[archangelmorph]

Originally Posted by one

You can think it backward - Why were automatic generation tools unpopular? It's because the distribution media was DVD. More investment will occur in this genre.

Huh?

Automatic content generation tools were unpopular because they produced pretty undesireable results..

It really didn't have much to do with storage medium so I'm not sure what you're trying to say one?

[one]

Originally Posted by archangelmorph

Huh?

Automatic content generation tools were unpopular because they produced pretty undesireable results..

It really didn't have much to do with storage medium so I'm not sure what you're trying to say one?

Do you believe it's inherently impossible for these tools to improve further? If you believe so then there's nothing to discuss. Also it's important to note the quality of human artists don't really improve per the same cost.

My stance is these softwares needed further investment for R&D before a breakthrough. At some point

cost to develop/buy automatic content generation tool (and modify output by hand) < pure artist salary

will be more apparent, and the market for these software will mature with more investors. With DVD, it was sustainable without these tools and the issue was not apparent. It's no different from game engines and components integrated so far.

In addition to these tools, assets will be more recycled and shared between projects along with engines in future.

[Arwin]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

I'm ready to start another thread on creating art assets and on various tools; but only if the "I know better without any experience" opinions stay out...

If that would be the clearly stated topic of the new thread, then I'm sure mods would have no qualm deleting any off-topic posts, especially if you place a certified-by-mod warning that any off-topic posts will be pruned. It sounds like a very valuable thread for a forum like this, and therefore a great idea. And as an expert on the field, you'd be a great guy to set it up.

[archangelmorph]

Originally Posted by one

Do you believe it's inherently impossible for these tools to improve further? If you believe so then there's nothing to discuss. Also it's important to note the quality of human artists don't really improve per the same cost.

Huh?

I said were..

Of course I don't believe such a silly idea..

Originally Posted by one

My stance is these softwares needed further investment for R&D before a breakthrough. At some point

Breakthroughs are made on a regular basis (predominantly in academia) however they take a while to be picked up and incorperated into production quality tools for real world use..

Originally Posted by one

cost to develop/buy automatic content generation tool (and modify output by hand) < pure artist salary

Depends on the context of the output.. If your looking for a tool to automatically generate 20 humanistically-accurate animations for a 3D model then it's going to cost a heck of alot more and take a significantly longer time to develop than it is to get one *very* talented artist to whip them out for you.. (It's also important to note that the cost disparity between developing an app to produce lower quality content compared to one that can produce higher quality content is much greater than the difference between a reasonably talented artists' salary and amn exceptionally talented artists salary (with the difference in some cases being negligible wrt the latter..)

Originally Posted by one

will be more apparent, and the market for these software will mature with more investors. With DVD, it was sustainable without these tools and the issue was not apparent. It's no different from game engines and components integrated so far.

not sure what you're trying to say here? could you please elaborate?

Originally Posted by one

In addition to these tools, assets will be more recycled and shared between projects along with engines in future.

Definitely not too sure about that.. Unless your company is churning out "uber-generic-FPS-with-exactly-the-same-themes-&-art-direction-as-the-last-game-#24"

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Arwin

Did you really miss my point completely? From what you rote below, I'm thinking that at least on a general level you don't. You just disagree with me on the current state of tools that help, as well as how complexity balances out the overall effort required to create a lot of content.

A photo isn't a painting. Having access to a Canon DSLR isn't going to enable you to replace the contents of the Louvre. A 3D scanner can provide you with some content. I think SOCOM on PS3 is using this. I know one title for Sony's is, and it was doing an amazing job in the video I saw. But a 3D scanner isn't going to create the content for RnC or Fable 2 or anything which deviates too much from the real. There's a limit to what technology can get you. If you want a photographic likeness, a camera is far better than a painting. If you want a painting though, there's no quick solution. The artist has to be given time. A lot of games fit much more the artists painting requirements than the photorealistic-through-any-means. PGR has done a great job with photos too, but again that hasn't dropped the budget. It's only allowed them to do more within the budget.

Isn't that the whole problem though? Because I'm arguing the 'other' side of the debate, I'm coming across as someone who believes there is only the other ground.

No. At least for me. My beef comes down entirely to...

Again, you're misrepresenting me and I'm trying hard not to take offense. My comment "blinded to some extent by the work that your team is hired for" is a huge distance away from "your arguments are stupid because you are a blind idiot"...Listen, if this is how it comes across, then I apologise...

It did come down this phrasing, and if that was just a poor choice of words on your part, I can appreciate it as unmeant and we can move on to discussing the meat! Where I'm not sure I agree with your economic argument. For me the obvious economic consideration is 'how have average costs been increasing' which isn't limited to best-case scenarios and will be more indicative of what 'average' studios experience. The other consideration is what are tools like and how are they changing, again for the mainstream rather than what some exclusive studios can manage. For BRD to be worth it, it needs to be something that more than a choice few games can make use of. If every third party development could add BRD content at little extra cost, it'd make sense, but as long as the cost is still there then BRD isn't any advantage. I doubt anyone wants to argue the worth of BRD's inclusion for games on the strength of only a handful of games (BTW - I like the idea of BRD inclusion and I'd have gone with it myself. Who wants old outdated technology! I'm sure some games will benefit to good effect. Whether it was the best economical choice from a games only perspective is a different matter).

Also to complicate matters is that as technology progresses and we hope and expect art tools to improve to make content creation easier to fill those discs, we also have other technology in the form of in-game procedural synthesis that solves the same problem but using CPU cycles instead of disc capacity. I'm not sure we can discuss the worth of disc capacity and its future costs without regard for potential algorithmic technologies too.

[one]

Originally Posted by archangelmorph

I said were..

I know, but this is a chicken and egg problem. CD -> DVD transition and DVD -> Blu-ray transition are different in terms of quality because of the transition to HD. So the breakthrough didn't occur before DVD, hence softwares were poor, and unpopular. As long as you hide behind DVD you can postpone a solution just like Nintendo backed out of HD. I don't think technologies that enable automatic generation tools are a rocket science, just have been lacking proper investment because there was no prospect of payback for these ventures. Outsourcing to China may be OK for a while, but the problem will come back soon.

[Laa-Yosh]

I'll get into detail later tonight about why most automated tools aren't sufficient... There are several very different issues.

[archangelmorph]

Originally Posted by one

I know, but this is a chicken and egg problem. CD -> DVD transition and DVD -> Blu-ray transition are different in terms of quality because of the transition to HD. So the breakthrough didn't occur before DVD, hence softwares were poor, and unpopular. As long as you hide behind DVD you can postpone a solution just like Nintendo backed out of HD. I don't think technologies that enable automatic generation tools are a rocket science, just have been lacking proper investment because there was no prospect of payback for these ventures. Outsourcing to China may be OK for a while, but the problem will come back soon.

But what you need to understand is that much of the technoloy that goes into automated content generation tools (in the broader sense..) becomes mandatory when storage becomes a limiting factor (think, compression mechanisms, procedural textures etc).. & this scenario predates the DVD to Blu-Ray transition since many of these technologies were pioneered outside of the game-space as forms of compression to deal with things like network bandwidth limitations across the internet for example..

(Now in view of the other arg..)

Sure auto-gen content isn't perfect today & has seen improvements over the years.. but in my view you have to put things into context to understand where the economical scales of such technologies lie..

For example, you could procedurally generate 3D clouds + dynamics a heck of alot quicker than it would take an artist to meticulously create them by hand.. However trying to realise something much more stylised using some automated tool provides very little quality in terms of artistic value without sufficient artistic input into the generation process (to the point where it basically stops being an auto-generated process and becomes more of an augmentation tool for the artists work..)

[nelg]

Originally Posted by Arwin

Your metaphors are amusing. Since you seem to enjoy them so much, I can only give you Bob Ross. Or, the modern day equivalent, SpeedTree. Hey wait, the latter fully integrates with Unreal Engine 3. And happens to also be used in Ratchett & Clank (and Resistance, and Call of Duty 3, etc.). Coincidence?

What about the coincidence that tools for quicker content generation have been around for along time. In fact the first, and still most effective one is the Flail.

[TheChefO]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

No, but TheChefO was and that's why this thread exists. There were people suggesting the experts were making rash decisions without thinking things through.

I've never INTENDED to paint the entire corporation with all it's employees as Dumb, Arrogant, or Incapable.

The DECISION MAKERS though, overule all. As is seen in virtually any corporation. When your boss tells you to do something, you do your best to complete the task at hand. Even if you suggest otherwise against what has been decided, if your boss takes that info and tosses it aside or contemplates it heavily, yet redirects you to disregard your suggestion and carry on with the original assignment, your boss makes the final say on what actions are taken.

Sony's decisions for ps3 ALL leaned toward a characterization I would call arrogant.

Standard HDD
xb1 had it and it killed component costs til the bitter end.

Standard BRD
Not only was this media/hw expesive while being new to market, it wasn't even on the market yet so timing was up in the air as well. A console has NEVER introduced a new media and carried it. In this case, they also had a new rival hd optical technology to worry about as well.

Cell
New experimental architechture heavily emphasizing parallel processing and consequently, programming difficulties. Additional time would be needed.

These base choices dictated a relatively high cost (regardless of 65nm availability).
They also dictated a timeline as BRD was still under development.

History has shown a few things about the console industry:
1) High priced (>$500) consoles don't sell well compared to low cost alternatives.
2) Late consoles have difficulty catching up to their competition as early sales dictate userbase and userbase dictates available software. (the cycle continues)



In order to combat these limitations, Sony had only one card to play: software.

Sony's internal dev team is twice as large as either MS or N. They also had the strongest support from 3rd party devs on ps2. Instead of putting their full weight behind ps3 development (which already had a few things going against it), Sony decided to milk ps2 profits. Odd, considering they would still get ps2 royalties/licensing fees from 3rd party devs regardless of their own internal efforts.

Further, instead of leaving themselves with a "plan B" (BRD-less ps3), they went full on with BRD mandated games. For contrast, many early ps2 games were produced on cd.




Obviously, in hindsight at this point, Sony did make rash decisions and didn't think things through. No reasonably thinking corporation would say: we can be successful selling a console higher than has ever been accepted, introduce radical architecture, be a year late in comparison to our strongest competition, and all without giving our full effort on software creation, or securing exclusives.

Dev tools is debatable, but internal dev priority is not.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by TheChefO

I've never painted the entire corporation with all it's employees as Dumb, Arrogant, or Incapable.

The DECISION MAKERS though, overule all. As is seen in virtually any corporation.

You'll still saying thought that the decisions they ruled on were the result of arrogance rather than what seemed the best idea at the time of making them.

Standard HDD
xb1 had it and it killed component costs til the bitter end.

It was the hardware licensing contract mess that killed XB. They tied themselves into nasty contracts. $30 HDD wasn't the back breaker - it was the lack of cost reduction options and the paying of nVidia.

Standard BRD
Not only was this media/hw expesive while being new to market, it wasn't even on the market yet so timing was up in the air as well. A console has NEVER introduced a new media and carried it. In this case, they also had a new rival hd optical technology to worry about as well.

Even though a console has never carried a media before, there hasn't really been much chance to establish a precedent for success. If their forecasts for the technology said they could get a $400 by December '06, it wasn't necessarily a bad decision to include it. If 3 months before launch you find that the cost is gonna be sky high for anything like 3-12 months afterwards, you're faced with another decision. And the 'grin and bear it' one is common practice that late in the game.

I don't know this happened, but there's some evidence to support the view that Sony weren't intending to launch at $600 straight away.

Cell
New experimental architechture heavily emphasizing parallel processing and consequently, programming difficulties. Additional time would be needed.

It's not possible to quantify how much time though. What we do know is Sony had Cell enable dev-kits at the earliest opportunity, and were rolling out tools as the became available. They even surpassed Microsoft in terms of providing developers with suitable hardware to work on. Can they do any better than that?

In order to combat these limitations, Sony had only one card to play: software.

I agree with that sentiment, but without real figures I don't know that I can agree with this...

Sony's internal dev team is twice as large as either MS or N. They also had the strongest support from 3rd party devs on ps2. Instead of putting their full weight behind ps3 development (which already had a few things going against it), Sony decided to milk ps2 profits. Odd, considering they would still get ps2 royalties/licensing fees from 3rd party devs regardless of their own internal efforts.

Do you have stats to show that Sony weren't investing a substantial part of their budget into PS3? Do you also think that it'd be wise to spend even more than they did seeing as the gaming division has been deeply in the red for a while now?

Further, instead of leaving themselves with a "plan B" (BRD-less ps3), they went full on with BRD mandated games. For contrast, many early ps2 games were produced on cd.

Not for a chance to bail out on DVD though, but as a cost saving I'd imagine. If any game was released on DVD, it'd make the option of a CD only PS2 very difficult. The choice to stick with BRD all depends on forecasts. If the returns are potentially that big, then as the time draw closer and the choice was to drop it or not, deciding to stick with it and hope the BRD price drops quickly enough isn't a no-brainer. It's a 'he who dares wins, or loses' moment. The choice they made will prove excellent or poor, but only in the coming years. As I've said before, it was never a consideration as a race to the most sales in 1 year. Sony's eye is on long-term profits. We can speculate whether they manage that or not all we like, but until we know whether it's worked or not, we can't say whether Sony were foolish or bold.




Obviously, in hindsight at this point, Sony did make rash decisions and didn't think things through. No reasonably thinking corporation would say: we can be successful selling a console higher than has ever been accepted, introduce radical architecture, be a year late in comparison to our strongest competition, and all without giving our full effort on software creation, or securing exclusives.

Dev tools is debatable, but internal dev priority is not.[/quote]

[Diamond.G]

From my understanding the choice to mandate BD was done to help lower replication cost. Of course I am not sure how many games they press per month on BD, so I can't be too sure on that. I also wonder if licensing has been increased to cover the cost to press disc. Do publishers usually find any place to press disc or do they always go to the console maker to get it done?

[TheChefO]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

It was the hardware licensing contract mess that killed XB. They tied themselves into nasty contracts. $30 HDD wasn't the back breaker - it was the lack of cost reduction options and the paying of nVidia.

$30 is the difference between 200 and 170 or 150 and 120. At each intervall, you'll notice sales spiked for ps2. Also, these smaller 2.5" drives are more expensive.

Even though a console has never carried a media before, there hasn't really been much chance to establish a precedent for success.

Doesn't change the fact it hasn't been done before. In doing so, one should realize that caution should be used in other areas in order to achieve success.

I don't know this happened, but there's some evidence to support the view that Sony weren't intending to launch at $600 straight away.

Regardless, the price would be high introducing new optical technology, it always has been.

They even surpassed Microsoft in terms of providing developers with suitable hardware to work on. Can they do any better than that?

They did great in that regard, but they are a HW co. It's expected. SW tools is where they dropped the ball here.

I agree with that sentiment, but without real figures I don't know that I can agree with this...

I have no figures, but I do know they only had two launch games developed in-house:
RFoM
Motorstorm

MS had 2 a year prior and 3 (pgr) if you include 2nd party.

Twice the man power, less output over a longer period of time.

What's worse, a year later and the situation hasn't shown any significant shift in internal development policy.

Do you also think that it'd be wise to spend even more than they did seeing as the gaming division has been deeply in the red for a while now?

I'll tell you what isn't wise; thinking you can sell a product for twice what your competition is doing with less content and in many cases, inferior content, while coming to market a year later.

The investment priority switch wasn't a question of should it be done, but when. IMO, as soon as Sony knew they likely would have difficulty shipping next to MS (~6mo) and knew their msrp would have to be quite high with BRD (early), they had two choices, either dump BRD, or fully switch dev priority to ps3.

Sony's eye is on long-term profits...

Indeed. In the meantime, they're risking losing their once healthy cash cow in the games sector.

[Paul_G]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

You'll still saying thought that the decisions they ruled on were the result of arrogance rather than what seemed the best idea at the time of making them.

I don't want to get too involved with all the details, i think you guys are doing a perfectly good job covering both sides of the argument on your own, however I did want to just cover this one point. In a similar way to the phrase 'history is written by the winners' surely many actions later perceived of as arrogant were simply the 'best idea at the time of making them.' What differentiates an arrogant action and an inspired one is the relative success of that action. Where I think the difference of opinion lies is that Chef and others who have similar beliefs already see the current events (slow sales etc) as proof of the failure, and therefore arrogance, of Sony's choices. Others see the situation in a far longer term way, and feel it can't be arrogance, because the condition for arrogance, failure, has not yet been met.

[Arwin]

Shifty, you have to be more careful with the quote blocks. Now you end with a paragraph that is TheChefO's, but especially in this case it's easy to mistake it for a line of yours.

Anyway, on to your post:

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

A photo isn't a painting. Having access to a Canon DSLR isn't going to enable you to replace the contents of the Louvre.

No, but what now if you wanted to have the contents of the Louvre embedded on this page? Or what if you wanted a virtual louvre in a game? What would you do? And, given your budget, what can you do? Those are the two important questions, and in different contexts (budgets, art requirements, and so on), you are going to get different answers. If you're in a hurry or you want to do a whole lot, then photo textures in 3d frames are going to be the most efficient. If you need something that looks good in the style of the game, then you could redo the painting in that style as well (think the Simpsons for a simple example where it comes up). If you want to have just one of them done really, really well, then having an expensive artist making a 3d model of not just the painting but the actual paint may be more effective. If it needs to be 100% accurate, then maybe a 3d scanner can help the artist out. If you need to create a 3D digital encyclopedia of the future and you have 3000 paintings you want to get in there, then maybe the latest and most expensive 3d scanner is your best option. Etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

A 3D scanner can provide you with some content. I think SOCOM on PS3 is using this. I know one title for Sony's is, and it was doing an amazing job in the video I saw. But a 3D scanner isn't going to create the content for RnC or Fable 2 or anything which deviates too much from the real. There's a limit to what technology can get you.

Why do you feel you need to stress this point? Can you point out in which post I'm saying that there isn't a limit to what technology can get you? But there are also limits to what humans can do. It's a matter of choosing your battles wisely.

To give an example from Uncharted's art team:

Originally Posted by Evan Wells

IGN AU: In terms of the art design, how much were you focused on realism versus a slightly stylised aesthetic?

Evan Wells: Yeah, I mean we knew that we wanted to stop short of photo realism. We didn't do any scans or photos for our textures or our character maps - everything's been hand painted. We wanted to make sure that our characters didn't fall into the uncanny valley; our character modellers got down to amazing detail, making sure the eyelashes were right, I mean, I just had to stop myself, check myself - I can't believe I'm talking about the eyelashes in a videogame! It's just mind boggling. We really focused early on on the mouth, making sure that we could express the emotion through when they're talking or smiling or grimacing, but then we really quickly realised that it was the eyes we had to focus, almost more than anything, because the human eye is drawn to looking at other humans eyes, and we actually convey a lot of emotion and expression through the eyes.

source: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/830/830514p2.html

If you want a photographic likeness, a camera is far better than a painting. If you want a painting though, there's no quick solution. The artist has to be given time. A lot of games fit much more the artists painting requirements than the photorealistic-through-any-means. PGR has done a great job with photos too, but again that hasn't dropped the budget. It's only allowed them to do more within the budget.

Budget's don't drop. You go over them or stay under, but typically, you spend it all. In PGR's case, they had a budget, and using photos managed to do more with their budget. So they got more per dollar using photos. How obvious a case do you need?

But on the other side of the story, Heavenly Sword, has some beautiful hand-drawn character art and environments, that were then lovingly recreated in 3D by hand. You can unlock them in the game and some of them are stunningly beautiful. It's an effective technique, and the results in the game too are absolutely beautiful. And they require some very talented and dedicated artists, I'm sure. Still, even with this part of the work, surely both artists get better and faster at their jobs as time goes on, and part of that is getting to grips with the tools better, and part of it is getting better tools. Even if this is for now almost evenly matched in terms of what they can now do with the tools, and how many different texture layers they can apply, and what kind of different materials/shaders they can apply to each surface, and all the work that goes into deciding where to use pre-baked shadows and where to use realtime lights, and so on and so forth, the end result will not be that future games will get shorter and shorter. Even if there's been a trend towards this, there's a line somewhere and a solution will be found if art content alone is going to be responsible for games lasting a mere 4 hours, or 2 hours, and so on.

For BRD to be worth it, it needs to be something that more than a choice few games can make use of. If every third party development could add BRD content at little extra cost, it'd make sense, but as long as the cost is still there then BRD isn't any advantage.

There are different ways of adding content. Multi-platform game development, as I've frequently said, is going to be a bottleneck. That is partly because of Microsoft's choice to go early and DVD only, and in that sense it's to Microsoft's advantage. Eventually though, as is the nature of competition, the even some multi-platform games will spill Some parts may end up coming out on PS3 on disc, but being downloadable on the 360. Then maybe the 360 game on multiple discs, and so on. Perhaps, for multi-platform games, we will never see a 50GB game at all, and that will then be Microsoft's gain and Sony's loss (and ours!).

I doubt anyone wants to argue the worth of BRD's inclusion for games on the strength of only a handful of games (BTW - I like the idea of BRD inclusion and I'd have gone with it myself.

Isn't that just it though? Doesn't it sometimes just take a handful of games to make all the difference? What if the Wii didn't have Wii Play? What if Xbox didn't have Gears? Etc.

Who wants old outdated technology! I'm sure some games will benefit to good effect. Whether it was the best economical choice from a games only perspective is a different matter).

Of course. The question is, is BluRay an advantage that we will see? And of course the answer is going to depend on the software we will see. It will take more than Ratchett & Clank probably, but the real question is how much more? And there's no easy answer to that, or we wouldn't still be having this discussion.

Also to complicate matters is that as technology progresses and we hope and expect art tools to improve to make content creation easier to fill those discs, we also have other technology in the form of in-game procedural synthesis that solves the same problem but using CPU cycles instead of disc capacity. I'm not sure we can discuss the worth of disc capacity and its future costs without regard for potential algorithmic technologies too.

Absolutely. So far, I've been working on a common assumption that compression efficiency is a linear factor - i.e. every bit that compression gains, is lost to increasing complexity and efficiency at the core, i.e. graphics cards that can work with compressed textures and so on reduce the advantage of being able to keep the textures compressed on your disc in the first place, and so on.

For every new form of compression, there are other forms of compression that have reached their maximum efficiency. If compression had been more efficient, then we wouldn't have needed to upgrade our media in the first place. And there have been huge incentives to use good compression methods in the previous generation, because the read-speeds of DVDs (particularly on ye olde PS2) were a huge bottleneck and loading times were quite a pain. So the desire and drive to use better compression techniques has always been there already. Now I will never exclude the possibility of another breakthrough, but for now, it's not really there yet, and so probably belongs with the set of arguments stored on the shelf with the value of content creation tools that make content creation easier in ways that do not yet exist today.

While being on the subject of PGR and their use of photos, it reminds me of the Sony GTA clone London tech demo. They were taking similar approaches. If they felt they were being held back by the limits of DVD, it could be interesting to see if they will attempt something that uses a full BD. Maybe not, but it's not impossible at all. But while I enjoy fantasizing about what studios may be able to do with 50GB (a GTA game for this generation should really be able to use it to good effect, imho, even if it just means you'll have a year's worth of unique radio in the game :P), I think the energy is probably better spent on keeping track of the here and now.

All I need to do is think of the best way of setting this up properly. Should I open a 'examples of BluRay use in games' thread here? Or maybe create a Wiki? I'm not sure.

One other example I've forgot to mention is user created content. With LBP and Unreal coming up, a 50GB yearly compilation of the best user created levels and such could really work. Ditto with the Sing Star HD video uploads. I'm thinking with those kinds of developments, current console HDDs will be too small far too quickly (though external HDDs are a good alternative of course). Well, I'm just throwing it out there because both LBP guys and Epic mentioned this option themselves.

So maybe create a current use section, announced use section, and suggested uses section.

@Chef: the HDD was also essential for building up to what Live is now. Without the HDD, Live would never have become as good a service (downloadable demos, online content, expansion packs, etc). Also very popular then but because of this even better known now, is custom in-game music, for which the HDD has been essential too.

So at least part of what it cost them in the previous generation has helped them in this generation. Additionally, the fact that Halo 2 was the only game that actually used the HDD for more than savegames says a lot both ways. On the one hand it's been Microsoft's most important game so far, and on the other hand it shows that perhaps they missed some big opportunities by not releasing more games that used the HDD for more than savegames (and online content).

Also, your examples of in-house are actually flawed (possibly on both sides though). They were games paid for by Sony perhaps, but Insomniac is still an independent company, and Motorstorm's guys have only recently been acquired by Sony.

[dobwal]

This argument about whether "arrogance" applies to Sony and their decision with regards to design, development and execution of the PS3 is becoming cyclic.

Some will append the term to Sony and some will not.

I think we can all agree that Sony pushed to provide us a great console that ultimately has been so far hampered by poor decisions that left Sony no choice but to initially put a console on the market that was costly for its consumers as well as Sony itself.

I for one have not been disappointed in this generation so far. We have had great games with a slew of highly anticipated ones still on the horizon despite Sony's high price, MS's high failure rate and Nintendo's shunning of competitve visuals.

I mean who can get mad at games that have come since late 2005 or is coming out 2008 and 2009.

2006-2007-2008-2009 might go down as the golden age of gaming.

[TheChefO]

Originally Posted by Arwin

@Chef: the HDD was also essential for building up to what Live is now. Without the HDD, Live would never have become as good a service (downloadable demos, online content, expansion packs, etc). Also very popular then but because of this even better known now, is custom in-game music, for which the HDD has been essential too.

Also, your examples of in-house are actually flawed (possibly on both sides though). They were games paid for by Sony perhaps, but Insomniac is still an independent company, and Motorstorm's guys have only recently been acquired by Sony.

HDD in xb1 had potential, but never proved valuable enough to include it in every box. Leaving this component out of the required list will let MS hit lower pricepoints as ps2 did while still turning profits later in it's life.

Regarding launch software, with that being the case, it is further emphasized that Sony did not shift enough resources to meet the needs of their young platform when it needed all the help it could get.

[dobwal]

Originally Posted by TheChefO

HDD in xb1 had potential, but never proved valuable enough to include it in every box. Leaving this component out of the required list will let MS hit lower pricepoints as ps2 did while still turning profits later in it's life.

This is an assumption and unless the Core to Premium/Elite ratio improves immensely, the 360 could have gotten away with tying a harddrive to every unit. 10% is the difference between 22.5 and 25 million units, 45 and 50 million units and 90 and 100 million units. In my opinion anything less 20% of the 360 userbase would place the Core near insignificant in terms of playing a major role in the 360's success.

Originally Posted by TheChefO

Regarding launch software, with that being the case, it is further emphasized that Sony did not shift enough resources to meet the needs of their young platform when it needed all the help it could get.

Well I suppose Sony thought their 14 month line up would look like this:

Resistance
MotorStorm
Heavenly Sword (near or at launch)
Lair (near or at launch)
Metal Gear Solid 4
R&C
GTA
KillZone2 (maybe)

[TheChefO]

Originally Posted by Paul_G

Where I think the difference of opinion lies is that Chef and others who have similar beliefs already see the current events (slow sales etc) as proof of the failure, and therefore arrogance, of Sony's choices. Others see the situation in a far longer term way, and feel it can't be arrogance, because the condition for arrogance, failure, has not yet been met.

While this is true, I'd still be of the opinion that Sony was arrogant regardless of the sales outcome. They'd just be successful, arrogant businessmen.

Consoles are about games. Yes, many new features are being added which blur the line, but the main draw is games ... still.

When I examine many of Sony's HW decisions for ps3, I see a very bold outlook for a games machine.

Cell is new and exciting.
Their GPU choice is solid.
Wireless controllers, standard = nice.
BT, standard = nice.
Wifi connectivity with psp = nice.



Then things get a bit iffy:

BRD, standard = nice ... ehh ... how much is that again? And when can we get this to market?
HDD, standard ... hmm ... I've seen this somewhere ... didn't work out too well last time.

While Cell is a great component for the future of gaming, obviously Sony had grand plans for it outside gaming. No harm done as it could be key to great gaming experiences and souldn't cost much more to produce than rival silicon ... good bang for the buck and bonus if they can profit elsewhere.

GPU ... no other uses outside ps3, but who cares as it does it's job nicely and for reasonable cost.



BRD and HDD on the other hand I think start to sway outside the realm of what's best for a gaming machine and gamers and dips into, "what's best for Sony and possible future revenue streams".

If both these features were "free" and were merely replacing other components which simply add potential revenue for Sony, great. As is, they add cost to every console while providing limited benefit. Further, BRD added time or rather, took away time.



Sony director(s) essentially saw ps3 as a trojan horse into a mass of future profits from hd movies and thought gamers would have no problem footing the bill. "even if it didn't have any games"

I call that arrogant and called it such when they announced the price. Maybe it's just me though.

[dobwal]

Originally Posted by Paul_G

I don't want to get too involved with all the details, i think you guys are doing a perfectly good job covering both sides of the argument on your own, however I did want to just cover this one point. In a similar way to the phrase 'history is written by the winners' surely many actions later perceived of as arrogant were simply the 'best idea at the time of making them.' What differentiates an arrogant action and an inspired one is the relative success of that action. Where I think the difference of opinion lies is that Chef and others who have similar beliefs already see the current events (slow sales etc) as proof of the failure, and therefore arrogance, of Sony's choices. Others see the situation in a far longer term way, and feel it can't be arrogance, because the condition for arrogance, failure, has not yet been met.

Failure isn't a requirement for "arrogance", it is infact success that often drives such a trait.

[Laa-Yosh]

Originally Posted by TheChefO

Sony director(s) essentially saw ps3 as a trojan horse into a mass of future profits from hd movies and thought gamers would have no problem footing the bill. "even if it didn't have any games"

I call that arrogant and called it such when they announced the price. Maybe it's just me though.

I agree with you 100%, and I've stated at least once already that this is the reason why I call them arrogant. They thought they can just do this and the customers will take it. And it doesn't matter if they were right or wrong.

[scooby_dooby]

Originally Posted by dobwal

This is an assumption and unless the Core to Premium/Elite ratio improves immensely, the 360 could have gotten away with tying a harddrive to every unit. 10% is the difference between 22.5 and 25 million units, 45 and 50 million units and 90 and 100 million units. In my opinion anything less 20% of the 360 userbase would place the Core near insignificant in terms of playing a major role in the 360's success.

In my mind this is already a foregone conclusion.

By 2011-2012, when the box is selling at $99, there will be at least 20% of them without HDD's, though I would guess more like 30-35% at the end of the day.

As the pricepoint gets lower, and appeals to more casual gamers, the desire for a HDD will also drop.

It defies logic to believe that the current ratio of core/premium sales will continue. We know for a fact right now that 40% of 360 users are not connecting to the internet, and not utilizing the HDD. That percentage of people not utlizing the HDD will surely rise, as the install base currently consists mainly of hardcore gamers and early adopters.

As that percentage of people not utliuzing their hDD rises, to 55-60% as I believe it will, the ratio of non-HDD 360's will go up significantly. I find it hard to envision 9/10 users will continue to purchase a HDD, when only 4/10 intend to use it.

[TheChefO]

Originally Posted by dobwal

This is an assumption and unless the Core to Premium/Elite ratio improves immensely, the 360 could have gotten away with tying a harddrive to every unit. 10% is the difference between 22.5 and 25 million units, 45 and 50 million units and 90 and 100 million units. In my opinion anything less 20% of the 360 userbase would place the Core near insignificant in terms of playing a major role in the 360's success.

It enables them to hit rock bottom prices down the road. It's role isn't for today, though it should help capture some overflow from disappointed Wii shoppers this Christmas.


Well I suppose Sony thought their 14 month line up would look like this:

Resistance
MotorStorm
Heavenly Sword (near or at launch)
Lair (near or at launch)
Metal Gear Solid 4
R&C
GTA
KillZone2 (maybe)

Launch window is 6 months post launch.

A console maker coming in late to the game needs to make an early impact to lure buyers and at $600 a pop, that better be one heck of a lure. Out of that list:
MGS4
KZ2
GTA4
are the only ones I see making an impact significant enough to move units and with GTA4 being available down the road for much cheaper, it gets removed from the list. Also, with MGS4 being a 3rd party title, it's out of Sony's control, removed from the list.

KZ2 at launch, could have been significant enough to uphold desire for ps3. Even if most people couldn't afford to spend $600 on a console, it could have at least upheld the idea that Sony = elite and ps3 = elite. It could have also convinced many others that yes, it is worth $600 and many more to say, "I'll wait for ps3 because THAT (KZ2) is something I want and I don't see that experience anywhere else".

Heck even KZ2 for this Christmas could have been enough to do the trick. Too late though.

[TheChefO]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

I agree with you 100%, and I've stated at least once already that this is the reason why I call them arrogant. They thought they can just do this and the customers will take it. And it doesn't matter if they were right or wrong.

Well, there's two of us.


I remember like it was yesterday arguing with Acert on this subject almost a year ago.


@Scooby - good point on the future and current demographic trends for xb360 and core.

[Paul_G]

Originally Posted by dobwal

Failure isn't a requirement for "arrogance", it is infact success that often drives such a trait.

But why would you judge it as arrogance if they succeeded. i.e. had PS3 been a run away success despite the price and the dearth of games, would we be having this conversation now? Past success definitely gave them the (perhaps misplaced) confidence to make the choices they have though, no doubt about it