Sony Attacks Microsoft's Publishing Policies 203
winston18 writes "Sony's vice president of publisher relations has gone on record as saying that Microsoft is protecting an inferior technology with their policies regarding content on Xbox Live Arcade and multiplatform titles. The comments stem from Microsoft's admission that they reserve the right to deny titles on Xbox Live if they launch on the PlayStation Network first."
Wait, what did Sony just said (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess all the old OtherOS, PSN network hacking and other fiasco wasn't enough for Sony.
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Are you kidding? Until recently, Xbox versions of games were sort of infamous for having exclusives.
Re:Wait, what did Sony just said (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, this is sort of a reverse exclusive. It's an interesting question whether the same considerations apply.
With an exclusive, the platform/publisher pays a developer $X, or otherwise gives them some special consideration, to only publish on the platform, or at least to publish there first. So e.g. Sony pays Rockstar something to launch first (or perhaps only) on PSX.
But with this, a platform/publisher punishes a developer for publishing first on another platform, so they say that if you launched on PSX, well then you can't also publish here 2nd.
What's particularly interesting is that in the case where a publisher wanted an exclusive, they shouldn't object at all to the 2nd one, because it's just giving them an exclusive for free! They don't even have to pay a dev to publish only on PSX, because Microsoft is exclusive-izing the release for them, by refusing to become a 2nd platform for it.
However the dynamics are a bit different with smaller devs, where this sort of thing can feel like a minefield of blacklists.
Re:Wait, what did Sony just said (Score:5, Insightful)
The dynamics of this are also different in that a publisher can choose whether to accept or refuse an offer of exclusivity and the competing vendors are welcome to offer more money to the publisher. In this case Microsoft are simply acting as a bully and attempting to leverage their platform to enforce desirable behaviours in publishers wishing to target that platform.
If you want your game to appear on the XBox at some point then you have to follow Microsofts rules governing your game on OTHER platforms! That is anti-competitive and morally wrong.
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The whole INDUSTRY is anti-competitive and morally wrong, from the basic locking down of the hardware, to having to have all published works go through Microsoft / Sony / Nintendo in the first place.
If they sell the hardware at a loss that's their problem. Having a monopoly built on top of that should be illegal, legitimate start-up developers are being locked out or forced to pay fees in order to have their games released and have their potential market share and exposure greatly marginalized if they can
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The PC market sells hardware that is not locked down, and sells it at no loss. That's what a console without any lockdown, sold at profit rather than as a loss-leader, looks like.
It's not reasonable to argue that three distinct curated video game experiences are each monopolies, when, first of all, there's three of them, and second of all, you don't have to participate in any of them to get video games.
Given that there does not seem to be a monopoly or collusive oligopoly on the relevant market (video game
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The thing is, that's just a general side effect of a free market and contracts. Specifically, the reason the industry has degenerated into three main companies is precisely because of issues like the inherently obfuscation of complex technology and contracts that further enforce that upon licensed developers wh
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I imagine you only got modded up because you bash Microsoft and this is Slashdot.
Microsoft is not the big bully in the console gaming arena, they seem to have a good product (I am not a console gamer so this is from what I read) that got a decent market share. However, they are a distant third in market share (yeah, even if you don't count handhelds).
What they do have going for them, is that, again according to what I read, their current gen console is perhaps the best (for casual gamers), especially when y
It's fairly normal in retail (Score:4, Informative)
If you go and tell Target that you'll sell them something exclusively for awhile before you sell to other retailers, you may well find that Walmart, Best Buy and so on blacklist you. They don't like you trying to give a competitor an advantage so they'll say "Ok you want to go exclusive with them, you do that, but it is a permanent thing. We aren't going to let you give them a boost, and then give yourself a sales boost by using our store space."
Same shit with pricing. You generally can't give highly preferential pricing to one retailer or the others will retaliate.
Remember: It is 100% your right to determine who you do and do not wish to sell to. However it is 100% the stores' right to determine what they do and do not wish to stock. If you do something that they believe hurts them, they are within their rights to tell you to fuck off.
Similar deal here. If Sony bribes you to release your content first on PSN, ok that is their right, and your right to accept the deal. Nobody is going to say you can't. However MS is not then interested in carrying your product. They don't want you trying to boost Sony's platform by releasing there first, and then to improve your sales by going to MS's market later.
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Similar deal here. If Sony bribes you to release your content first on PSN, ok that is their right, and your right to accept the deal. Nobody is going to say you can't. However MS is not then interested in carrying your product.
That doesn't appear to be what MS is saying though (you didn't read the story, did you?).
MS are refusing to carry titles that launch first on the PSN for any reason -- e.g., a developer has limited resources and can't develop all platforms simultaneously (or runs into problems in the Xbox version, delaying it). There is no "exclusivity" money involved.
By contrast, Sony don't appear to care if you release a title on the PSN that first appeared on Xbox live.
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Wouldn't it make sense to develop first to Xbox360 in that case, then?
That's certainly the conclusion MS wants developers to come to, but it doesn't make it any less of a douche move on MS's part.
Developing for the Xbox first may be a real hardship for some (especially small) developers -- for instance, a Japanese developer, whose main market is the PS3, but who wants to eventually sell to U.S. Xbox users as well. Or consider a big developer who does develop simultaneously, but runs into serious problems with the Xbox port, delaying it by a few months; they then have to sim
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What are you talking about, "giving [the publisher] an exclusive for free?" They don't want an exclusive to be free, they want to get paid for it!
Without Microsoft's approach:
Make exclusive deal with Sony, get paid $X
Release on PS, make $Y from sales
(Months later) Release on Xbox, make $Z from sales
With Microsoft's approach:
Either forfeit $X and release on both consoles simultaneously, or forfeit $Z -- if you weren't planning on taking $Z, then none of Microsoft's policies matter.
What MS is doing is good f
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What MS is doing is good for customers (though that's not why they're doing it). It sucks when you're forced to wait several extra months to get a game just because the developer was handed a big bag of money by some mega-corp hoping to coerce you into buying their console next time around.
So what you are saying is that it is better for consumers if the producers make less money and delay all versions until they are all complete. With the current exclusive model, publisher get additional funds, and often additional support, which helps them get a product available sooner for at least one platform. Ultimately this also means it will be released sooner for all platforms as there will be additional revenue for resources. Exclusivity rarely means waiting longer than you would have otherwise, b
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MS is trying to make it so any other platform cannot have any exclusive content. It was force the 360 to be the lead platform for any and all g
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DLC sales are tiny in comparison to game sales.
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Seriously dude, it's even right in the summary. Learn to fucking read.
It's even in the summary? The summary isn't some hard truth. It's comment part of the article and part from the submitter. This was my comment. Slashdot summaries aren't some exact truth. Sometimes they're actually pretty far from it.
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Gran Turismo is made by Polyphony Digital, which is one of Sony's first party studios.
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Xbox Live (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of developers have been publicly complaining about Xbox Live, calling it too closed [mcvuk.com]. Even Gabe Newell of Valve--who used to work at Microsoft--criticized Live for being too restrictive because Microsoft wouldn't allow Valve to use Steam. Meanwhile, Sony not only allows Steam but lets Valve offer a free copy of the PC and Mac version to buyers of the PS3 version of Portal 2.
Microsoft has ridden the success of Halo and Gears of War, and the 360 was easier to develop for when people were learning how to work with the PS3, but sales of the PS3 are surpassing the 360 this year, and PS3 developers have caught up. In addition, the poor reception to Microsoft's focus on motion gaming as well as a lack of an answer to mobile gaming signals a diminishing of the their position to third place.
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On the other hand, PSN hands your CC data over to russian mafioso.
So... do you want to be hanged, or shot?
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No, it doesn't.
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Oh HI Mr. Pedant!
You know very fucking well what I meant. Forgive me for expressing it in a brief and humorous sentence referencing an incident the details of which we all are very fucking aware of, rather than providing a detailed blow-by-blow recount of the entire PSN incident complete with sourced quotes and references.
Go blow it out your uptight corporate shill of an asshole.
And that's something you CAN take literally.
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I'm not Anon, bro. There's my name. It's.. it's right there.
You also need to get the stick outta your butt.
There's absolutely no way my post could have been interpreted as anything but a joke. It's referencing the PSN incident in a way that's so inaccurate that anyone who heard anything about it would understand both that I was referencing that incident and that I was exaggerating and fabricating the story with the intent of eliciting a laugh from the allegedly tech-savvy readership here at Slashdot.
Of
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I'm glad you're brave enough to respond to my refutation of my post to -- oh, nevermind, you came back anonymously.
Not that it matters, but I don't own an XBox, or XBox360, and will never load GFWL on my computer, and will never participate as a consumer or producer in XBLA. I don't much care for Microsoft and their shoddy Steam-knockoff products.
None of that changes the fact that PSN was porous as all hell, was hacked, exposed sensitive information of thousands -- millions -- of their users, and was down
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Depends on your jurisdiction. If I leave my car unlocked and it's used for criminal activities, I'm partly liable.
So I'd say... they're partly handing them over. ;)
Xbox Live Indie Games (Score:2)
Minecraft? More like Microcraft! (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact of the matter is that when the Xbox 360 originally came out, you would see maybe 1 to 2 titles every 1 to 2 weeks released on XBLA. XBLA was touted as the way for smaller, more "indie" development houses to develop games on the X360 platform without having to deal with all of the ins and outs of manufacturing, distribution, and more restrictive technical certification requirements that come with a disc-based game. Microsoft were highly selective over the titles that would be released on XBLA, and for good reason - they needed an online marketplace with many "strong" titles and few "weak" ones.
After so many "indie" development houses complained that they were not being allowed to market such obvious smash hits as "Try Not To Fart" or "Controller Vibrator 2000" - note the intended sarcasm - Microsoft created the XBLIG marketplace, touting that as the new place for smaller, more "indie" development houses to put games onto the X360 platform.
This went well for perhaps 6 to 12 months, with a few particularly good indie games making their way to the top of the XBLIG charts, and all of the undeserving fluff and blatant cash grabs fell to the bottom of the pile, at which point the wheels fell off. Microsoft felt the need to take things in a third direction, now choosing to "upgrade" specific XBLIG dev houses to XBLA contracts.
In doing so, they signed the death warrant for both XBLA and XBLIG. Removing the more polished indie dev houses from the XBLIG marketplace ensured that XBLIG continues to play second fiddle to XBLA, but more importantly, it means that the XBLA marketplace is now flooded with "lesser" games that would otherwise have remained on the XBLIG marketplace (and for good reason). Now, it is much more difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff on the XBLA marketplace, and there is no wheat on the XBLIG marketplace.
Despite all of this, Microsoft insist that they are "top dog" regarding their digital marketplaces, to the point of taking blatant advantage over dev houses they perceive as "smaller" when those dev houses come a-knocking to try to get their games released on XBLA. In the case of Minecraft, the sad fact is that the Xbox 360 is the only console (handhelds excluded) on which it will be released, specifically because Microsoft forced Mojang into an exclusive contract. The entire matter is sickening.
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Eh?
specifically because Microsoft forced Mojang into an exclusive contract.
I'm reasonably certain that Mojang is wealthy enough that nobody forces Markus into nuthin'. The man wants to settle legal disputes with Bethesda in a Quake 3 match. What the hell kind of power do you think Microsoft has over him, with their 25 million users that can't even plug in a mouse? He's outsourcing the port, it's not even important enough to handle internally!
From Notch's August 30th blog about why MC is not going to be on Steam:
We are talking to Valve about this, but I definitely understand their reasons for wanting to control their platform. There’s a certain inherent incompatibility between what we want to do and what they want to do.
So there’s no big argument, we just don’t want to limit what we can do with Minecraft. Also, Steam is awesome. Much more awesome than certain other digital distribution platforms that we would NOT want to release Minecraft on.
I have purchased several XBLIG, and I enjoy the little snippets of
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In addition, the poor reception to Microsoft's focus on motion gaming
You define "poor reception" as making the world's fastest selling consumer electronics device [guinnessworldrecords.com]?
sales of the PS3 are surpassing the 360 this year
PS3 is surpassing Xbox in sales? Not according to NPD, which says Xbox 360 has been outselling other consoles for 5 months now [g4tv.com].
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Pot, meet kettle (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't see this as anything other than one giant who uses customer hostile strategies to profit complaining about another giant using customer hostile strategies to accomplish the same goal. Boo hoo, poor Sony.
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Inferior technology? As far as I know, xbox live has never been down for a month... [wikipedia.org]
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Whatever you say, scrotum.
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I'm not the AC, but my goodness this is funniest thing I've seen all week.
You made yourself look like a total fool.
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Oh, a person on slashdot thinks I'm a fool. However will I continue with my life...
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Keep moving forwards in time, that's how life works.
This is even more hilarious that you felt compelled to respond rather than slinking off, defeated. It's that urge that you just have to try and save face by getting the last word in! I suppose it was inevitable, since your *first* debate technique is going right for "scrotum" and the ad hominem. Still funny though, keep it up.
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Yeah, and then they remove features after they've sold you the hardware, and it's fatally crippled by insane DRM that treats you as if you're a suspect instead of the device's owner.
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In what way is any PS3 owner or their content "fatally crippled by insane DRM?"
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List of features you lose if you don't accept Sony's firmware update [playstation.com]
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You've been drinking the koolaid I see. Give that back to the xbot fanbois and do some research.
Aside from the obviously-secondary-use of the OtherOS feature, what on earth are you talking about?
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I'm not an X-Box fanboy. I refuse to own one, for similar reasons to the reasons I so intensely dislike the PS3.
My PS3 is a full computer. I should be able to treat it as such. The fact that it's so hard means that there is a ridiculous level of DRM attempting to control my behavior. The same goes for the X-Box.
The same goes for the Wii BTW.
I think these game 'appliances' are all about controlling the behavior of the consumer so it maximally profits the corporations who own the hardware. It's wrong. Sony, N
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Forgot a few points:
* Remove a feature that you marketed to customers via firmware updates
* Have your online network down for a month
* Have a security infrastructure that allows for 77 M customer records to be accessed
* Sue and harass those who modify the device they paid for
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So, make Linux the next OS for PS4! (Score:2)
So, make Linux the next OS for PS4!
That would help discussions with Microsoft.
Microsoft Has No One To Blame But Themselves (Score:3, Insightful)
They have been in the console market for ten years now and they still think they can buy/bribe/threaten their way to beating Sony and Nintendo.
Sony has some 21 first party studios.
Nintendo has about 10.
Microsoft has only 3 or so first party studios.
So Microsoft is forced to play the bribe and threaten crap with publishers since they have almost nothing in the way of exclusive games to compete with Sony and Nintendo's huge first party lineups.
No wonder they went from distant 2nd place last gen to last place this gen.
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They have been in the console market for ten years now and they still think they can buy/bribe/threaten their way to beating Sony and Nintendo.
Why? It worked on the PC didn't it?
Thats how the inferior Windows won and how Office beat the better Lotus 123 and Wordperfect. It is why the green screen ugly, slow, 640 k ram limited, pc speaker beeping, single tasking, CLI OS DOS won over the supperior Amiga and Macintosh at the time to dismay over people who had multimedia 10 years earlier.
The only reason IE stil
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I always thought it was because Ballmer was a fucking idiot ?
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In Asia no SSL is why IE still has 90% marketshare.
I've re-read this bit several times, and it makes less sense with every try. Care to explain?
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I might be wrong but I think the poster is talking about crypto export restrictions which made it illegal to export strong encryption in software for a while. They developed a way around it using ActiveX controls that were downloaded by the site rather than built into the browser, that of course only work in IE. When everyone else was switching to other browsers, all the infrastructure used IE only stuff (for encryption, internet banking, etc) therefore IE didn't lose it's spot at the top because no other b
NPAPI (Score:2)
Netscape/Firefox did not have an answer to ActiveX
Of course it did: NPAPI.
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Thats how the inferior Windows won and how Office beat the better Lotus 123 and Wordperfect. It is why the green screen ugly, slow, 640 k ram limited, pc speaker beeping, single tasking, CLI OS DOS won over the supperior Amiga and Macintosh at the time to dismay over people who had multimedia 10 years earlier.
WordPerfect was a DOS era product ported to every platform known to man - each with its own little fiefdom within the company. It was late to see Windows as a threat - it was late to get credible product on the market for Win 3.1 and Win 95.
The MS-DOS PC was positioned as an office workhorse. The natural upgrade path from the eight-bit world of CP/M. Sold with an industrial strength keyboard and a large - readable - 80 column display. It would prove equally at home on the shop room floor .
The modular des
Where did you get those numbers? (Score:3)
They have been in the console market for ten years now and they still think they can buy/bribe/threaten their way to beating Sony and Nintendo.
Sony has some 21 first party studios.
Nintendo has about 10.
Microsoft has only 3 or so first party studios.
Woah, wait a second. Where the crap did you get that? Wikipedia says that Sony has sixteen first-party studios [wikimedia.org], Nintendo has eighteen [wikimedia.org], and Microsoft has eleven [wikimedia.org]. Some of the games that are made by studios like Level-5, Next Level Games or Insomniac are actually second-party studios that are not directly owned by the companies they collaborate with (especially Level-5, who releases games pretty much everywhere).
I don't know where you did your research, but that's REALLY misleading (and a little biased towards
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Actually, 343 has done nothing so far. They're a dev that formed up when Microsoft lost Bungie to keep milking out Halo, but they've yet to release a game and have only announced Halo Anniversary, a 360 upgrade of Halo CE.
Lionhead and Turn 10 are the sole good first party developers (and even that is open to interpretation, with Lionhead mostly looking like they're not sure what they want to do) that Microsoft has specifically because they've been shutting down all the others. ACES, Digital Anvil, Ensemble
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I would love to see the other statistics you reference.
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"No wonder they went from distant 2nd place last gen to last place this gen."
Except they haven't.
They're still a clear 2nd place in terms of consoles sold, a clear first place in terms of games sold, and a near 1st place in terms of total profits (thanks to XBL subscriptions etc.). Even the historically very pro-Sony VGChartz.com accepts that the 360 is still ahead of Microsoft in terms of total units sold.
By what metric that puts them at last place in your world I've no idea, but their strategy has worked.
It is all meaningless anyway (Score:2)
With the Wii we know a console sold does not equal market share as it may be gathering dust in the closet. For the 360 we know they got an insane failure rate and especially American customers seem to think it is perfectly normal to buy a second one instead of insisted the first one be repaired for free.
Meanwhile Sony is not above a little channel stuffing and their hardware is of course used in super computers by the US. Since the US army can build cheap super computers out of them, why wouldn't others?
Wha
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That's a bit misleading. You say that the PS3 is in last place worldwide, and then you say that the 360 is the fastest selling console right now. Then you make the conclusion that the 360 is increasing its lead on the PS3.
However, you left out the part from TFA that mentions that it's the fastest selling console in the US. You can make no conclusion about worldwide sales figures based upon the sales figures in the US. You can't just mix data samples like that.
I don't care about the whole console war or anyt
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"Exclusive" Titles should be illegal (Score:3)
Personally I think "Exclusive" title arrangements should be illegal. But as long as developers can get a premium fee for making their work platform-exclusive, we'll have to put up with the practice.
Then again, given the shitty quality of some ports, maybe it'd be better if all developer's focused on one platform first and got it right before they tried tacking other development environments.
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Personally I think "Exclusive" title arrangements should be illegal.
On what grounds? If I develop software, and some company offers me an extra sweet deal if they get an exclusive, you want to tell me that I shouldn't legally be able to accept the offer?
Why stop with software? Should all companies that have exclusive deals be banned from continuing with those exclusive deals? Apple must sell phones through all carriers? Selena Gomez must ditch her exclusive clothing line at Kmart? Same with Kathy Ir
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The idea to ban exclusives deal with anti trust laws.
Sure you might get a sweet deal, but the point is it hurts consumers who want to play the games and are stuck without buying 3 different consoles because of agreements by the makers to limit compeition. The other argument if one console starts winning like Nintendo did earlier than you no longer get such sweet deals and if anything you have to pay them for the privledge to develop. It serves your best interest as a developer to have heavy competition too
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Are you seriously suggesting forcing developers to develop for multiple, independent platforms? You'd kill all but the largest studios, since a guy eating ramen isn't going to live long enough to get his game done for PS3 and XBox360 and Wii.
For that matter, if you're going to legally force people to not just make one version of a game, how do you decide what counts as a platform, and how many they must develop for? If I make a PS3 game, can I port it to a different model of PS3? Do I have to make a 3DS
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Are you seriously suggesting forcing developers to develop for multiple, independent platforms?
No, he's not. He's suggesting to force developers to not take money for developing for a single platform only. If a developer targets a single platform for reasons other than someone paying them, that's okay.
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Are you seriously suggesting forcing developers to develop for multiple, independent platforms?
No he didn't suggest that at all. So the rest of your argument is irrelevant.
All he said was the console manufacturer shouldn't be allowed to pay a developer to prevent them from releasing on another console.
If the console developer doesn't wish to release on a particular platform that's entirely up to the developer. He just can't accept a bribe from the console manufacturer to help him to come to that decision.
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Bob's Game (Score:2)
Are you seriously suggesting forcing developers to develop for multiple, independent platforms? You'd kill all but the largest studios, since a guy eating ramen isn't going to live long enough to get his game done for PS3 and XBox360 and Wii.
A single guy eating ramen is going to develop for the PC running Windows because Nintendo is known not to want individual developers working from home (source: warioworld.com). Case in point: Bob's Game, whose developer was denied a devkit solely due to working from home. I assume Sony is the same way, given its removal of Other OS from the PS3 system software. (I'd check for PS3 developer qualifications, but Sony TPR appears to have been down for four months.) So only large enough studios can afford to dev
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Anti-competitive isn't illegal, per se, in the USA. We already have anti-trust laws, which wouldn't apply here since there isn't a monopoly in consoles, oh yea, AND ITS A GAME. You don't have to buy it. Your law would open the door so that no store could ever have an exclusive deal with anyone. See my examples above. No exclusive clothing lines, etc. Absurd and anti-American/Capitalist as anything I've heard in a while.
Cartel (Score:2)
there isn't a monopoly in consoles
But there is a cartel: all three platforms are allegedly over-curated, and it's hard for indie developers to get on board. If there weren't a cartel, why wouldn't a PC maker try to make its home theater PC offering into the fourth console by promoting it to non-geeks?
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Clothing is different because you don't need to pay $300 up front before you can shop at K-mart.
Well, then DIG a little deeper yourself, twit (Score:2)
I can go into any of these stores you mention at WILL and buy these clothes from exclusive lines. NO prior investment needed. To play a game exclusive to a console I need to buy that console first.
So your examples have nothing in common with the situation.
Smart move kid.
Water is Wet? (Score:2)
A giant corporation with huge market power is pointing out that another giant corporation with huge market power is creating a barrier to entry that, gasp, favors inferior technology?
Does Sony not know what barriers to entry are? Do they think barriers to entry are used to protect superior goods and services? (hint: superior goods and services do not need protection) What -- if not such barriers -- do they think is the cost of entrenched incumbency?
Let me present the rough outline of the economic cost of en
Since 1985 (Score:2)
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Ahh (Score:2)
Sony Hypocritical conduct at its finest. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Wait, what? At least Sony's hard drives are user-replaceable out of the box, whereas Microsoft's are housed in special cases and arguably much more expensive. Sony also includes a wireless adapter within the console that Microsoft charges you 100 bucks for as a dongle.
Also, Sony might've made the headlines for removing Other OS functionality, but comparing that to other consoles is disingenuous considering they all never offered the option at all. Sony's console might still be the most open of the lot, all
No such thing as PSN Indie Games (Score:2)
Also, Sony might've made the headlines for removing Other OS functionality, but comparing that to other consoles is disingenuous considering they all never offered the option at all.
What is Sony's counterpart to Xbox Live Indie Games? Apple's counterpart is the App Store.
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Shall I feed the troll? Maybe.
Sony, who offered any form of Linux ever on two of its consoles, who allows you to rip CDs to your PS3 hard drive without DRM, who allows open outside connections from the PSN (such as to Steam) and who allows importing of mods from the PC (Unreal Tournament), is the closed platform?
Pop quiz, which console shipped with industry standard HDMI, industry standard USB, industry standard SATA user-replaceable hard drives, and previously chose to offer industry standard Firewire (PS
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Dicks, but superior dicks. (Score:2)
Microsoft are being dicks here, but XBL is head and shoulders above PSN precisely because it is a fully walled and controlled garden.
Or perhaps PSN is just overwhelmed by all those mandatory system update downloads to remove more PS3 features?
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Yes, Sony has a more open platform than Microsoft for online. Because it displaces the cost of bandwidth and servers to the publisher. That also lets the publisher enable cross-platform play if they want, but also means they don't have the sheer bandwidth MS has arranged for, so pluses and minuses.
Valve now loves PS3 for that reason. The PS3 hardware is a gigantic pain in the ass except for the capacity of the Blu-ray disk, which really made ports to PS3 like Orange Box awful. But Valve has craploads of ban
Console Gaming will decline anyway. (Score:3)
Console Gaming is on the decline anyway.
While the PS3, XBox360 and Wii are great systems on their own, Sony, Nintendo and even Microsoft are still dinosaurs of the Gaming industry.
PS3 sales have been inflated by the fact that it was the best value BluRay Player on the market for years. Now, sub-$200 BluRay Players are making the $400 PS3 look more like the niche product that it is.
While the Kinect has boosted XBox sales almost as much as the Red-Ring-Of-Death did, it is still a fad. People are using their Kinect for niche tasks like 3D-imaging rather than gaming. The Kinect was one of Make:Magazines most Hackable Gadgets, and that could a major factor in driving sales of what is still a niche product.
Wii Fit has made the Wii the "housewife's second-best-friend" of gaming consoles and has inflated sales as well. Once again, it is turning out to be just a fad. It is the most consumer-friendly gaming console of the big three, which explains it's much higher sales figures, but it is still of limited appeal to the average consumer.
While their always will be Dead-beat stoners who spend their profits from their hydroponic operation to continue buying XBox's and PS3, as well as high-pressure professionals who want some mindless downtime when they get home from work, Console gaming is not where it's at at the moment. I doubt their will be much of a Console Gaming comeback in the future either.
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Wow, after reading that I'm just pissing myself in anticipation to run out and buy a $1000 vacuum cleaner that can run console game ports and Norton at the same time!
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Selling games and peripherals on which you turn a profit is not what I'd call inflating. It's just business sense. The music game fad is dying out, but there was still mad profit made in there. Is that inflation or just taking advantage of a popular product?
Also, the PS3 is actually 250 now, not 400, and Microsoft's sales disregard RRODs because they were all covered by the extended warranty. In fact, the RROD affair hindered Microsoft by giving them huge losses for replacing faulty hardware, it didn't boos
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Console Gaming is on the decline anyway... I doubt their will be much of a Console Gaming comeback in the future either.
We're just seeing the typical slowdown closer to the end of product life cycles. Most everyone who wanted a current generation console has one (or two) by now - the market is becoming somewhat saturated. I'd wager that gamers will be just as excited when Sony and MS start talking about their next console offering. Besides which, sales of consoles is not really the best way to judge the health of the overall market. The real issue is: are games still being created and published for it? For all three maj
In favor of what? (Score:2)
Console Gaming is on the decline anyway.
In favor of what? PC gaming? Let me know when a PC maker starts selling a home theater PC that appeals to people other than geeks [pineight.com] and I'll agree.
Little fucking late (Score:2)
Sounds like sony is just sucking sour grapes. its perfectly fine when they do under the table deals to keep publishers from releasing multiplatform games sometimes up to a year later but no one else.
You lost this race sony, quit making excuses for your own doing. You have a white elephant that was more expensive than a neo-geo, took years to get your cost down, bet on blu-ray that most people dont give a shit about, took fucking forever to get games out, other OS, and the psn CC leak
yea its Microsoft's faul
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It would be interesting to see a parallel world where the 360's early runs didnt have such high failure rates, if Sony would still be in the race at all.... That microsoft was able to stay in the race themselves with such an insane failure rate says something...
Holy Crapping Crap!!! (Score:2, Informative)
As a former console developer I would like to know what that Sony asshat is smoking.
The SPUs, which have considerable processing power, do not make up for the rest of the crappy architecture of the PS3.
The OS is crap, the GPU is crap, the APIs are crap (except for gcm) and the security is crap. I was the guy who wrote the graphics engines and a lot of the SPU code (for the devloper I worked for) and I can tell you that the PS3 is a boat anchor for cross platform developers.
Here's an example; The SPUs seem
Corporations in glass houses, Sony... (Score:2)
Just saying.
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Only the last one still applies, and that applies to all OSes with the possible exception of OpenBSD. Windows has many flaws in UI design but its core is pretty solid these days and yes I am amazed to be writing these words.
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Where in the software-world do you see developers chucking out all their code ever 3 -4 years and starting over?
It's not true that Microsoft would be doing this. Wordpad in Windows 7 still offers you to insert a Paintbrush image.
Sony V Microsoft grudge match: GO! (Score:3, Insightful)