Ars Technica rumor claims 399 40GB PS3 this year
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In Japan, Xbox 360 Premium is 39,795 JPY (344 USD), the 20GB PS3 is 49,980 JPN (433 USD).
A $399 SKU would need to have less obvious value than the 80GB SKU (which should be $499. I don't see them going lower with this model, nor keeping it at the ridiculous price of $599). In other words, a $399 model would have a lower capacity HDD, no Wifi and surely no GS, thus no backward compatibility.
And as I, and others, said, this potential $399 model is just an "artificial" lower cost model, just like the 20GB model was, or just like the X360 Core (or now Arcade) is as Joshua pointed out. It exists just to lower the relative price point of the product, nothing else.
Even if Sony is just saving, say, $30 compared to the $599 model BOM, on this lower-end model a $399 retail price makes perfect sense. A few dollars saved on every produced item for a product expected to sell millions is worth the trouble, and for various marketing/PR and inventory related reasons Sony can't afford to remove the 80GB model from the market. Therefore, the only solution left is to (re)introduce a lower-end model.
By the way, Pete, the 20GB PS3 doesn't retail at $325 in Japan, it retails at ￥49,980 JPY ($430 tax included). Anyway, the U.S. value of the item is not important in the Japanese domestic market. For the Japanese consumer who want to buy a PS3, the 20GB model costs ￥49,980, the 60GB model ￥59,980, while the Wii costs ￥24,999. Now if you factor a quasi-total lack of games that cater to the Japanese crowd and the evolution of the market toward mobile and casual gaming, the situation of the poor performance of the console there is hardly surprising. In Japan Sony is in a dire need of not only a price cut but also of Japan-tailored game releases.
In the coming months, SCEA and SCEE can sell the console with the few titles they have, plus the western publishers third-party catalogue, as long as they get their price cut. SCEI, on the other hand, will need more Japanese games, any of them at this point, or at least big announcement (which should cater to the hardcore crowd. Won't sell the console gangbuster but should move a few units while waiting for more game releases), and a price cut as well obviously.
It's worth noting that SCEI, unlike SCEA, has the "advantage" of having the HD/technogical console gaming market locked in Japan, since the X360 is not a threat there. I chose to put advantage between quotes because it has yet to demonstrated that it's a worth having advantage in the current Japanese market where casual and mobile gaming reign supreme.
And as I, and others, said, this potential $399 model is just an "artificial" lower cost model, just like the 20GB model was, or just like the X360 Core (or now Arcade) is as Joshua pointed out. It exists just to lower the relative price point of the product, nothing else.
Even if Sony is just saving, say, $30 compared to the $599 model BOM, on this lower-end model a $399 retail price makes perfect sense. A few dollars saved on every produced item for a product expected to sell millions is worth the trouble, and for various marketing/PR and inventory related reasons Sony can't afford to remove the 80GB model from the market. Therefore, the only solution left is to (re)introduce a lower-end model.
By the way, Pete, the 20GB PS3 doesn't retail at $325 in Japan, it retails at ￥49,980 JPY ($430 tax included). Anyway, the U.S. value of the item is not important in the Japanese domestic market. For the Japanese consumer who want to buy a PS3, the 20GB model costs ￥49,980, the 60GB model ￥59,980, while the Wii costs ￥24,999. Now if you factor a quasi-total lack of games that cater to the Japanese crowd and the evolution of the market toward mobile and casual gaming, the situation of the poor performance of the console there is hardly surprising. In Japan Sony is in a dire need of not only a price cut but also of Japan-tailored game releases.
In the coming months, SCEA and SCEE can sell the console with the few titles they have, plus the western publishers third-party catalogue, as long as they get their price cut. SCEI, on the other hand, will need more Japanese games, any of them at this point, or at least big announcement (which should cater to the hardcore crowd. Won't sell the console gangbuster but should move a few units while waiting for more game releases), and a price cut as well obviously.
It's worth noting that SCEI, unlike SCEA, has the "advantage" of having the HD/technogical console gaming market locked in Japan, since the X360 is not a threat there. I chose to put advantage between quotes because it has yet to demonstrated that it's a worth having advantage in the current Japanese market where casual and mobile gaming reign supreme.
You are almost quoting Andre Vrignaud, Xbox Director of Technical Strategy.
http://kotaku.com/gaming/addicts/microsoft-bets-ngai-again-ps3-will-be-399-this-year-282303.php
I would be really surprised if Sony compromised the backward compatibility more than what they have done already, it has always seemed to be such an important feature to Sony. They surely have invested a lot of money in having the EE and the Rambus memory removed by adding software emulation and testing thorugh thousands of titles. I would be really surprised if all that work would get wasted by introducing a mass market model without backward compatibility.
To a lot of buyers the backward compatibility has exactly a value of 0. I don't see a problem with an SKU without it, provided there is a substantial savings. I wouldn't pay $100 for the ability to play my ps2 titles on a new console. (I personally probably wouldn't pay $5, usually when I'm done with a game, I'm done with it forever.)
Yeah, there are all sorts of gamers, I personally thinks it is kind of neat to have the option to slide in an old good game at times and not having to keep an stack of old consoles.
Anyways, another thing making removing BC unlikely is the fact that Sony is selling old PSX games on PSN, I think they want to offer them to as many as possible.
I think that catalogue could be expanded as time goes to also include PS2 games, 4-5 years from now. Very easy money even if Sony sells them at bargain prices.
PSX backwards compatibility is done entirely through software emulation, without any of the original PS1 graphics or processing hardware, so the question is moot for the moment.
Well, that would be nice, but any advantage in releasing PS2 games for download that far out would make no difference for this generation.
I am not willing to give such creedence to a Microsofty's guess work. I imagine rather we'd see the GS functions pulled into a revised RSX chip. If you look at the traces on the newer PS3 main board, the GS looks very much like it would most naturally be integrated with RSX.
Presumably they'd achieve a noteworthy amount of savings from just doing that.
What really surprises me is that Sony never started labeling PS2 releases as 'PS2/PS3' releases, or at least added 'Works on PS3!' stickers. I have to wonder how many people fully appreciate the level of backwards compatibility that the PS3 has with PS2 software.
True, but it is still backward compatibility we are talking about. I think removing backward compatibility for PS2 games and keeping it for PSX games will be very awkward to explain to the consumers. I don´t find it likely.
I am not sure I understand your point. If Sony can have an income in the future by keeping the backward compatibility it must certainly have some effect on Sonys business strategy.
I do also think that scenario seems likely. At 45 nm, they may even be able to convert the 4 MB EDRAM to SRAM and save money by sticking to a simple standard CMOS process for the RSX if Sony finds the EDRAM process too expensive as some reports have indicated. The extra die space at 45 nm may not add much to the cost in comparison to the cost of some esoteric EDRAM process and it is easy to add cheap redundancy to memory logic so it would probably have little effect on the yield as well.
I would also not be surprised if Sony at some point gave PS3 developers some kind of access to that 4 MB buffer. I think it could give the RSX a nice boost since many people seem to think the RSX is somewhat bandwidth limited. From what is visible on the PCB of the PS3 the current RSX - GS connection could have at least a data path of 64 bits. Depending on how fast they clock that proprietary bus they could achieve a pretty good bandwidth, perhaps 10 - 20 GB/s. Having another bus would allow the RSX to have more work in progress in parallel, perhaps we will see some kind of tiling a la Xenos later on. :smile:
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The same conclusion?
I don´t think that we will see ANY PS3 without harddrives. Sony will maintain the same basic Gaming platform across all Sku´s anything else would be stupid.
Backward compatibility even with emulation-only seems to be just fine. You can already check the difference between the 60GB and 80GB SKU's, and the number of "fatal" differences seem to be low. (You find a lot more things which have, like, graphical or audio bugs introduced, and primarily in FMV sequences. At least judging by some of the most popular titles.)
Back-compat isn't 100% to begin with, and it looks like the move to emulation only subtracts another 10% or so, so it doesn't appear to be as huge a concern as we think. (And it just as able to be coded around as with the 60GB version, I would imagine.)
At any rate, it doesn't appear that any title needs to be "coded in specifically to work" even with the new emulation-only SKU, but rather some titles need to be "bug fixed," and may be on the back burner.
Back-compat isn't 100% to begin with, and it looks like the move to emulation only subtracts another 10% or so, so it doesn't appear to be as huge a concern as we think. (And it just as able to be coded around as with the 60GB version, I would imagine.)
At any rate, it doesn't appear that any title needs to be "coded in specifically to work" even with the new emulation-only SKU, but rather some titles need to be "bug fixed," and may be on the back burner.
"Emulation only" is not the correct term for the current 80 GB or 60 GB PAL SKU, they still have a"GS" chip. Only the "EE" part is emulated.
Oh? I thought they'd stopped fabbing the GS separately ages ago, since the EE+GS has been the hardware replacement since the first redesign after they got it out there, wasn't it? Why would they go back halfway and start up new lines instead of biting the bullet and trying emulation only? I guess the embedded DRAM makes the GS harder to emulate...
Yes, that seems to be the case and that is probably the reason to why the backward compatibility still works so well.
Maybe they found a way to emulate GS as well..
I wouldnt go so far as to say that, im sure more mature gamers, who also value keeping their entertainment areas neat, really enjoy being able to count on backward compatability. PC gamers install old games all the time to play them again without a second thought. There are many people who also grew up with Atari and Nintendo and often like to replay the classics. If anything i'd bet its the exact opposite, and people do notice because its something they've been taking for granted. Add to that games are still coming out for the PS2 all the time and i think its more of a problem then you think. Many people dont see a graphics leap as the start of a new gaming era and the abrupt end of the one they were just in.
The people who don't see the graphics leap, probably haven't seen the need to buy a new console at all. The biggest reason to have backward compatibility imo is so that when you release your shiny new $500 piece of hardware, you can actually claim that it can play more than 5 games. Once you're through that initial adoption phase, i don't see that big of an issue with it (lack of backwards compatibility), but perhaps Sony isn't there just yet.
To expand on conspiracy theories, they already have compatibility sections called "60GB and 80GB" up on the SCE site. A new SKU with emulated GS would need its own section, and what better way to differentiate it then "40GB" - instead of some stupid model serial number like "45665634Falcon4135435Xenon"nAo said:
That said, I think that 'maybe' is not even necessary - the only real question is how high compatibility they will be getting with it.
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