Business Approach Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox

Finally! Now they need to take the next step for cars, where you just buy a dumb display in the car and your laptop, phone or whatever just gets mirrored to it and you control it all from there. That's another market they could completely own as Apple has totally missed it. Hopefully in the not too distance future the idea of buying a "car radio" will come to an end and they will just be dumb displays that our phones, tablets and laptops just project onto. I like how all the pieces are coming together, but crickey it's taken a long time.

Car makers won't go along with that.

They will bundle high-end stereo with things like Bluetooth, NAV and HID that people want.

They may make car stereos work with phones. In fact, I think there may be AirPlay support coming from several OEMs.
 
It's possible. If people were to compare exclusives rather than multiplats.

How do you compare exclusives? they are composed of unique in game problems they are trying to solve.

DO you mean like Forza vs PGR vs GT? So comparisons of fidelity across genres?
 
Car makers won't go along with that.

They will bundle high-end stereo with things like Bluetooth, NAV and HID that people want.

I don't really agree. Everything the high end units do a phone can ultimately do much better and in a more familiar way. I have a "high end" Kenwood in my car and it feels like it's powered by a 6502, it's so primitive compared to what phones can do. Car makers resisted adding phone support for a long time and eventually it cost them especially amongst female car buyers, I don't have the article links anymore but ladies would avoid buying a car if it didn't have proper phone support on the radio. I think once they get display mirroring working it will become a must have not only because it will save people money from having to spend on overpriced car stereos that are still very primitive, but because it will provide a familiar and hence better experience. It's an opportunity waiting to be taken.
 
Try to buy any foreign cars without a stereo. All the aspirational brands are sold as packages. You don't get to order a la carte.

Why would car makers willingly put in a dumb unit there and lower the prices? If anything, they're going to try to put in more mobile technology into the cars, making them redundant. But for their purposes, they're interested in keeping the ASPs of the cars as high as possible.
 
Except this time the motion/camera system will (or should) actually be available at launch. The Playstation Eye launched a full year after the launch of the PS3 and the EyeToy came out three years after the launch of the PS2. Even if its not bundled, it stands a better chance of broader adoption for that reason alone. Particularly if there's strong marketing behind it, along with solid first party examples of how to use it and perhaps just as importantly, robust developer libraries and tools.



What are you basing all developer's supporting it on? Regardless of whether its bundled or not I don't think we even know if SCE is providing the same level of libraries with the PS4 SDK (for voice recognition, body tracking, skeletal tracking, etc) for the Eye as MS has, and will again, for Kinect and Kinect 2. Without the same type of libraries and tools (tailored to the PS4 Eye's specs) you'll likely have fewer developers willing to invest more of their resources into developing their own to make use of the peripheral (regardless of whether its bundled or not, although bundling would help make a stronger business case).

If Sony's initial focus is the gamers, then they should show us convincing PSEye game concepts and applications first. They can sell a PSEye bundle when these stuff are here.

If Sony have other ideas, say Occulus Rift for a random example, they may choose to bundle that thing for core gamers instead/later. :devilish:


PSEye and Move didn't reach mainstream users because Sony market them badly. They seem to see the hands free natural interface tech as "just" another way to play some games, instead of the future of gaming. In particular, they (Dr. Marks) mentioned that the camera techs were not ready at PS3 launch.

Adding Move improved tracking but introduced other issuess. The limited PS3 OS and memory also made it hard to retrofit the technologies. PS4 should be different in this aspect.

Perhaps similar to their rumored audio approach, Sony will deliver a high level controller API and framework to take care of common PSEye use cases behind the scene.
 
Try to buy any foreign cars without a stereo. All the aspirational brands are sold as packages. You don't get to order a la carte.

Why would car makers willingly put in a dumb unit there and lower the prices? If anything, they're going to try to put in more mobile technology into the cars, making them redundant. But for their purposes, they're interested in keeping the ASPs of the cars as high as possible.

You keep the basics as they always need some base functionality there. But they will have to support the more tech savvy people as time goes on. It's the same reason they don't sell "highly profitable" cd changers in cars anymore and instead offer "low profitable" aux-in jacks on their car radios because people switched to using their phones for music. They had no choice because people were skipping on cars that didn't have an aux-in, it was seen as a negative especially in newer cars where you often can't go aftermarket on audio because the whole system is also tied to base car functionality like heating and cooling. The next step is dumb terminal type display, I'd bet top dollar on it becoming ubiquitous. I always scratched my head why Apple didn't jump on that, they could have owned it. Now it's Microsoft's for the taking.
 
I think some car stereos have USB jacks now, which will connect to an iOS device and display what's in it.

But the real thing will be AirPlay support via Bluetooth. That way, you can be listening on your earphones and then get into the car, start it which will turn on the car stereo, which will automatically transfer the output to the car stereo.

Then when you park and turn off the ignition, the playback continues on the headphones (if you plug them in).

That is how my iPhone works with my Airplay speakers. I get home, turn on the Airplay speaker and the output transfer to it and I can take off the earbuds. Plug them back in or turn off the Airplay speaker and the sound transfers back to the earbuds.

I have aux-in jack on my car stereo but don't use it except for long trips because when I get in and out of cars, I have to physically tether my device, which is sitting in my pocket, to the car stereo. Cords are messy in the car, with seat belts involved.
 
I think some car stereos have USB jacks now, which will connect to an iOS device and display what's in it.

But the real thing will be AirPlay support via Bluetooth. That way, you can be listening on your earphones and then get into the car, start it which will turn on the car stereo, which will automatically transfer the output to the car stereo.

Then when you park and turn off the ignition, the playback continues on the headphones (if you plug them in).

That is how my iPhone works with my Airplay speakers. I get home, turn on the Airplay speaker and the output transfer to it and I can take off the earbuds. Plug them back in or turn off the Airplay speaker and the sound transfers back to the earbuds.

I have aux-in jack on my car stereo but don't use it except for long trips because when I get in and out of cars, I have to physically tether my device, which is sitting in my pocket, to the car stereo. Cords are messy in the car, with seat belts involved.

Sure but my Windows Phone has already done that for years, that's old hat and not really the big thing I had in mind. Likewise on the aux-in jack that's also old, I haven't connected a cable to my phone in ages, it does charging, audio, everything wirelessly for a long time now. Nothing special there.

What I was saying was that the display in your car will mirror the phones display, touch and all. So you get in your car and head out, and your phone's display appears on the dumb touch display on your car, automatically connecting to the phone in your pocket. At that point you can do anything on that car display as if you are using your phone. So use the same Nav app you are used to, use the same music app you are used to, run the Yelp app, Angry Birds, whatever, using the same familiar interface on your phone because it is your phone, it's the same thing just projected onto the dumb terminal in your car. That's where things will get interesting. Microsoft going with Miracast will accelerate that happening, I think Google supports it also. Apple could have locked that down with Airplay but they missed their chance.
 
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I don't really agree. Everything the high end units do a phone can ultimately do much better and in a more familiar way. I have a "high end" Kenwood in my car and it feels like it's powered by a 6502, it's so primitive compared to what phones can do. Car makers resisted adding phone support for a long time and eventually it cost them especially amongst female car buyers, I don't have the article links anymore but ladies would avoid buying a car if it didn't have proper phone support on the radio. I think once they get display mirroring working it will become a must have not only because it will save people money from having to spend on overpriced car stereos that are still very primitive, but because it will provide a familiar and hence better experience. It's an opportunity waiting to be taken.

Having worked for a company that makes the actual products you mention I would have to say that it is not as easy as you think. Also, you want the stuff you put in cars to last 15 years.
 
Having worked for a company that makes the actual products you mention I would have to say that it is not as easy as you think. Also, you want the stuff you put in cars to last 15 years.

Which is why having navigation systems and such built in there makes no sense whatsoever. ;)

So instead, I agree that a generic, replaceable screen could definitely be the way forward. But yeah, that's not as easy as it seems, especially if you want that screen to also be able to interface for built-in car features. The touch-screen may have different requirements, such as still work when your fingers are cold and covered in gloves, for instance (stuff I've thought about since my 2007 model Prius has a built-in touchscreen)
 
Having worked for a company that makes the actual products you mention I would have to say that it is not as easy as you think. Also, you want the stuff you put in cars to last 15 years.

I don't deny there will be a fight, but ultimately I feel companies like Kenwood, etc and the whole car aftermarket thing is a dinosaur that will be extinct. All it takes is one manufacturer to support it and others will have to follow or be left behind as old fashioned, just like tape decks and cd changers fell by the wayside.

Look at the audio situation that wco81 describes, that's something I've already had for ages now. My phone plays music, I get in my car and take off and it all auto switches wirelessly to the car speakers, then I get home an head in where audio auto switches back to the phone, then I plop it onto the wireless charger and make a sandwich. I'm way to used to that now, there's no way I'd go back to the old primitive cabling methods, my Windows phone is far too convenient to go back to any other method. Now once someone saw a mirroring display in their car and saw that everything on their phone be it Siri, some tourist app, photo slides app, movie playback, or whatever all runs seamlessly on their car display, do you think people wouldn't want that all standard? If car maker 'A' offered that and car maker 'B' offered an old fashioned car stereo, you don't think it would eventually affect their bottom line? Car makers dropped tape decks and cd changers for a reason, they can't risk being left behind.

To kind of keep it semi on topic, Microsoft supporting Miracast is also cool because it means you can eventually play XBone games on your Windows tablet while outside on your hammock, or play pc games on your tv via the console, etc. Display sharing is a long overdue thing that hasn't taken off because not enough people got behind it. Apple being Apple didn't bother enough with it. Microsoft and Google backing the same standard will give it enough ubiquity to finally become mainstream rather than just a hobbiest thing.
 
But yeah, that's not as easy as it seems, especially if you want that screen to also be able to interface for built-in car features.

You just have another button/input which represents your Miracast display. So you know how you can press a button to display heating/cooling controls on your display and press another button to go to default car audio mode, you could go to another input called 'Aux' which is any Miracast wireless hookup. The way that currently works with automatic Bluetooth audio connections for example is both mine and my wife's Windows phone are mated to my car stereo with mine set as the priority. So if I drive alone in the car it auto hooks to mine, if she drives alone it auto hooks to her phone, and if we are both in the car it still auto hooks to mine since my phone is higher priority. I change input on my car stereo to listen to audio from my phone. They can do the same thing with display pairing so you maintain all vehicle functions on the display, and switch to aux to get Miracast data. You can mix and match the two as well, so like they could reserve say the bottom part of the display all the time for various car stuff and display the Miracast stuff on top of that. My current car stereo does that where when using the Nav unit it still displays satellite radio controls at the bottom of the display in the reserved area and vice versa.

Anyways I don't want to derail this thread anymore but it is kinda relative to their respective business approaches as Microsoft is thinking very broad here, which to me is fantastic as clearly mass appeal is their long term goal.
 
Yep. And then Apple changed the connector and they no longer work. Great. :rolleyes:

My iPhone 5 and iPad mini can be hooked up to my car via the new USB->Lightning cable.
My wife's 4S connects to the same car via the old USB->30 pin connector.

Both can also talk to my car with Bluetooth (e.g., for calling and music playback).

When I enter the car, the stereo system will autoplay my songs. The first time I used my car, I looked around for about 15 seconds before realizing that the familiar songs were all from my iPad mini. >_<
I thought it was a new radio station since the music starts almost right after my engine powers up.

I control the playback and phone with the buttons right on the stock steering wheel. That's probably a safety feature. No need to fight with bad recognition. In fact, even with working speech recognition, some parts of the system will refuse to continue if it senses that the car is moving.

Besides the LCD display, the car has its own voice to respond to me.
 
really we are just talking about the death of the ipod connector being built into cars... I add more music to my phone than my ipod and it annoys me that my car (a 2009) only supports bluetooth telephone audio- not a2dp. When I travel I rent cars with SYNC and when i get in my phone connects voice and sound through the computer and I'm off and running. I have a Lumia 920.

I think this may be on MS' radar. IM not sure how you would miracast the WP screen as the orientation is 768X1280.
 
really we are just talking about the death of the ipod connector being built into cars... I add more music to my phone than my ipod and it annoys me that my car (a 2009) only supports bluetooth telephone audio- not a2dp. When I travel I rent cars with SYNC and when i get in my phone connects voice and sound through the computer and I'm off and running. I have a Lumia 920.

I have a Lumia 920 as well, but my car stereo supports a2dp which is cool because the wireless sound quality is pretty good. It's actually better than using a cable because there is less chance of audio interference or hiss.


I think this may be on MS' radar. IM not sure how you would miracast the WP screen as the orientation is 768X1280.

Keep it vertical, that would easily fit on todays car displays and be about the same size as your phone display, or larger in the case of small iPhone screens. Or rotate it and display it landscape, both would work fine. Use empty space for other car controls like heating or whatever, there's lots of ways to do accommodate this.
 
really we are just talking about the death of the ipod connector being built into cars... I add more music to my phone than my ipod and it annoys me that my car (a 2009) only supports bluetooth telephone audio- not a2dp. When I travel I rent cars with SYNC and when i get in my phone connects voice and sound through the computer and I'm off and running. I have a Lumia 920.

I think this may be on MS' radar. IM not sure how you would miracast the WP screen as the orientation is 768X1280.

Use the Lightning to 30 pin adapter.

I have Sony's Music Unlimited, and YouTube Favorites playlists. The third party apps will work like the built-in Music app regardless of the connector type, or over Bluetooth.
 
You forget that BR have higher storage capacity (which is why XBO will have BR) and that thanks to this all PS3 games have better surround support and better FMV than Xbox 360 games.

Sure Sony took a hit with Blu-ray but now we know they went in the right direction.

So better sound and video is the great justification for hiking the price by 50% at launch? Relating this back to the inclusion of media features and Kinect with the Xbox One it is hardly comparable. Playing streaming video is 'free' whereas Kinect offers a completely new way to play games AND draws a wider audience into the system. Kinect is a money maker and a system seller both; whereas Blu Ray cost Sony time, money and sales.
 
I have a Lumia 920 as well, but my car stereo supports a2dp which is cool because the wireless sound quality is pretty good. It's actually better than using a cable because there is less chance of audio interference or hiss.
Oh? Have they fixed the A2DP driver then? When I last tested it, it had a spike at 11khz and 16.5khz which made it impossible for me to listen to it for more than a couple of minutes. Took me an age to convince them there was even a problem. Although, this was on the CE kernel, the Minwin driver might not have the same problem.
 
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