The irony is, that's exactly what Sony went for with PS3.
Business Approach Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox
- Thread starter BRiT
- Start date
IMO That will only make things harder to compare. So what if Microsoft outsells PS4 2 to 1, if only a quarter of the people buying into a Xbox One are actually buying it to play games? It surely will be interesting to see how software sales will relate to hardware ones 2 years down the road.
Given what we know of both platforms at the moment and the likely consumer of both, I'd expect those hardware sales numbers to be flip flopped.
Software attach rate will be nearly identical with an edge going to Sony.
but what can stop sony from doing all these dvr cable thing really, its not like an optional add on is totally out of the question. Like some articles has mention, MS should learn from google tv and how they failed.
Reminicent of the PS3 launch. Many bought it as a bluray player, and it was labelled a trojan horse by naysayers on the gaming forums. At some point the hope is that these people will buy games too. I don't know if that will work outside of the US, but it's not a crazy strategy. They don't really care whether you buy games, or media content, or just the gold subscription and use streaming services. As long as you give them money.
Still, it's hard to imagine the sales tipping that much in MS favor (2 to 1?), most analysts are saying they should be about equal at launch.
Billy Idol
Legend
Exactly. The X360 is famous for its absurdly high attach rate, all that despite major piracy issues and multiple consoles per owner etc etc. xbox users buy games like crazy and are it seems reason for investing lots of money into game development.
I wonder if this will be influenced? If lots of people buy X1 for NFL and not for games, I guess it will be difficult to judge success as a gaming console...will be interesting to observe.
Interesting times ahead!
Billy Idol
Legend
I think that MS invests major resources into this...I am really not sure if Sony can keep up with this giant, don't know it and wonder myself.
I've sort of wondered if one or both of Sony and Microsoft might try to pull an Apple and forego the title licensing fee, in favor of simply taking the retail cut from their digital stores. That'd presumably be worth quite a bit in publisher goodwill (ie, special Microsoft / EA relationship), it would increase publisher profit at retail, and it would still leave a very good business for the console makers, who presumably will both have XBox Gold style service plans this generation.
Especially with the value that they would get by locking their console and their media stores under the tv..
I half expected Microsoft to announce that move at the reveal of the One.
Thoughts?
Especially with the value that they would get by locking their console and their media stores under the tv..
I half expected Microsoft to announce that move at the reveal of the One.
Thoughts?
That sounds like a fair trade off, though it doesn't seem MS is in the trade-off frame of mind.
They seem to just be getting greedier and greedier. xbl fee + more and more ads + marketing research mandatory in every box + high MSRP (allegedly) + smaller compute die size + cheaper ram + drm.
I'm wondering how the Internet is going to flip out if Sony says online multiplayer now requires a yearly fee.
At this point, MS has set the bar so low wrt what to expect on policies, that Sony has a lot of leeway to work with.
If I were in their shoes, I'd slowly build up into MS territory. Let MS take all the heat for drm, xbl fees, marketing research in your livingroom mandetory etc. by not announcing any of it. Wherever ms stands on a negative policy, stand on the other side with "we don't charge/do that".
Make the decision easy as can be for the consumer to "jump in" with ps4.
Then start introducing these not so nice profit policies after a year or two.
I'm wondering how the Internet is going to flip out if Sony says online multiplayer now requires a yearly fee.
Neogaf certainky wood, but it doesn't take much.
However, they've indicated that wouldn't be very likely. More likely is an extension of something like Playstation Plus, perhaps extended with stuff like party chat etc., but not the core thing. We'll see ...
I believe the way it works for Xbox360, and PS3 is the publisher sets a wholesale price for the product, the online stores then set the retail price. There is some fixed markup, but it's not guaranteed.
It used to be even more complicated at Sony because SNEI run the store and until recently they didn't report through the SCE structure at all, so they would get the retail markup in their books and pay the licensing fee to SCE.
There is a legal reason that it's done this way, and it can't currently be done the same way as Google and Apple. What I've been told is that doing what Apple and Google do which is just taking a percentage of the money that passes through the store requires a special legal status.
They would a little, but not that much.
Besides, PS+ gives you free games but the subscription rate is low. Roll online gameplay behind it and sub rates skyrocket. But they wont stop giving away the games I would expect. So that'll give GAF an easy out.
Right now it's a bit early to get an accurate picture of what the exact strategy of both companies is. I will wait until E3 to give a more accurate opinion.
I think that Sony go for gaming and then multimedia, which is what we expected from MS, but MS go for games and multimedia with too much focus on the later.
Additionally, what separates Sony from Microsoft is that they learnt from their own past without forgetting we are in 2013.
They have the most capable machine next gen and they only need some kind of Final Fantasy VII game as an exclusive. This might be the new game from Cerny. Killzone is getting there, but it needs a very strong / charismatic main character. Gran Turismo is another amazing exclusive game but it won't be released at launch date.
MS on the other hand have some good exclusives -without them being Nintendo, of course-, and they spent most of the money on getting a cloud service running and some exclusive deals like the NFL one. They have 15 exclusive games and 8 new IPs, apparently, and I wonder how much money it cost.
Unlike the good ol' Xbox days when they wanted the most powerful hardware, they are focusing on software and universal appeal -I expected to see Justin Bieber during the Xbox reveal, to add to that, but the got Steven Spielberg instead, which is fine-.
PlayStation 4 is about gaming mixed with some motion controls and a camera, while Xbox One is all about nongaming entertainment and a bit of games here and there.
But we shall see in the E3.
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Bagel seed
Veteran
So is it safe to assume Xbone will have their own game livestreaming and sharing functionality built in?
Oh they — including WiiU — will all have general entertainment features. It’s the baseline. At this point it’s all about how you want your customers to perceive you.
MS want everyone to see them as a legit entertainment company rather than a dudebro + Kinect gaming box maker. So in some sense, they have to come out to declare their stand publicly. They will show advanced gaming stuff in E3.
Sony have always been associated with entertainment. Even if they keep quiet, you know they will have entertainment features [Insert 4K3DBRTV ad here]. But they choose to focus on gaming because plain and simple, it’s their core strength against Google and Apple. They have their first party studios to back their position. It looks like they see gaming as a mainstream medium, and they intend to carve out a space for themselves.
MS want everyone to see them as a legit entertainment company rather than a dudebro + Kinect gaming box maker. So in some sense, they have to come out to declare their stand publicly. They will show advanced gaming stuff in E3.
Sony have always been associated with entertainment. Even if they keep quiet, you know they will have entertainment features [Insert 4K3DBRTV ad here]. But they choose to focus on gaming because plain and simple, it’s their core strength against Google and Apple. They have their first party studios to back their position. It looks like they see gaming as a mainstream medium, and they intend to carve out a space for themselves.
But even as such the games were still taking the primary focus when it was announced. I was pissing in my pants with every game announcement/tech demo.target render/real time footage. Sure they said they were gonna have linux and blu ray, but still they werent spending most of their conference time demonstrating linux, media functions and the awesomeness of Blu ray. They just made their point. Gaming was just as important. The console just came with added functions
MS focused a lot on the non gaming features, Kinect, TV, browsing, skype and was trying desperately to convince that they are more important than they really are. And this got even more disappointing when they made deliberate hardware choices that treat gaming as a less significant aspect of the console by sacrificing too many resources and silicon for these features that arent everyone's cup of tea.
Take me for example...I was eager to see what MS was going to do with the XBone and they showed a console that allocates resources to functions I dont care and I wont have access to because I am from Europe. edit: because I AM FROM EUROPE!!!!!!! Capital letter significance!!
Would you sell a fridge to an Eskimo who was waiting for an OVEN?
And thats the difference. MS's conference was aimed at general consumers while Sony's was aimed at gamers. Given MS's overall vision and timing, this makes complete sense. SONY's conference wasn't 3 weeks away from e3. Three weeks of gamer disappointment is easier to manage than 4 months. Sony had to show games as it had no console to show and Sony's has always marketed itself having a gamer centric philosophy. However, widening the appeal of a console means showing off a bunch of non gaming functionality and it's easier for MS to present this type of conference with e3 so close. MS could have minimized the backlash by having 2 conferences at e3, each with a different focus or a really long one. But that requires a greater level of logistics and cost for MS. Instead they they broke out tents and threw a presentation on their campus for XB1 on mostly it's non gaming features, but biggest differentiator with mainstream implications.
We may not see the value of Kinect and the TV integration, but we already own consoles. MS is trying to attract users whose values of different features are unlike our own and don't necessarily engage in console buying. And those that buy console but aren't heavy game buyers. Kinect and the TV integration maybe very important to these buyers and could provide an alternative revenue sources that casual gamers might more readily use.
Furthermore, MS and Sony are basically a performance/priced based sku apart in the same generation of technology. The performance gap between Sony and MS tech will be minuscule compared to the gap between consoles and discrete cards from nvidia and AMD. Whatever sacrifices made by MS it didn't come with a drastic difference in performance. And plus I doubt MS will be the sole lowest common denominator for all things gaming performance related.
In terms of issues like memory, discrete gpus will employ stacked memory in a couple of generations. Bringing a level of bandwidth that will make both consoles' bandwidth look nothing but anemic. But stacked RAM will also bring with it lower latency. Onion bus provides for lower latency with its 20 GBps pipe. But the xb1 has 102 GBps going to 32MBs of eSRAM. XB1 looks like MS is basically employing a strategy commonly found on HDDs and SSDs. Employing a small RAM cache/buffer to improve the read and write performance. Except that the cache/buffer is intergrated directly into the SOC. While Sony employs a system that provides faster overall bandwidth, it provides the worst latency solution. So in the future PC development will be affected by the XB1 lack of bandwidth and the PS4's higher latency.
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