What exactly happened to the Playstation 3?

The launch titles apparently all suck, which is make or break for a platform. The cost is a hundred bucks more than XBox 360, which had a couple of decent launch titles, Wii's innovative control structure and Wii Sports (which ships free with the console) and the new Zelda game are really popular and well reviewed. They launched with very limited stock, people were getting killed waiting in line for them.

If Sony can hang on for a while until whenever the "killer" PS3 exclusive game comes out it will suceed. Otherwise it'll join the Sega Dreamcast, Sega Saturn, Turbografix 16, and Colecovision in silicon heaven.

This is anecdotal evidence, which is worth almost nothing, but every time I have been in a Target or other big store with a video games section, I have seen at least one PS3. I have never seen a Wii.

Again, this is not worth much, but it certainly strikes me as very odd.

PlayStation3 was/is waaaaaay overpriced. Only an "idiot in a hurry" would shell out $600 for a gaming system (even with Blu-Ray, which it looks like is sputtering in terms of sales). Wii is a more reasonable sell to families and the average consumer. Most people would probably spend the $$$ on an iPod anyway.

Another reason people aren't snatching up the PS3, in addition to the price, is that all the current games are not any better than ones on the Wii and the 360. I think once "prettier" and more interesting games, the PS3 will sell better.

One of the things Sony did with the PS2 was hype the machine to such a point that the comparable Sega Dreamcast curled up and died- and then delivered a machine that was immensely hard to write games for.

The PS3 is much the same. Lots of games lined up for the launch have failed to hit their ship dates because the machine is not as powerful as promised and difficult to create optimize code for. This should not be a big surprise because Sony have done very little right in the last 4 years.

But this time, the hype machine did not kill the xBox. In fact there are rumors of a new version of the Xbox360 - with a big hard drive, HDMi output, HD dvd drive and 65 nanometer chips which will run cooler (and hopefully mean a quieter fan)

I'll give Howard 6 months.

C.

On the other hand the PS3 is selling well to those people who want the lowest cost Blu-Ray player.

My wife and I just bought a PS*2* last week (PS was flaking, DVD player died, one PS controller was dead... made sense), and when running around looking for a copy of Katamari, we found that every game store within 30 miles had at least the first of the two following signs up:

"We have no Wiis"

"We do have 360s and PS3s"

I'm looking at this from a Finnish viewpoint. Our PS3 launch is in March.

HDTV adoption is very low. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are not in stores yet. This bodes well for the PS3 to actually hand a win to Blu-Ray in this market - the small amount of people who have HDTV, the early adopters, are also the kind of people who'd buy the PS3 even if it costs a little more than the other consoles.

If you don't care about Blu-Ray, the 360 is already better value, and stands to become even better through a revision (fixing noise problems, adding HDMI, bigger hard drive maybe? No way they'd be putting on a HD-DVD drive. Microsoft has very clearly said they are not going to make gamers pay for technology that might not even win the format war). For the average gamer the 360 without noise would be a really good deal.

The PS3 can run Linux. Maybe it'll become a decent media center? I don't know exactly what the 360 Media Extender functionality does, but I doubt it will do what I want, which is to grab divx from my Linux / OS X machine and stream it, and have some too-big-to-stream HD on the console hard drive ready to be played.

If either console had a fully unlocking modchip available, its shares would go up by about 200% in my book. I want media center functionality. I want to put in a huge hard drive, copy the game disc images in there and keep the optical media as backups. I want to play imports like I do on my PS2, and sadly all the non-handheld consoles still have region locking.

As the PS2 has staggeringly higher market penetration than the XBox, the PS3 has an edge in backwards compatibility. Also, I have the general impression that PS2 gamers buy controllers, which can represent signifcant sunk cost, while XBox gamers don't. I have over 200 sunk in controllers myself. Some of my friends have Guitar Hero guitars, dance mats, etc. The controllers I have actually make the price gap between the 360 and the PS3 disappear.

The slow start is a problem as the 360 gets too much marketshare, but PS3 can still have a good future through exclusive games and by expanding its functionality. Let's make this clear: I'm not expecting the latter from Sony, but from the modchip makers. Also I think they need to very clearly embrace the indie game market like Microsoft is doing with Live Arcade. That stuff is hot. They'll have Settlers of Catan on the Live Arcade soon. 8)

For those of us old enough to remember, this is the Atari ST vs Amiga battle all over again.

In Europe, the ST initially sold very well while the Amiga faltered because of its price being a better machine. However by the middle of their lifespans, the Amiga grew and totally killed the ST and still sold years after the ST had died.

Its a shame the PS3 has a wobbly start, but eventually I think as the price of the blu-ray comes down and the PS3 is reduced in price, the PS3 will kill the 360. I think this is a longer term gamble by sony, that wont pay back for a couple of years. The Ps3 is a machine that could easily last for 6-8 years, while the 360 might last 4-5 if lucky.

A recent Article over at Arstechnica, shows that this holiday, the biggest seller was the older PS2!

What did you THINK would happen to it?

For the record, did any of those stores say how many Wii's they've been receiving versus how many PS3's they've been receiving?

Because sales statistics claim the Wii has been stagnant for the past few weeks, but the PS3 is still moving forward.

Not that the Wii still hasn't crushed PS3 sales by a factor of 2, but it seems like the PS3 has better sustained output while Nintendo had just stockpiled the Wii (smartly) before Christmas but is now is just unable to ship more than a trickle of units.

I still personally think the PS3 will do better long term. Wii's doing great right now because of Zelda, but the graphics suck and it has no lifespan. The price is tempting until you realize it's a slightly better GameCube. A year from now when real next-gen games like GTA and MGS4 come out, it'll just be an eyesore.

I might just get Zelda for my GameCube and skip the Wii (the only other games I'm apt to get for it are Mario Kart and Mario Galaxy, but I still don't have Mario Kart or Mario Sunshine for the Gamecube, so I'm not forking over my money for it just yet). The only other reason I'd do it is so I can throw out my NES, SNES, and N64, but I'm not exactly excited about spending a few hundred so I can spend another few hundred rebuying all my old games :/

It's not about the graphics though. It's about being fun to play. The Wii is definitely fun to play, and has a unique way of interacting with the console that definitely does help you feel more "in the game." Good graphics are only there to help the game feel more "real." The Wii accomplishes this same effect through the controller. And cuts the price significantly in doing so.

And the PS3 isn't fun to play?

The Wii controller is innovative for sure, but everything I've heard is just that it's gimmicky and doesn't add any real value to the games.

Nintendo doesn't have a monopoly on "fun."

Also, it's a little disingenuous to say that they "cut the price" when they've essentially repackaged a GameCube with a faster processor.

No, what I mean is, the only reason graphics are there is to help you get more involved in the game. It seems more real. Nintendo accomplished that in a cheaper way, by changing the controller. The controller (have you used it?) really does help everything seem more real, even without any sort of realistic graphics.

The Wii is indeed just a repackaged GameCube internally, but externally that controller is a real asset.

I would definitely buy a Wii over a PS3 because of the price. Sony made a big mistake including a Blu-Ray drive in the PS3. It drives up the price without any real benefits. Even if price weren't an issue, the Wii would still get my vote, though by a narrower margin. I am willing to sacrifice graphics for the Wiimote, though it would be nice to have both.

The PS3 is too over priced. Its getting its butt handed to it by the Wii. The Wii is still selling out and its almost at 5 million sold. The PS3 has harldy breached its 1st million. And its not because there arent as many available like the fanboys will tell you. I've seen numerous places with PS3's just sitting there while they were sold out of Wii's.

PS3 really doesnt have anything going for it. To me it just seems like they wanted to sell you a blu-ray player. Not a PS3.

You're comparing (incredibly exaggerated) world sales of the Wii to US sales of the Playstation.

The Wii has sold around 3.5 million world wide, but only 1.4 in the US, versus around .9 million PS3's in the US, or 1 million if you believe Sony's figures.

I thought Wii hit 4 mill already? and Ps3 has hardly sold over 1 mill in NA and only half a Mill in Japan. Those are the only areas its available in. So yea no matter what way you slice it PS3 is still below 2 mill.

nexgenwars.com

Cost!!

PS3 will come down, will eventually have more games for it, and will sell. Wait and you see. As there's not a lot of good games yet, but come Christmas 2007 it will be cheaper, and there will be lots of games available.

I have a Wii, and I like it, but the buzz is starting to ware off. I don't think I will feel strongly about it next year.

If people bought the console soley as a DVD player - it would be a disaster for Sony.

The PS3 is heavily subsidsed - Sony lose money on each console sold. The only way they recoup this loss is through game sales. (not DVD sales)
Sony needs an attach rate of 6-10 games before the PS3 goes into profit. If half the buyers never buy games this makes things really bad.

C.

If Blu-ray ends up winning the hi-def movie war, I will probably get a PS3. From a gaming perspective, at least at this point, the 360 is superior and things may well stay that way for this gen of systems.

Not that I was planning to buy a PS3 but it is certainly easier to add a new type of controller than improve the graphics in a console. Unless Nintendo has a patent lock on every way to add motion controllers so no one can replicate the remote.

That seems unlikely given some of the the other VR prior art and InterLink's patent. Wii's IR sensor thingy may be one of the cheapest methods but others should be available.

I'm buying a 360...not because of hardware but because of Mass Effect...a 360 exclusive. If I were a fan of some PS3 exclusive I'd likely buy that instead but I like BioWare RPGs...tho' my platform of choice is the PC for RPGs.

Heck...which PS3 exclusives are still left? Either way...Wii isn't even in the running for me. There are no titles I care that much about on the Wii platform except Zelda and only because I played Zelda waaaaay back when...and Wii wont scale with the 360 and PS3 when the other two platforms get better in 2007/2008 as devs more fully exploit the hardware.

Wii is not getting anything close to Gears of War, Resistance:Fall of Man, etc and these are early titles that will be eclipsed in the future. And that's because its a souped up GameCube.

Vinea

Apparently the porn industry has just formally backed HD-DVD - citing manufacturing costs. (and Sony's resistance to adult content)

So that's it. The war's over.

C.

Do you have to post this on every thread?

We already carefully and explicitly explained how stupid that notion is.

OK, nothing "happened" to the PS3 and it certainly isn't a flop. Inventories are extremely low, whether or not you can see them here and there. I'm so sick of Wii fanboys and the anti-PS3 crowd posting anecdotal evidence and then interpreting it to mean the console is a flop.

Dave


I'm sorry, but you sound like a moron when you say that.


A surplus? A surplus? Because you can find ONE of them in each store you visit?
Man...if that's the standard than Circuit City has a HUGE surplus of HDTVS. Christ...they haev them in STOCK! They must be failure too!

spam:


Yeah, it's so overpriced that they can't make enough of them to meet demand. It's so overpriced that they are losing $200 on every console.

Blu-Ray is not "sputtering." There is no way to predict in terms of hard data which format is winning. And btw, this "idiot" just paid $600 for the console that plays Blu-Ray better thant he standalone players and has the best graphics capability of any of the consoles. Not everyone buys a console because it's more family friendly.

You guys are literally rooting for the console to fail. It's so...dumb.

It wont fail, and I dont want it too, it is the best console, and contains alot of cutting edge tech. If anything, its slightly ahead of its time. It needs a couple of years to show its potential, and for the rest of the industry to catch up with it. When that happens, im confident it will be the best selling console by far.

It could still do with a price reduction though :/

No need to take any sides here. But it is becoming very clear that the PS3 is simply not the runaway success that Sony wanted it to be.

The initial sell-through of consoles was not great - because Sony could not manufacture the units. The launch titles were very poor, despite Sony having a head start on Microsoft. And in a head-to-head comparison with its main rival, the PS3 just does not look that good.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=22215

And although developers will not come out and say this publically (because of the suicidal nature of such statements). It is fair to say that the development community are not happy with the performance of the machine - or the ease of creating games.

Sony did something identical with the PS2. In 2001 the hypestorm worked. And despite the lousy hardwarem the PS2 became a self-fulfilling prophecy of success.

This time, the hype didn't work. And to be completely honest, I *am* happy to see Sony get a bloody nose, not because I am rooting for the others, but because I don't like to see these tactics succeeding. Companies should focus on delivering, great products to customers.

But Sony have been playing a different game.

C.

Apparently, at least 750k PS3s had been sold in the US market as of mid December, so there may well be more than 1 million of them out there. Nintendo probably sold more Wiis, but that's not my point. I have nothing against the Wii.

The point, rather, is that there are more than a million Blu-ray players out there, and polls seem to suggest that the Blu-ray feature of the PS3 has been a major contributor to its sales. In contrast, there are fewer than 200k HD-DVD players. At the moment, the PS3 is a trojan horse. It's not going away anytime soon, and regardless of the cheekiness of the Wii or the relative maturity of the 360, the PS3 makes a well defined value proposition to the consumer.


Your bias against non-linear programming is quite well established at this point (check older threads). Whether or not the PS3 succeeds is one matter, but the success of the Cell is a very different one -- and all signs seem to point to the Cell being a huge success. Programmers who don't want to get used to massive multicore-ing should consider alternative career paths. The other option is to license A tool like this one which claims to provide a much more yesterday-friendly Cell API/IDE than the one available in the PS3 dev kit.

So what would you pay $600 for... an iPhone or a PS3.

I'd take the phone.

Hmm. I don't want an iPhone until it's 3G, and I don't want a PS3 until I'm ready to get a nice TV. Can I get $600 off of a macbook instead?

Ummmmmm... no.

(Grin.)
If Cell programming costs more for equivalent functionality - (which appears to be the case) - then yup, sell me a ticked to Biasville. I hereby declare my bias against even higher development costs. Games development is unfortunately mired with the unfortunate obligation of making something called "profits".

I think the Cell seems like a great solution for video compression etc.
It's clever. But it is the wrong sort of cleverness for videogames. The bottleneck in modern games is often the branch-frenzy in actor behavior code. And the Cell is not the solution.

Meanwhile the 3 general purpose CPUs in the 360 seem to be causing far fewer headaches.

C.

Well, Cell is the direction the industry is heading. We're not seeing 10GHz sequential machines, and the 360's Xenon isn't going to scale anywhere except towards Cell. CPU power and heat are big considerations, too, and they didn't used to be. The business and EE communities want the Cell's GFlop/watt, which means that we'll be seeing more and more software toolkits for it as new products are developed. If a product that will undoubtedly be profitable can't be realized without Cell, then it doesn't really matter if the development phase will cost more. Software development is always slower to get with the program. If it weren't, it wouldn't be using a syntax as error-prone as C's. New Cell toolkits should help.

Sony has definitely screwed up - but I don't think that it is bad enough to kill the PS3. The PS3 has the best hardware by far, and if you add the wireless dongle and HD-DVD player to the 360, the PS3 is less expensive ($599 for the 60gig PS3, and $399+$109+$199 = $707 for the xbox, and once the new xbox hardware comes out in a few months I think the price will be even more).

- you can run linux on the PS3
- the hard drive is easy to replace
- bluetooth, built in wireless, the xbox requires lots of extra dongles that the PS3 does not
- much lower noise level

All they need now is better games...

"PS3 Report, part 1
posted at 11/17/2006 03:06 PM PST

Ok, it's been an exciting day today. After resisting the urge to sell this baby, I've decided to enjoy it. Ebay, be damned!

First, the actual hardware. It has a glossy exterior, not too unlike the PSP, ironically. The system can stand vertically, or sit horizontally, like it's predecessors. But, this time, you can rotate the 'PS' logo so it's upright no matter which way you have it--a nice touch. All of the ports are in appropriate places to hook up accessories and cables to. No daunting, arm-stretching is necessary. I will note that there are no USB ports on the rear side. Not a huge deal, but I would've appreciated one or two for a camera, in order to hide some of the cables.

The controller, as mentioned before, is quite a masterpiece. I know rumble is gone, but you have to appreciate what is still in there. The controller is light as a feather. I found myself wondering where the battery was. It is internal and from what I could tell, you cannot remove the battery--odd. There is a small reset button on the back of each SIXAXIS, in case you need to re-orient your controllers to the system. Plugging in the controller was as easy as plugging the USB cord in and then plugging the small end into the controller. It immediately worked. Sometimes when switching between media, you need to press the 'PS' button in order to re-assign the controller again, but that didn't happen to often to become annoying. While in wireless mode, the controller performs great. No wireless-lag that most cheap wireless controllers suffer from. It's perfectly responsive and impossible to tell the difference between the wired and wireless during a game. One thing that you Xbox 360 players will notice is a lack of a headset port. This is a shame, but hopefully Sony will release a wireless headset, negating the need for a port on the controller. Wireless>Wired after all.

The system buttons themselves are a marvelous thing, let me tell you. First of all, when you turn power on, you barely have to touch the thing. I makes a very quiet, but almost tactile beeping noise when it powers up...almost aircraft like. It really did fool me the first time, because at first glance, I thought to myself no way THAT is the power on/off button. It's something you need to do yourself before you can appreciate it. The eject button is the same way--just a feather touch activates it.

Perhaps my favorite hardware improvement is the slot drive. As dependable as tray drives are, having a slot drive really adds some sex appeal to your entertainment center. Someone else had mentioned the bright lights on the front of the console. I have to agree that the blue and green power and disc lights are nice to look at and not distracting, even when watching your favorite blu-ray movie. There is also wireless activity and hard-drive access lights, but they are hardly noticable, and an amber color.

Next thing I noticed is the noise the Playstation 3 puts out, or the lack thereof. I can confidently say that it's at least as quiet as a PS2, probably closer to Gamecube quiet. You will not notice any noise from it when you are playing. This, to me, was the most suprising part of the experience today...a quiet machine that's as powerful as this. When I placed my hand on the right side, I could indeed feel some heat coming out of the machine, but it doesn't feel like an oven, like the Xbox 360 does. There seems to be 2 different major areas where heat dissipates from the system. It's hard to tell where exactly the intake is, since there are just so many grill holes throughout.

Ok, now on to the testing of the system. First off, I poppped in "Talladega Nights" movie that came with it. It looked great in HD (720p mode). I watched the whole movie, just to see if there would be any hiccups, glitches, or bugs during playback. Not a one.

Next, I played "Resistance: Fall of Man". It ran flawlessly.

To test the backward-compatibility, I ran Okami, a PS2 game. It requires you to make a virtual hard drive memory card. I made one with no problems. It even lets you select which slot the PS2 games will see the memory card, slot 1 or 2. Okami played great and had no glitches.

Next, onto the PS1 test. For this test, I selected a generation 1 PS1 game, "Raiden Collection" from 1995. The game loaded up without a hitch.

I have to say, seeing your older PS1 and PS2 games being played through an HDMI compatible TV is amazing. I'm glad Sony decided to support older games.

Next, the Cross Media Bar (XMB). Upon turning on the system, the PS3 plays a short symphony orchestral clip as it's power-up tune. Very classy. It reminds me of a sound you might hear if heaven were to open up and bright lights beam down on your mortal face. Once into the interface, it prompted me to do an update to the software. This part was clunky and not nearly as user-friendly as the Xbox 360 updates are. It required me to agree to a user agreement, followed by several "I agree" and "hit enter to start" messages. Not a huge deal if you are patient. After the update was complete, I browsed the interface some more. It appears to support a USB mouse and keyboard out of the box. I didn't test this, but will soon.

Going to the internet browser, it feels almost exactly like the PSP browser. It contains much of the same functionality. If you don't have a keyboard/mouse, it's going to take you forever to type any URL, so it may not be useful to you unless you don't have a computer in your house. The browser does work just fine. I went to Sony's webpage and clicked around. The browser software isn't extremely pretty, but it get's the job done. It's no Firefox, but I like it ok just the same.

Just like the Xbox 360, the PS3 requires you to register your information if you are to play multiplayer games or use the online store. I registered and got a username within 5 minutes. It was nice to see the Sony network was performing well, despite it was system launch day. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that no one is playing a PS3...everyone's selling them. I digress. After registering a user name and password, I browsed the online store. There were only two games available for download. I was hoping to see some PS1 games available. Nope. The prices for the two games were 7.99 and 9.99 respectively. A little pricey for some games that no one's heard of yet. Especially when compared to XBL download gems like Geometry Wars Evolved and Hexic. I will say I appreciate Sony not using "points", and instead going with actual dollar amounts. Yay for logic!

Browsing further, I discovered just how many devices the PS3 could theoretically support. It allowed me to register a bluetooth device, which I can only suspect would be something like a PSP, ect.

On the front of the PS3, you will find a compact flash, type 1, an SD slot, and a memory stick slot. I plan on using the memory stick slot, since it's compatible with my PSP memory stick Pro Duo.

I haven't had a chance to test all the features, but I plan on posting more of my findings after a week or so. Thanks for reading.

Pros:

Sleek, Sexy exterior. Powerful new hardware, backwards compatible too. Ultra-quiet. Blu-ray player.

Cons:

High price. Not 100% backwards compatible. No intuitive chatting system. No headset capability out of the box. Online service lacks polish. Not many Downloadable games.

Bottom Line:

Is it worth $600? Yes"

Man oh man...and you think the guy you're quoting sounds like a moron...

1) Console sales and TV sales are two entirely different things. While there are 100s of different types of TVs, with different brands and different features, there are three main (this-gen) consoles out right now. When one isn't flying off sales when its INITIAL FIGURES OF DELIVERY WERE CUT IN HALF, it isn't a good sign. When eBay markup only lasted for two weeks, after which the sellers started to lose an average of 50 dollars / console? Again, not a good sign. So far, quite a few things about the PS3 show a (current) lack of demand.

2) The ancedotes shared in this thread are, multiple times, noted for their value of less-than-nothing, seeing as they are only ancedotal. The posters state this.

3) When people say the PS3 is overpriced, they aren't talking about the hardware that Sony is selling. It is hard to argue for a better Blu-Ray player. WHAT THEY ARE ARGUING is that it is too overpriced as far as consoles go, many (myself included) think that the current price tag is too steep for a general audience.

I personally have none of the next-gen consoles, not a huge fan of any of them - but your post was, in a word, ridiculous.

Market forces are a brilliant Darwinian mechanism for setting prices.

C.

Update - hot off the presses.

The Market says.... $600 is too high a price.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=22243

When the PS3 has Final Fantasy (Versus) XIII, and White Knight, I'll pick one up.

Until then, my Playstation 2 is more then enough to keep me busy (whenever I actually have time for it these days) and I'm not in a hurry to pick up a 360 any time too soon either.

That leaves the Wii, which I don't really have a good excuse for, I just don't want to buy a new console right now.

Sebastian