Business Approach Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox

What XB1 problems? Sony lunched PS3 one year after XB360 at higher price with worse multiplatform games (compare to XB360) and lower quality online services/support in first 3-4 years of last generation and they didn't use any secret sauce/feature to make PS3 what it is today but making their services/tools better, bringing more games and reducing the price.

XB1 price is 100$ higher than PS4 and it's its only problem. Is it possible for every PS4 to be a Dev-kit? Is it possible for PS4 to have Universal app between windows and a wide range of phones with same OS? If Microsoft make it's own Xbox ecosystem (multiplatform Steam like service) on XB1/PC/mobile for digital games and offer gamers digital games that can be played on PC/XB1/mobile with one time purchase, what can Sony do to counter this? They have DX12, they have Universal Windows apps, they have mobile/windows/XB1 and hardware/local solution to do this. What can stop Microsoft from doing such a thing?

You are looking at XB1 like a weaker PS4 while potentially it could be a totally different beast.

 

And notably lower performance, unlike PS3 vs 360 which were roughly similar, at least on paper.

The rest is as you say, though. MS can compete with a different strategy. That's would they should have been doing from the outset, but they backtracked to become a rather generic console which is where the comparisons are being drawn. There's little focus on XB1's USPs because, at the moment, they are just potential and haven't been realised.

 

I think he's referring to the perceived different in value/power between PlayStation 4 and One, the perceived image problem Xbox has and the perceived level of commercial success.

Note I used the word 'perceived' a lot.

Cell was PlayStation 3's not-so-secret sauce. It was crazy powerful from day one but took years for developers to start using it effectively and compensate for that GPU. It didn't help that game engines and game programmers were not very experienced with parallelising code to leverage multicore processors at the time PlayStation 3 launched. The first 'Merom' Core2Duo processor launched in 2006 and prior to that programmers had been used to processor advances that were largely based on clock rate increases (faster, not wider).

Cell forced to them to rethink and re-solve old problems using the new hardware. I went through this myself, it requires a complete resetting of mindset for problem solving in software.

Microsoft launched Xbox One as a different beast. A device at the centre of your media system that also played great games. How they view it now I don't quite know but they are talking mostly, almost exclusively, about games now. If you are looking at the two devices as games machines the Xbox One is arguably a weaker PlayStation 4 - based upon it's hardware specs.

However games are what separate and differentiate games machines. Microsoft could usurp the perceived Sony core gamer mindshare advantage by bringing out lots of great games that are exclusive to Xbox One, or use it's features (particularly Kinect 2) in ways that PlayStation 4 can compete with - not even with their camera.

 

On paper XB1 has more powerful CPU by 10% and other fixed function blocks like DMEs (for using swizzle texture on CPU with low cost?) and SHAPE. although I didn't see effect of them on practice to date.

They are saying gamers what they want to hear. Last E3 was totally about Games, Games, Games but every one remembers the XB1 announcement that was TV TV TV Sport TV. They can't change their strategy in less than 6 month but they can change their massage to gamers in a short period of time. If they are going to show even more games on this year E3 then they had all of those games in the work even before changing their policy last year.

They talked about XB1 at their Build conference and they said the universal windows app will come later (maybe this year) for XB1. They talked about how developers can make or port their apps for XB1 in detail and they talked about every XB1 will be a Dev-kit in future (this year). So they aren't backtracking to make XB1 a generic console but they are talking about a part of their plans that is more important to gamers, GAMES.

At best you can say that Multiplatform games on PS3 were equal to 360 version after 6-5 years (which is not true for many games) and Cell was a big help for developer to do that but I was talking about all of the problems that PS3 had in its time. They solved many PS3 problems even before Cell being used at its full potential.

 

On paper, PS4 is more powerful. XB1 has some efficiency hardware (not all of it exclusive) but PS4 is definitely the more powerful machine in a way neither XB360 nor PS3 was. Also that's played out in the present software. Maybe, just maybe, developers can do ESRAM voodoo and get near enough game parity. Then you're looking at a device that costs more to offer the same game experience, unless MS can price-drop more aggressively than the simpler PS4 hardware.

It really doesn't matter whether XB1 is less powerful or not though. XB1 needs to compete on the extended functions. And you yourself say MS are all about the games at the moment. they are presenting their console as a more expensive, less capable PS4. The only thing is has as a USP in the immediate market is whatever exclusives and the media functionality.

 

Because you only get one chance to make a first impression.

But Microsoft have been telling gamers what they want to hear, unfortunately it's not been entirely truthful. During early 'resolutiongate' before launch Microsoft were assuring everybody Xbox One games would look as good as PlayStation 4 games. The reality was a resolution and frame rate delta favouring PlayStation 4 that some were not happy with. Microsoft said it'd be cool but it most certainly was not cool.

Multi-platform games were always going to difficult. RSX was grounded in the yesteryear (even at launch) of discrete memory and pixel and vertex shaders where Xenos offered unified shaders, unified memory and more of it available. So for a generation most (not all) multi-plats were better on 360, but first party titles looked stellar on PlayStation 3. Ratchet & Clank, Uncharted and Metal Gear Solid being notable early stand outs.

And sure, Sony viscously cost reduced the platform, first removing the backwards compatibility over two revisions, removed the excess ports and die shrunk Cell and RSX twice. But fundamentally, as a games machine, PlayStation 3 was competitive with 360. You just had to target it's architecture which many multi-plat developers, quite understandably, didn't do until there was a bigger base to justify making that effort.

 

My math and logic appear to be just fine. LOL

 

I link to the latest quarter (Q2 2014), you pull figures from 15 months ago (Q1 2013).

 

I can pull 2014 also.



Notice the differences between iphones share of Apples revenue in 2013 (56%) versus 2014 (56%)...

Considering that overall revenue is up YoY at Apple and the iPhone share hasn't declined at all, means that iPhone is even moreso the most dominant element of their revenue.

My point still stands that iPhone IS Apple... the only thing that has happened over the last year is the reallocation of share amongst the remnant product mix.

 

So you're writing off almost half of the company's revenue?

Just the Mac and iPad produced $4.8Bn clear profit. Let's put that in Microsoft context, profits from Mac and iPad were just $860m below Microsoft's recently announced quarterly profit for the same period was $5.66bn. Profit's from their entire operation.

You stil want to just write that off?

 

im not sure where you are going with this.

I argued that iPhone is Apples bread and butter. iPhone took the top off iPod which has declined as a percentage of corporate revenue ever since. iPhone revenue by itself is greater than MS total corporate revenue. Mac sales are steady but relatively small, ipad sales are declining, iPod sales are declining or flat. Its really just that simple.


iPhone is Apple for now.



If Windows went away, people would say that MS dead too *shrug*

 

When I have time, I challenge blatantly dumb assertions.

Still no. You're own figures shown this not to be the case. If you want to argue that iPhone is Apple's biggest single profit centre at the moment, sure you can and I'll agree. But to claim iPhone is Apple, meaning without iPhone Apple would be nothing when in fact they'd still be bigger than Microsoft, then no. Because.. math.

Maybe you shouldn't just post what people would say. People say a lot of dumb things. Most of the threads on these forums are people rallying against common sense, math and logic for the sake of a platform preference.

 

Does Netflix, Skype, or any other non-gaming app that's behind paywall, charge manufactures a licensee fee on installing their app on their wares? If not, ignore the bottom statement.

If so, I can understand from a business perspective of MS wanting to recoup those fee's first, and possibly later allowing these non-game apps for free.

 

It was a spawn of the chatter/assertion related to MS and "failure" of kin, Zune etc. I then went against that proposition by saying that MS was late to a market segment (iPod/mp3) with the Zune. That same market segment has been a declining profit center for Apple as iPhone has become central nay critical to Apples revenue stream. The phone subsumes most of the sales of the iPod so whether Zune succeeded or not is fairly immaterial.

IPod isn't important anymore even to apple so not winning that segment doesn't matter. The real battleground was the smartphone. Every other market segment in apples portfolio is either declining or stagnant meanwhile MS' market miss of both mp3 and smartphone have forced it to widely diversify into 13 separate billion dollar product offerings. Apple's diversity isn't nearly as broad, as the majority of apples success is defined by a single product... Its phone.

 

Looking from the outside you'd think that would be the reason, but there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that we're not privy to. More later.

Agreed.

I can see that being the case, which would mean a lot of Gold subscriptions are sold by the month or 3-months? and not typically 12-months?

Tommy McClain

 

You can't eat your cake & have it too. You don't think MS should charge for access that are basic features that they can get for free elsewhere, but also get upset that they are putting totally unique Kinect features behind a paywall. It makes sense MS would want to monetize Kinect features. I've already mentioned what I expect as basic functionality. So I don't have a problem with Kinect features behind the paywall.

Tommy McClain

 

If it's not basic functionality, why is the Kinect a required component of XB1 that significantly increases the cost of the console for the consumer? If it's extra functionality and I don't have any interest in using it, why do I still have to pay for it when I get an XB1?

Obviously Microsoft is going to want to monetize it, but it really does look like a messaging issue.

 

What are Kinnects unique features?

 

That's a good question. When MS became the 1st console to stream Netflix they wrote the app themselves. They even paid for exclusivity to get the app. So that's probably why they put it behind the paywall: to offset costs of bringing it to their platform. With the exclusivity gone you have point, why are they still requiring Gold? Might be like you said, because they can. Lot easier to keep it behind a paywall when your subscribers are already used to it. But I agree they are no longer in a position to justify it being behind a paywall anymore.

Anyway, back to the app. It was based on Silverlight initially. Since then it has been rewritten by Netflix themselves a couple of times. Once a HTML5/Webkit app & most recently using their own native platform. Supposedly it makes it easier to update Netflix across multiple platforms. As Shortbread alludes to below, we have no idea if MS is being charged any kind license fee to bring it to their platform. I don't think they are myself. Would be kind of backward if they were no?

As I said above I don't think so, but does Netflix make enough money from subscribers to offset their IT & movie/TV license costs? If not, it might make sense for them to charge manufacturers a license fee. But that's just Netflix. No way every media service on Xbox Live requires a license fee too.

Tommy McClain