[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

It's amazing how we've arrived at the conclusion that not only was Sony not arrogant at all, it's actually not their strategy that's wrong but the entire market.

What amazes me is that Sony can only be 100% arrogant with that determining every action they make, or 100% innocent and humble, and that some people can't even consider that such polarized views aren't the only explanations...

[Arwin]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

They were arrogant. They've thought they can force their new HD media format down the users' throats, and make them pay at least half the cost of their new dominant position, because their position is strong enough even for that.
All the apologism is beyond me, that people go out of their way to defend a greedy corporation...

By the way... As of now there's about 2.4 million BR discs sold worldwide. DVD in the US is at 7.2 billion.

Ironically I'm not taking issue with the 'they were arrogant' part. Very obviously, they were arrogant. But it is equally much beyond my comprehension that you don't see that at best, if Microsoft was right that DVD is large enough for this generation, then that was their brilliance, because they noticed that something that had been an essential part of every preceding generation's move forward, was suddenly no longer important in this generation.

Never mind that it's beyond me that people fail to see that BluRay is actually necessary for this generation of consoles (I may have my own limitations), but it is very weird for me to see Sony being faulted for assuming that BluRay in PS3 made as much sense as DVD and CD did in the PS2 and PS1. The fact that there were actually even more benefits to Sony this time seems to blind some people to the fact that all the benefits of the previous generations are also still there.

Time will tell not whether or not sticking to DVD was a sacrifice, but how much of a sacrifice.

[deathkiller]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

The HDD is there for Home, in particular for the microtransaction part. Sony wants a piece of the online revenue pie and it's their choice of implementation for it.

Square Enix asked Sony to make the HDD default for the MMO games but even if you add all the revenue of every microtransaction it won't justify a HDD in every PS3, using FLASH storage would be better in the long term (lower capacity but far better minimum cost). I don't see the current Sony's online content strategy bringing them a lot revenue in sort/long term.

As long as you don't use a proprietary/exclusive storage consumers can use the storage that they want for cheap (you can use an external USB HDD with the PS3 if you want).

[Paul_G]

Originally Posted by Arwin

Ironically I'm not taking issue with the 'they were arrogant' part. Very obviously, they were arrogant. But it is equally much beyond my comprehension that you don't see that at best, if Microsoft was right that DVD is large enough for this generation, then that was their brilliance, because they noticed that something that had been an essential part of every preceding generation's move forward, was suddenly no longer important in this generation.

Never mind that it's beyond me that people fail to see that BluRay is actually necessary for this generation of consoles (I may have my own limitations), but it is very weird for me to see Sony being faulted for assuming that BluRay in PS3 made as much sense as DVD and CD did in the PS2 and PS1. The fact that there were actually even more benefits to Sony this time seems to blind some people to the fact that all the benefits of the previous generations are also still there.

Time will tell not whether or not sticking to DVD was a sacrifice, but how much of a sacrifice.

Isn't moving to a new generation of media each console generation unsustainable though? If you think about it, CD had been around for at least 10 years before consoles started using it. DVD was around for 4 years before consoles made use of it, and now BD is in use at pretty much the launch of the media. Next generation, what can they do? I personally think MS saw the same thing, and decided a high definition format wasn't viable. Next generation is likely to be much more about digital distribution, so maybe it won't be such an issue, but maybe we're at a point where demand for increasing storage looks to be outstripping the physical means, and MS and Sony have simply gone in different directions. Who is right isn't something we can say right now, though i have to say had it been my choice, i would have done what MS did. DVD media is cheap, so extra discs are no problem, and it never did the Playstation any harm to have multi-disc games.

[Arwin]

Originally Posted by Paul_G

Isn't moving to a new generation of media each console generation unsustainable though? If you think about it, CD had been around for at least 10 years before consoles started using it. DVD was around for 4 years before consoles made use of it, and now BD is in use at pretty much the launch of the media. Next generation, what can they do?

I agree that for next generation that could be an interesting problem. Most people feel that digital distribution will become the norm by then, which is possible. It is certainly not extremely likely that we'll see another disc-based media that soon, though they may up the amount of layers on the BD-drive to 8. Then again, there's also the 1TB new optical 3d stuff, so you never know, but again, it doesn't seem too likely.

Does that mean that next-gen software won't need any kind of solution to this problem though? And so for this generation the issue was a little more obvious - we were preparing to move to HD and BD was coming for HD media anyway, so the choice was easy, especially for Sony. Microsoft was in a hurry and they chose their priorities, but it was a surprise to many that they didn't at least go for the built in HD-DVD drive (something which now seems to have been completely forgotten).

I personally think MS saw the same thing, and decided a high definition format wasn't viable. Next generation is likely to be much more about digital distribution, so maybe it won't be such an issue, but maybe we're at a point where demand for increasing storage looks to be outstripping the physical means, and MS and Sony have simply gone in different directions.

Which of the two platform holders is actually selling retail games online today though? So I wouldn't go so far as saying that they have 'simply' gone into different directions. They both know what is coming, but Sony also believes that BluRay will be necessary in the transition period and believe they are right.

and it never did the Playstation any harm to have multi-disc games.

But that was in a time when everyone said that CD based games were overkill and completely unnecessary. Do you catch the irony there? I guarantee that unless the PS3 dies an unexpected and sudden death, I'm willing to bet we will even see multi-disc BD games. Is the situation really that different from the days of the PS1 and the CD? I'm still not seeing it. Whenever someone like AlphaWolf sarcastically remarks that we need it for uncompressed audio', I remember identical comments on how CD based games 'need it for pointless FMV sequences'.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Paul_G

Next generation is likely to be much more about digital distribution.

I seriously question that. It might have a stronger presence, well it's bound to, but I doubt you could rely on it alone without recourse to use a hard media. Even if most games don't exceed a DVD this gen, they'll be bound to next-gen with the more complex assets. 20 GB downloads aren't very practical on 2 and 8 Mb broadband uplinks which a lot of folk might still be on. Then there's the storage to worry about. Maybe a terabyte HDD will be feasible, but this gen the choice of HDDs has been woefully below the large-scale mainstream. More likely we'll get a 250GB HDD IMO, or even smaller capacity in flash mem. Chances are there won't be much room for storing lots of games, which means having to manage them deleting unused ones and then redownloading when you want to play. If people aren't given a choice, it'll happen, but people won't like it. ISPs won't like it! They whinge and moan on anything above a few gigs a month here in the UK! A commitment to no disc means chopping out potential customers. Perhaps the console company/ies will decided the savings are worth it, and those people will just have to go without consoles, but I wouldn't go that route myself.

Instead high capacity discs which'll be way beyond anything actually needed for games, which'll probably not even hit 50 GB tops next-gen, will be cheap and more than capable, and dependable up until to world has a strong enough, broad enough internet infrastructure to handle a download only system that offers the same level of experience, and also appease the retail chains.

[Laa-Yosh]

Originally Posted by Paul_G

...

Exactly. MS decided against the transition not because they've believed DVD would be enough, but because the next gen media format wasn't ready at the beginning of this generation.

Speed is a far more limiting factor anyway. I want instant loads, or at least 3 seconds instead of 30, and BR can't solve that either.

[Crossbar]

The loading times can probably be reduced significantly on both the 360 and PS3 if they organise the data cleverly on the disk and store some data on the HDD as well, allow background loading etc.. I guess it is has not been prioritised much so far, the loading times of the games for prev-gen were significantly enhanced in many titles over time.

[archangelmorph]

Originally Posted by Crossbar

The loading times can probably be reduced significantly on both the 360 and PS3 if they organise the data cleverly on the disk and store some data on the HDD as well, allow background loading etc.. I guess it is has not been prioritised much so far, the loading times of the games for prev-gen were significantly enhanced in many titles over time.

No comparison considering the sheer amount of data required off the disc was much lower...

Devs have consistently been battling with loading requirements for a while and many games have very few whilst others still have pretty noticable ones..

[Carl B]

I think the thread through post #225 has been very constructive and civil, but it's starting to get a little heated and hostile. Let's try to remember that this thread is just a high-level reflection on Sony's strategy/environment leading up to the PS3 launch. No reason for folk to get so worked up either in defense of decisions or in accusation, as most of what we're talking about is already in the past anyway.

[one]

Originally Posted by aselto

The fact that the biggest queues at Leipzig Games Convention were to Wii Sports, game available for 9 months already, tells you exactly why Nintendo is beating the competition so much at the moment (and is likely to do so for a long while, probably for Wii's entire lifespan).

The fact that PS3 has Blu-Ray and 360 does not will not ultimately matter in the grand scheme of things. It is software that will decide winner between the two.

Yeah, software. Wii Sports is a software enabled by the remote. Why do you pick up Wii Sports in the former part and then dismiss Blu-ray (and Cell, standard HDD) in the latter part?

[Shifty Geezer]

Okay Laa-Yosh and others, here's an analogy that I hope explains my point.

A minibus of third-rate Brit Rockers, the infamous 'Greek Sheep' band, pulls into town for a gig. The streets are packed with parked cars and the only clear place to park within reasonable walking distance from the venue is in front of someone's drive. The level-headed drummer driver clearly isn't happy with parking here and blocking someone in. The discussion in the van is such (sans copious amounts of swearing)...

Lead Singer : "Just park here man. We're flippin' Rock Stars! We can park wherever we want!"
Drummer : "But we'd be blocking these people in."
Lead Guitar : "There's nowhere else to go. These streets are marmalade, man."
Bassist : "What about the car park back that way? Had spaces."
Lead Guitar : "You wanna lug our gear all that way?"
Drummer : "Maybe we can drive around a bit and a space will appear."
Singer : "Didn't you hear me?! We're Rock Stars! We're flippin' late for the gig as it is!"
Lead Guitar : "Yeah, but that skirt was worth it!" (lecherous sniggers all round)
Drummer : "Well, I can't really lug my kit from that car park. It's gonna be a trek as it is."
Bassist : "They're probably not gonna notice us here anyway. It's only a couple of hours."
Lead Singer : "C'mon guys! Stop wastin' time. My public can't last without me!"

So the drummer reluctantly pulls up in front of the drive. They carry their gear in two trips, get a bawling for being late to which the drummer, bassist and guitarist apologise, and then the Singer notices he left behind his radio-mic transmitter so goes back to the van.

When there he meets the furious owner of the home who's driveway they are blocking.
"What the hell do you think you're doing! I've been here 5 minutes. You can't damn well block my drive!"
"Shut it, bitch! We're soddin' Rock Stars and we can do whatever we want!". The singer grabs his stuff and leaves the woman blocking the road with her oversized SUV as a number of other drivers behind her start beeping their horns.

Does the woman think the van owners are arrogant? Was the behaviour and mentality of the Singer arrogant? Was the decision making process the led the Drummer to park in front of the drive based on an arrogant over-opinion of self-worth, or a rational consideration of the pros and cons of the different available choices?

[Carl B]

Shifty between this rock-star analogy and your previous 'day at the races' analogy, I'm starting to worry about you man.

[scooby_dooby]

Originally Posted by Arwin

.Compare this with other small potatoes game series like Final Fantasy, in which for instance X-2 allowed you to go back to any part of the world map whenever you liked.

As does Blue Dragon.

[dobwal]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

I seriously question that. It might have a stronger presence, well it's bound to, but I doubt you could rely on it alone without recourse to use a hard media. Even if most games don't exceed a DVD this gen, they'll be bound to next-gen with the more complex assets. 20 GB downloads aren't very practical on 2 and 8 Mb broadband uplinks which a lot of folk might still be on. Then there's the storage to worry about. Maybe a terabyte HDD will be feasible, but this gen the choice of HDDs has been woefully below the large-scale mainstream. More likely we'll get a 250GB HDD IMO, or even smaller capacity in flash mem. Chances are there won't be much room for storing lots of games, which means having to manage them deleting unused ones and then redownloading when you want to play. If people aren't given a choice, it'll happen, but people won't like it. ISPs won't like it! They whinge and moan on anything above a few gigs a month here in the UK! A commitment to no disc means chopping out potential customers. Perhaps the console company/ies will decided the savings are worth it, and those people will just have to go without consoles, but I wouldn't go that route myself.

I agree. I see digital distribution becoming apart of TV and movies sales but outside of downloadable game content we see now, I doubt full fledge next gen console titles will make the transition. We are bound to see optical media for quite some time.

However, the move to digital distribution by other facets of the entertainment industry is bound to affect the profit potential of any HD optical media.

I read HD optical media licensing fees will be worth 10 billion over 10 years. However, with the current format wars slowing adoption and digital distribution becoming more and more mainstream, a wonder if that figures includes those variables.

I got this off of gaf posted by chris0701http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=202533

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/fina.../07q2_sony.pdf

Some interesting figures.

Sony's PS3 LTD shipped figures are at 5.9 million
Sony's game divison lost an additional 841 million
Sony's game division won't see a profit until fiscal year ending in March 09 (changed from 08)

If the PS3 doesn't rebound some of that 10 billion over 10 years will go to cover the billion dollars lost due to the PS3. Whats worse if the PS3 doesn't rebound and BluRay doesn't become the standard format for HD then this will probably turn out to be one of the biggest gaffes in CE history.

[TheChefO]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

how is Sony's position any different to MS's?

MS launched first while aggressively going after devs for support.

Sony sat back on that front while launching a year later (as soon as BD was ready!) and still didn't have full support from their internal devs. All the while knowing their machine would be facing an uphill battle with a very high price and a headstart by ms.

I'd called the comment arrogant, and if they thought the brand alone would enough to sell the device when they planned it, then I'd call that presumptuous too.

If the comment wasn't matched to the action, the action/plan alone would just be stupid. When combined with the arrogant comment, it becomes overconfidence/arrogance. Whatever, the word really isn't what's important. What IS important is their actions ... or in some cases, lack thereof.

Not admirable light, just not prejudiced in the negative. I don't understand how the complaints you levy against Sony don't apply to the others...

The only other one that possibly falls into this category is Nintendo, but even they were aiming to load their lunch with familiar/successful software, but much of it was delayed.

Difference is, they were trying because they knew their strategy was a risk.

MS had an okay launch lineup, but they were a year ahead of the comp and they secured gta4 and aimed for halo3 to counter ps3.


Sony acted as if failure was not an option, thus, load up the machine with as many potential revenue streams as possible. Such a strategy risked the only sure thing they had going for them:
Games/playstaion.

I think the latter case is a reasonable portrayal of what happened in every one of these companies. There were flip-charts and white-boards and brain-stormings and market research and costings galore. No-one just sat down and threw together an idea expecting they'd be number one sales within one year of launch. Whatever face a company presents, the background is invariably the same. It's the only way to do effective business. Market research, costings, analyses, focus groups, and predictions, and arguments between development team members with different ideas, to try and find the best direction to go.

No doubt, but at the end ofd the day, Management decided this was not only the best route for success, but the only route. Lack of any contigency plan suggests this and I'm quite sure their research didn't tell them that this was a slam dunk plan.

[Laa-Yosh]

Just as it doesn't matter to the owner if the rest of the band is pretty nice people, it doesn't matter to the market if 90% of Sony's people thought that they shouldn't do it.

Either we judge Sony based on its actions, whatever internal struggles preceeded them - or we can't treat it as a single entity at all. There's a lot of different voices within, but they're irrelevant to this discussion.

[TheChefO]

Originally Posted by aselto

It is software that will decide winner between the two.

Exactly.

Userbase dictates software.

Price+games dictates Userbase.

The cycle continues.

[Scott_Arm]

digital distribution won't take over. There are too many people without broadband, and too many with download caps. I don't think that will change by the time the next consoles are out. You'll still need some form of physical media for games distribution, at least. Other media like movies will probably see an increase in digital distribution, but I don't know who will make the money off of it. They have to choose between building in set-top capabilities so you can use your Playstation or xbox with your existing television service, or providing the content themselves. The former makes more sense to me than the latter, even though it would cut off revenues from the console makers.

I think Bluray or HD DVD is the way to be going right now. Next generation, the world will still not be ready for a DD focussed system. I'm just not sure if the world wanted a Bluray console right now.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

Either we judge Sony based on its actions, whatever internal struggles preceeded them - or we can't treat it as a single entity at all. There's a lot of different voices within, but they're irrelevant to this discussion.

They're not irrelevant to the discussion because the starting point of the discussion was 'Sony's actions were based on an arrogant decision-making process that didn't consider anything other than their impunity to market forces'. The discussion on if Sony's choices have really backfired is independent from the discussion on what was their motivation, even though both debates have been squeezed into this one thread. I agree wholeheartedly Sony's choices have cost them significant market presence, though I hold out on calling them the wrong choices until enough time has passed to see if any of their big intentions come to pass, like mass BRD adoption, or bucketloads of download sales, or if they can turnaround the sales of their platform. I agree that they look to have placed too much confidence in the value of the brand, but that's something a lot of us did. We all thought PS3 was gonna do well, until we noticed the price-tag. If Sony knew it'd cost so much back when they were planning this thing but thought they could ride it on brand, that's probably arrogance, but I don't assume the $600 proce point is thing happening exactly according to Sony's master plan. I also agree some comments are from the mouths of arrogant %&*#@'s and the state of PS3 is a humbling slap to their faces that they hopefully learn from.

But I disagree with the view that Sony went into this race in the blind-faith of their brand, and that they haven't put in any effort because it'd be a walk in the park. I disagree that the reason Sony hasn't any software is because they didn't bother, when consoles not having software for the first year is ordinary practice. I disagree that the reason their tools 'suxxorz' isn't because they felt they needn't bother, but because their efforts produced the results they have because of the complexities involved. You can't just magic up first rate titles, especially on weird hardware! I also don't see much difference between Sony and the others in this respect. Whether they overloaded their system with too much pressure or not, doesn't change the fact that making software is hard and has held back every console company. Ultimately my whole reason to enter this debate was to try and inject a bit of moderation and hopefully remind people that you can't pin all the ills facing a platform on a bad attitude - that lack of development tools, lack of early AAA 1st party titles, like of online services, is a not likely a result of some senior execs feeling they could rest on their laurels, but far more probably, the same for all those companies who haven't dominated for 10 years, because the people given the job of designing and implementing the systems can only do so much. Saying Sony didn't bother to make good tools and software is insulting to the software engineers at Sony who have been working on these projects for years, no? Saying HS not being out for launch is because Ninja Theory didn't really try hard enough is insulting to them.

[aselto]

Originally Posted by one

Yeah, software. Wii Sports is a software enabled by the remote. Why do you pick up Wii Sports in the former part and then dismiss Blu-ray (and Cell, standard HDD) in the latter part?

That's not the point though. Wii Sports could be a wiimote based game and be complete garbage and no one would care. It wouldn't be a system seller to that many people. According to Julian Eggebrecht, Lair is totally impossible to be recreated on Xbox 360 because of Cell, Blu-Ray and so on. Yet no one seems to care about that fact and the game sold poorly despite that and didn't move many systems. Games' quality decide about system sales in the end (among other factors, but they are not as important) and you can create incredible game experience on all 3 platforms. The question is whether or not all of them will have that and in susstainable guantities.

[one]

Originally Posted by aselto

That's not the point though. Wii Sports could be a wiimote based game and be complete garbage and no one would care. It wouldn't be a system seller to that many people. According to Julian Eggebrecht, Lair is totally impossible to be recreated on Xbox 360 because of Cell, Blu-Ray and so on. Yet no one seems to care about that fact and the game sold poorly despite that and didn't move many systems. Games' quality decide about system sales in the end (among other factors, but they are not as important) and you can create incredible game experience on all 3 platforms. The question is whether or not all of them will have that and in susstainable guantities.

The Lair example is interesting, it's a PR issue and a software development management issue. Blu-ray and Cell are more costly to exploit than the Wii remote, and SIXAXIS needs better PR, Nintendo paid huge PR money for Wii after all. But these are not something unexpected, did you see a great software in the launch period of PS2? Lair is a game criticized for its game design identical to a last-gen game, I don't think it's a good piece to show off what Cell is. Also PS3 is $600, they want to have more fun in Resistance and don't buy another software so soon. What I found unclear in your comment was "will not ultimately matter in the grand scheme of things". I'd like to know what are in that grand scheme.

[Laa-Yosh]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

They're not irrelevant to the discussion because the starting point of the discussion was 'Sony's actions were based on an arrogant decision-making process that didn't consider anything other than their impunity to market forces'.

No, the point is that whatever threats and risks Sony considered, they've decided that it wasn't important enough to care about them. They clearly didn't have any contingency plans either. The process might not have been arrogant, but the result is, and it has been emphasized even further by their PR talk.

But I disagree with the view that Sony went into this race in the blind-faith of their brand, and that they haven't put in any effort because it'd be a walk in the park.

I disagree, and this image supports me:


Their entire strategy fell apart, because they apparently didn't expect anything even remotely similar to the current situation. That's why I talk about arrogance.

[Carl B]

Pause while we move financial discussion into the results thread.

[TheChefO]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

Saying HS not being out for launch is because Ninja Theory didn't really try hard enough is insulting to them.

Sony doesn't really deserve credit for HS as it was a last minute decision to have it locked up for ps3 anyways and initially, they weren't a Sony dev.

HS is a bonus to Sony, they are lucky to have them.

Sony needed to tell their internal studios: "ps3 is the priority".

As you said, software isn't easy or predictable. So they would need all the help they could get to put quality titles out early.

They would need: funding, time, and tools.

Sony didn't sufficiently meet these demands for their own internal studios. Some things you can't fault them for, but Sony should have known they would need their studio's best efforts early to overcome the "probable" high price of throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the ps3's INTERNALLY REQUIRED spec sheet.