers - car dealerships. Companies like Sony and Microsoft do have their own online stores but the majority of their sales are through retailers that are 3rd parties. Those 3rd parties aren't likely to report sales of a specific product, especially in the timely manner that manufacturers need. So as a result, they're forced to say how many units they've shipped in order to report how strong a product is. The theory is that it's hand in hand with sales since most big-box retailers use Just-In-Time inventory and other methods to keep consoles from piling up. Retailers aren't stupid - if the product isn't selling they won't order it. However, there may be contractural obligations built into sales contracts that says they have to stock so many units or buy in blocks.
This timely manner for sales reporting, by the way, can be blamed on everything from the console war to the fact that Wall Street demands quarterly reporting from public companies.
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Most of the time, it seems that they're ready to accept the criticism they'll surely get, so they don't try to make things look pretty.
Japan? (Score:2)
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Bravia only? (Score:5, Insightful)
So it sounds like this only works on Sony units, and only certain specific Sony units at best -- yet another Sony proprietary product to waste their resources upon. Can't they see that a seperate unit which works with any HDTV would be better for both them and customers? But, this is Sony we're talking about.
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So you think Sony should make a unit that will work with any HDTV, and allow content to be streamed from the Internet to the TV.
How about if it includes a next-gen Media player also, like say Blu-Ray?
I think they made this unit already. They decided to call it the "Playstation 3". Perhaps you've heard of it?
Misleading Headline (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6163828.html [gamespot.com]
It only takes a couple good games. (Score:2)
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Yes that's right! In the coming months we can look forward to original titles from Wario [ign.com], Mortal Kombat [ign.com], Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [ign.com], SSX [ign.com], Prince of Persia [ign.com], and Medal of Honor [ign.com]. Nope, never seen those before. And let's not forget all of those original rehashes for virtual console!
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Xbox 360 already has those killer games.... (Score:2)
All exclusives. There are easily a half dozen other great games that aren't exclusives, but combined with the above?
The Playstation 3 needs a lot more than a "couple of titles" - those might grab a few hardcore gamers, but the Wii with it's unique control (assuming it doesn't get old, as in novelty) and Xbox 360 with Live both offer strong features that aim for a wider audience. I've heard some pretty disparaging things about
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And I'm still playing Wii Sports every day
Unsold means loss as costs decrease too! (Score:4, Interesting)
I say this because I'm sure they get better prices for parts on a Quarterly on Monthly basis. If something didn't sell which you didn't have to produce and your cost goes down = loss.
I also wonder if there is lower adoption because the higher quality Blu-Ray (and who "wouldn't" want it to play movies) really needs an HDTV to take full advantage of the system. This means system price + cost of HDTV. Ditto for X360.
Aside but relevant:
I don't know about most
"Fiscal Year" (Score:2)
From my personal experience. (Score:4, Interesting)
So after xmas I start a ritual on my remaining vacation of checking stores around the DFW area for a Wii. Took a week and a day before I scored one (at a WalMart) and ever place I checked I got a familiar refrain...
"We have no Wiis in, we aren't sure when we'll get more. But we have these PS3's , wouldn't you like one of those?"
I also don't hear buzz amongst friends who have xbox 360's or PS3's about one game or the other, but everybody I know with a Wii raves about how much fun they are. I would say the leader out of the gates for this holiday is the Wii, with Xbox 360 out in front due to getting an early (by MONTHS) start.
Add in that Sony loss leads with the cost of production of the console being above retail. but Nintendo makes a profit on every console and you have a strange formula which actually says Nintendo is doing better. But I'm sure Sony will save the day for themselves with some well though out proprietary product that uses a standard or media format which they are the only really proponents of. That's how it works, right?
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Absolutely. The employees at several stores here in Austin were trying to push the same thing on me. "Sorry, no Wii. But would you like a PS3? We have a lot of them!" They seemed so sad to not have Wii for me, and looked depressed that I wasn't interested in their "consolation prize".
(Finally got a Wii last Tuesday, tracking dates and times for UPS shipments.)
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Shipped often means sold (Score:2)
vgcharts.org, who seem accurate enough, estimate total PS3 sales worldwide at 1.41M so far (that implies maybe 1-2 hundred k in various display cases, not an unreasonable number) and Wii sales as 4M.
Wait a sec... (Score:2)
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Because the basic shape of the PlayStation family controllers hasn't changed since the Dual Shock was introduced back in the mid-PS1 era.
E.T. the game shipped 2 million units! (Score:2)
For Sony it's debatable what is worse... losing $300 million dollars by selling these units, or losing more money having them sit on the shelves. I guess sitting on the shelves is worse.
It would also be interesting to find out how badly the actual sales numbers really are, when returns and resells on returned units is taken into account. I suspect they aren't terribly great.
Fanboys can defend Sony all they want, but they will absolutely lie
Non-Fanboi (Score:3, Insightful)
What I will offer up is my humble opinion.
They are meeting demand faster than the 360 due to the system not selling out as fast.
The cost is still too high and they won't see big sales numbers until they lower the cost. They can't lower the cost, at present, due to losing money out of the gate. It's also a lost cause because MS/Nin can still low ball them if they decide to drop the cost. I think if they came in around 360 premium price, they would see better market penetration. They should also consider releasing a non-BR version with wifi for $299 and I bet it'd sell the shit out of the present choices they are offering up.
The PS3 was, pretty much, a paper release. I say this because they didn't have enough units, on hand, very few games, an incomplete gaming network, etc. I think they released and hoped to get the early adapters and such, but to this point, I think it's been a disappointing release, for them, no matter what they say. The truth is the cost is the single biggest issue holding them back. Everyone is piling on, now, so unless they pull something huge out of their asses, things aren't going to improve until they drop the price.
$600 is way too much for a video game system for the avg family, period. All the spoiled children who want to say it's not, obviously don't earn a living, so they have no valid appreciation for how much $600 is. I can afford a PS3, no problem, but I am unmarried and I don't have children. My low cost subsistence of free pr0n, boca burgers, and no debt make things more affordable:D I finally bought a 360, after a year of trying to justify it, because I could at least modularize it, which does make it cheaper. That's the simple truth.
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They should also consider releasing a non-BR version with wifi for $299
The problem is that they can't. The expensive part isn't the movie decoding, it's that freaking blue laser. And they've committed to releasing the games on BR discs. Sony have basically screwed themselves by trying to push their pet technologies.
They don't have a great track record doing so: Betamax, ATRAC, Memory Stick, SACD, and probably a couple more obscure enough that I don't remember them. None of them are popular technologies, one is completely dead (please don't anyone bring up the completely
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HD-DVD = Hitachi
They represent the major backers in the formats, each gathering a coalition of other suckers, erm, companies to release products. Don't let the paper tiger fool you - just as the CD format is "owned" by Philips, even though it is ostensibly a multi-company effort on PAPER.
Sony's non-electronics side is leveraging it's bleeding electronics division to push the format, at a huge lead-loss, into the public. It's about Intellectual Property, not about gamers.
What baffles me is why
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Toshiba, you mean.
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A pretty straight forward idea, but even before the PS3 was shipped it was already mentioned it would be next to impossible to 'remove' the Blu-Ray once it's there. Why? Size and HD support. Games are already made. You cannot go back and 'downgrade' the system and think these games will still play the same or that the developer will go back and modify the
Confused, Irratated and Annoyed (Score:3, Insightful)
The Xbox360 isn't in the same market, After a year there are almost enough games to make me interested in getting a Xbox360, but the limited hard drive lack of blu ray/HD DVD, crappy expansion slots and most importantly lack of any singstar,buzz,Guitar Hero type of games which puts me off the console.
The you have the Gimmick or Wii as it prefers to be known which has Wii sports, while I'm sure it will suck in many people with Wii Sports (heck we do have a 30 person strong waiting list for Wii's) I can't help but see it as anouther gamecube which will end up with two games I like and the rest of the game library sucking hugely. I'm not saying Wii Sports isn't fun, but it is the type of game which doesn't stay fun after the tenth time you've picked it up (kinda the same way a singstar/buzz game loses enjoyability over time.)
What does a gamer do? On one hand you have a console which sells based on a Gimmick (Wiimote) which looks set to sell hugely, one console which is limited in games for the non hard core gamer (which has sold well(Xbox360)) and the only console which looks like it could cover both is so incredibly expensive that I couldn't justify buying it (as well as the company showing increasing signs of evilness.)
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You'll probably wait until those come out, but it sounds like you are already on the verge.
I should point out ... (Score:3, Informative)
I should point
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Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Until the end of March I'd say. All snark aside, there's some reality to that statement. The reason there is a "console wars", is because the console that makes the best business model for 3rd party developers gets the most exclusive games and the best ports. It's as simple as that.
The business model that Sony presented this generation, is one of the highest development costs, for a variety of reasons, but they hoped to balance that by selling 100 million systems again this generation. Which would work pretty well. Except for the selling lots of systems part it seems. So their whole business model they're presenting breaks down. For this reason, you'll see a sparse line-up this holiday season, which results in less sales. It's a negative feedback loop, and the stronger it is, the more they'll need to do to counter it. (An AAA+++ title or a huge price cut or both)
Just to go a bit further. The 360 has a more comfortable programming/design environment and better tools provided, lowering costs, and has a large and very active American and European fanbase, plus online handled through XBL, the possibility of demos and new content, and microtransactions (even though we all hate them). It's a good model.
Nintendo is offering a very low development cost system, that focuses more on controller interaction than pushing polygons. And it looks like Nintendo will be combining this with a very large world-wide installed base. (The Wii will probably be the #1 system worldwide by middle of the year) It's a very good model.
It all comes down to the games. Before the launch of the PS3, people were saying they wanted it because they wanted the same experience they got with the PS2 and the PS1, namely the huge library that had games in every genre and even created a few new ones. But it's looking more and more like that experience is going to be on a non-Sony system.
So if Sony can't start selling systems, it's not going to get the games. And if it can't get the games, it'll probably end up like the GameCube..making games for it's core audience, but little beyond that. And I liked..no loved the GameCube. But a lot of people didn't. (Mostly people who didn't have it..but anyway) Or they perceived it to be a failure.
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On that note, is there anything to the rumor that MGS4 could be ported to the Xbox 360? I bet MS could crush the PS3 in its infancy if they lured MGS4 and maybe the next Final Fantasy by offering the developers zero licensing fees, which wouldn't be much of a sacrifice since they weren't planning to get license revenue from either of them in the first place.
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I'm willing to bet that Sony got blindsided with the announcement that DQIX will be for the DS. It'll have little effect outside of Japan, but having VII and VIII as well as remakes of IV and V on Sony consoles wasn't exactly a bad thing for Sony sales. Final Fantasy is a mere consolation prize compared to Dragon Quest.
Final Fantasy XIII specifically, when w
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Hardly. The 360 was still not available in decent quantities even then in 2006. No one is writing it off anymore in the US market.
> And if it can't get the games, it'll probably end up like the GameCube..making games for it's core audience, but little beyond that.
You're aware, aren't you, that Sony's "core audience" is defined by about a hundred million PlayStation 2 consoles? Sheesh. I'm one of those PS2 owners, and I'm holding out on the PS3 for myriad reasons (t
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That's simply not correct, Sony's core audience is the people who bought the Playstation or PS2 based on
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Let's step into the Wayback Machine, Sherman, and take a look at 1995.
It's not like Nintedo is chasing those third party developers away these days, is it? Given the amount of A-list titles they develop outright, they can hardly produce less content now than from the SNES days.
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It's not like Nintedo is chasing those third party developers away these days, is it? Given the amount of A-list titles they develop outright, they can hardly produce less content now than from the SNES days.
Nintendo has also never lost money on games since Donkey Kong, even in the N64 or GameCube era. It ended one quarter with a small loss on paper due to currency exchange rate fluctuation, but compare that to Sony Computer Entertainment or Microsoft Xbox, which had real losses, real big losses.
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Problem is, NES was notoriously abusive to third party devs for almost its entire lifetime til now. Many are still taking a wait-and-see attitude.
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Since when must one devise some new and novel debating strategy whenever one wishes to demonstrate a point? At least I'm not propping up a straw man.
"Problem is, NES was notoriously abusive to third party devs for almost its entire lifetime til now."
I was referring to the introduction of the Nintendo 64 (hence the year 1995 and the reference to the SNES, not the NES).
"Many are still taking a wait-and-see attitude."
If third-party develope
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It more than likely means they can't possibly pass Xbox 360 for two years.
It seems that they have as long as their parent company can afford to promote and maintain them. Sega went to the bitter end wit
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100 million PS2s were sold in its lifetime so 10 million still pretty small potatoes. Besides let's reasonably say that the PS3 sold 10 million by the end of the year (not unreasonable since Sony are pitching for 6 million by March and they haven't even launched in Europe yet). If you were a games developer, even if the 360 were up to 20 million, doe
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I think you are vastly overestimating Square/Enix's largess and brand loyalty. Final Fantasy I-VI were Nintendo exclusives (well, there was no real competition at the time) but they jumped ship because the N64 wouldn't cut it. It is fair to say that they did this both because the N64 would not allow them the creative latitude they needed, and because they sensed that the N64 would ultimately lose out because the N64 was so creatively restrictive that no one would write games for it.
Granted, I do not know
Why not FF4-6 on the Mega Drive? (Score:2)
Final Fantasy IV through VI were released on Nintendo's Super Famicom, which competed with the Sega Mega Drive. Or was the Mega Drive significantly less successful than its North American version (Sega Genesis)?
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Um ... the "end of the year" Sony is referring to is the end of their Fiscal year in March. So, lets figure 3 months from now (roughly).
If Sony ships 6 mil
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The 360 has already shipped 10 million units... Bill Gates announced at CES that they've already crossed that mark. [slashdot.org]
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PS2: 112 million
XBox: 24 million
Gamecube: 21 million
Dreamcast: 10 million
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