All purpose sales and sales rumors/anecdotes thread next gen+

[liolio]

Except that wouldn't be the case because it wouldn't have included kinect, allegedly the largest portion of the bom costs. So launching with a $400 kinectles sku last E3 could have been a realistic option for MS. After all, Sony removed the PS4 Eye to cut $60 off their launch unit prices to hit $399.

Oops I completely missed the "kinectless SKU" part in his post... Morning I guess, café has not yet worked its magic on me.

Still removing kinect was not a tiny decision, enforcing it proved to be a disservice for the system and for the device.

 

[liolio]

Well wasn't the ps4 supposed to have had 4gb of ram and little in the way of room for the OS and such ( 1/2 a gig or something like that reserved for non gaming purposes ) during much of the development time for the XB1. So while the ps4 could be used for a lot of things compared to the ps3 could do there might not have been enough reserved for say a substantial app infrastructure or some other non gaming use cases. Leveraging the 8 gigs vs 4 gigs could have been a good bet as would branching out into non gaming use cases.

Honestly I'm not convinced by either manufacturers choice to go with 8GB of RAM.
Both MSFT and Sony doubled the amount of RAM, we speak of lot of RAM for the OS.
I'm not convinced that the services SOny offers would have been different in any significant way may they had stick to 4GB.
Windows 8.1 now only require 1GB to run, 299$ inch windows tablet with 2 GB of RAM runs many old games and non demanding games ala diablo III with acceptable performances (keeping in mind that we speak of a tablet). 2GB is a lot of RAM, and there is more actually.

It is for now oversold (/PR point), while gaming one will use very few apps, you don't need much resources. Phones did, some still does a lot of thing out of 512MB.
For the ref I just opened "skipe" and snapped it on the left of my screen (Windows 8.1), task manager => north of 50 MB of RAM.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Honestly I'm not convinced by either manufacturers choice to go with 8GB of RAM. Both MSFT and Sony doubled the amount of RAM, we speak of lot of RAM for the OS.

I think Sony panicked at the prospect of Xbox One (which had long been rumoured to have 8Gb) being able to do way more outside of the games, which could have been more of an issue down the line. If they've been worrying about lack of RAM for games, games would already have more of the extra 4Gb they crammed in.

But now that Microsoft are winding back from their initial plan, I think it's like both platforms will give up more RAM for games and this is probably a bigger deal toward the end of the consoles lives. But even now, more RAM can take the strain off developers.

 

[liolio]

I think Sony panicked at the prospect of Xbox One (which had long been rumoured to have 8Gb) being able to do way more outside of the games, which could have been more of an issue down the line. If they've been worrying about lack of RAM for games, games would already have more of the extra 4Gb they crammed in.

But now that Microsoft are winding back from their initial plan, I think it's like both platforms will give up more RAM for games and this is probably a bigger deal toward the end of the consoles lives. But even now, more RAM can take the strain off developers.

I see nothing nothing in that Sony's reactions that implies panic of any form.
They released the system in the grey at 399$, hardly a move of panic or despair.
They doubled the RAM that is quite different than doubling the BOM part related to the RAM, they went from x16 2gb chips to x16 4gb memory chips, that doesn't not translate in x2 the cost.
We don't know for how long Sony knew about those memory chips or how hard they pushed to make them "happen". They played their cards pretty close on that front.
It seems that Sony was considering pushing hard on Eye Toy and gave up, may be to accommodate the increase in RAM price, may be not. I think it was pretty late as there is still that diode on the controller => to my point the ps4 could have cheaper, not by much but cheaper, remove the fancy feature of the controller use cheaper RAM, may 379$ was doable.
4gb memory chips could have served as drivers for price reduction quite early and those rumored 8gb may have helped further.

I'm not trying to say that less RAM is better, just that Sony was in a pretty comfortable this time around, pretty much imo "no matter what". Worst case scenario, they were positioned to fight on an "equal footing": more perfs/less RAM.

I still believe my old "they should have aimed lower", as I think a cheaper system could have been a match (~) for Durango and it could have been a bloodbath for MSFT especially with their strategy not doing well with their customers (I don't say that in a harsh manner, predictions especially about the future are tough, they took a risk it did not paid).


Thing is I don't really see can be done with the leftover RAM that is so great, that a hell lot of RAM for the service in the background and the couple that could be in the foreground while gaming.
THey could indeed increase the amount dedicated to the game, though I would not be too surprised if it ends up in lots of case as a buffer for streaming content from the HDD /make the life of devs easier. I'm far from opposed to that idea but I don't think it will translate into anything meaningful on screen.
I still believe that whereas 4GB set constraints it was workable, it is completely different than say if the 360 shipped with 256MB and the PS3 512MB.

now I've to acknowledge that there is not much granularity, adding RAM is a pretty coarse process.
May be everybody needed 5GB but well

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I see nothing nothing in that Sony's reactions that implies panic of any form.

Of course you don't, Sony's single mouthpiece for PS4 development has been Mark Cerny, who is not someone to let things slip. But he's mentioned in numerous interviews he had to fight for 8Gb. If 4Gb was sufficient, why move to 8Gb so late that even some first party studios didn't know before the announcement? Unless that upgrade was free, which I doubt.

I have no doubt that by the time the decision was made, Sony probably had a fair idea of what Microsoft were doing (and vice-versa) and knew that Microsoft were reserving a ton of RAM for OS features, looked at their 512mb and decided to bite the RAM upgrade cost in the name of future-proofing for features not yet anticipated. Hence the huge non-gaming RAM pool.

Nobody, that late in a project, consentingly allows the BOM to increase unless for something that they suddenly feel is absolutely critical. I.e, that panicked.

 

[zupallinere]

What is weird too me is not that they were ok with having specs but with the price of their system.

Of course MS didn't know that. If the assumption that MS had some reasonable expectations of Sony's performance and price is correct then the only variable was the memory when it came to MS choosing it's price point. Having double the RAM even if you're down by a handful of CUs and a significant amount of BW will still net you a great talking point. Look at how MS discusses increases in clock speed and Cloud power and coherent memory specs now, what would they have done with twice the memory which makes it closer to developers like Epic said they needed.

MS might still have kept the 499 price point even if they knew about the 4 gig bump by Sony or had plans in case that happened. They were looking to do quite a lot with the ONE and may just have thought given what they were offering that the price point was justified. It's certainly a reasonable argument, or was . But as I said months ago the "casual" gamer and the generic "Family in the living room" demographic that MS looked to be courting would not look kindly at 500 dollars no matter what Sony was up to. The NFL NFL NFL crowd may be a cash cow for cable/satellite bundles but once they have the games the extra XB1 cruft may not have made as big a splash as it may have seemed.

I'm not convinced that the services SOny offers would have been different in any significant way may they had stick to 4GB.

I don't know what Sony thinks it is going to do with the memory reserve ( maybe they don't ) and I sure hope games get back as much as feasible. Still better to have it now for development work and to give whatever non gaming development some breathing room to optimise for memory later at which time Sony will have figured out the mix of games vs services and then adjusts the memory reserves accordingly.

The memory was a big bump and for the next gen they may not go a lot bigger depending on how the games turn out over time. To keep costs down next gen you may be looking at only 12GB of say stacked ram in an even smaller package.

 

[Rangers]

Some actual sales. Courtesy here Infamous did not juice ps4 much in Japan as the Wii U streams cross

Year over year everything down except Vita, and it's not up that much. Japan continues to grow sadder.

I guess the market has gotten weak enough that Wii U doesn't always look awful. It's challenging PS4 in Japan and many give it a crack at beating X1 in May NPD's.

 

[DieH@rd]

Nothing meaningful is announced for PS4 in Japan this year. Only Deep Down, but who knows if that will have any impact.

However next year, there is a chance for The Phantom Pain, Resident Evil 7, Final Fantasy XV tripple combo [plus maybe Last Guardian]. All in all, their console game output is very low, even nintendo is struggling but will finally start cranking out some good games [Bayo, X, MK8, Smash, Zelda].



Edit - Ubisoft has announced a happy news:

"In its first 24 hours of availability, Watch Dogs sold more copies than any previous title in Ubisoft’s history!"
http://blog.ubi.com/watch-dogs-record-breaking-sales-day-one/

 

[Rangers]

Cool, that's a nice sign for core gaming.

I predicted this, there's just nothing else to play.

I always said more consolidation and fewer titles isn't necessarily a bad thing. It should mean higher sales for those left standing.

 

[Globalisateur]

For me the most shocking news is zero Wii U games on the top 20 in japan when PS3 + PS4 have 4 games in top 20.

Wii U is dead in Japan and is now a pure mario box. Like Wii, people know that Wii U won't be sustained by Nintendo in a few years.

Wii U beating PS4 for the first time since PS4 release thanks to upcoming MK8 release.

Main competitor of PS4 is... PS3. PS3 + PS4 = 15K sold this week. Playstations have legs in Japan also.

 

[Wynix]

The new taxes were a terrible idea, they have obviously had an effect on sales.
I can see the PS3 and Vita getting a price cut at E3 or TGS which will help sales recover somewhat but the PS4 is relegated to mediocre sales in Japan for the rest of the year.

 

[Prophecy2k]

The new taxes were a terrible idea, they have obviously had an effect on sales.
I can see the PS3 and Vita getting a price cut at E3 or TGS which will help sales recover somewhat but the PS4 is relegated to mediocre sales in Japan for the rest of the year.

What new taxes?

 

[liolio]

What new taxes?

New or I don't remember which one got raised.

Retails situation in Japan is dreadful:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-28/japanese-retail-sales-collapse-most-record

 

[JPT]

What new taxes?

Japan has introduced some new income tax or something like that.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

They basically had a VAT/sales tax increase from 5% to 8%. It's hard to see that actually having a major impact in consumption of goods.

 

[upnorthsox]

Could be they're mostly going digital too. Does the VAT cover DD?

 

[Rangers]

They basically had a VAT/sales tax increase from 5% to 8%. It's hard to see that actually having a major impact in consumption of goods.

There was a one week effect-I can believe that. Console purchases were higher the week prior to the tax, then dropped substantially the week the tax went into effect. That already happened a few weeks ago and there was discussion of it on Neogaf.

But Japan's market has been in the overall doldrums for a long time and this VAT wont have a long term effect like that. It's not exactly an option to stop buying things forever, especially over 3%.

 

[Wynix]

They basically had a VAT/sales tax increase from 5% to 8%. It's hard to see that actually having a major impact in consumption of goods.

There was a one week effect-I can believe that. Console purchases were higher the week prior to the tax, then dropped substantially the week the tax went into effect. That already happened a few weeks ago and there was discussion of it on Neogaf.

But Japan's market has been in the overall doldrums for a long time and this VAT wont have a long term effect like that. It's not exactly an option to stop buying things forever, especially over 3%.

Japan consumer spending, factory output skid after sales tax hike

Japan's household spending in April fell at the fastest rate in three years in a sign that consumption could be slow to recover from an increase in the nationwide sales tax, raising questions over the pace of economic recovery. Industrial production fell more than expected in April as companies cut output to avoid a pile up in inventories in the lull after the sales tax hike took effect.

The drop in spending is a reality.

 

[Rangers]

*shrug* maybe. But the market has been declining for years.

 

[temesgen]

*shrug* maybe. But the market has been declining for years.

Is the market declining or shifting to tablets and cell phones? I'd like to see sales numbers for cell phone games compared to handhelds and traditional games, viewing all three would be insightful.