Can Sony afford to have the most powerful console next-gen? *spawn

[liolio]

Yes, I was thinking 2006 launch when I wrote that, and I was projecting my own perception of what happened to "most gamers" because I didn't want to be alone
I would certainly agree that they waited WAY too long to do the price cut, but they had no choice, they were waiting for the silicon shrink, and a redesigned low cost bluray optical block. But has there ever been a moment where the 360 lowest SKU wasn't about $100 less expensive? The SKU without HDD?

I just wanted to point out that early adopters are not "most gamers" though I believe they can be in the category of customers manufacturers like the most, those who are willing to spend quiet some money.
I do not question the value the ps3 provided at launch, it was definitely worse the difference in price (vs the 360). The issue Sony had was that there definitely weren't that much people that could pay that much even if it was worse every pennies.
Anyway back to your original point I agree that Sony will lose some of edges it has with the ps3 (std HDD slot, brd, linux, browser,etc.). I think they should try to keep the psn free, some seems to criticize it (I never used a ps3 my self, and to say the truth there are quiet a few games I wisi I were able to play: LBP 1/2, wipe out, UDF2/3, Gow3 ) but my gut feeling is that is fine now and free. I always have in mind a sentence of some Sony exec which of late stated the "people should be wary about what they want for the psn" (in the face of criticism). I think he meant that people should keep in mind that while certainly not perfect the system is solid and free.
I think that keeping the free network is an edge for Sony. They should back that with a cheap system they could mass produce pretty early (so maximizing their launch and the launch line up which I hope is to be strong). I thionk again about the poll you spoke about and my answer, polls are free, some people are indeed loyal to brand but can't really pay the price of a system at launch. Ultimately those people jump it after 1/2 years (or more), it is not neutral from the manufacturers pov, it is potential sales and royalties lost on the first generations of games.
So overall, it is just that, my belief, but I think that Sony should try to go for a blitz on the core gamers on a budget as indeed they have lost some of the advantage they had this gen, and are likely to fall further behind wrt to services.
On the other hands MSFT is having some pretty counter productive decision, like block the browser on silver live account, in 2012 really? I mean MSFT is running many goal at the same times, I feel like they are pushing it a bit too far, I think that there is a good opportunity to top them from the bottom if it makes sense.

Judging from my own circles of friends, I agree there's a big difference in user base, MS gamers are the competitive kind and online is very important in general. The games considered the best are different on 360 and PS3. Would anyone really switch to MS if Sony starts charging for online? They'd be a little angry, but their favorite games are still on the Sony platform, there's nowhere else to go. That's the reason for brand loyalty, it's as long they make the right kind of games, they'll buy the console. I have more than one friend who went through multiple RROD 360 and eventually bought the "black-one-what's-it's-name" to solve the problem. I had a big discussion about it and they don't care, they will keep buying MS consoles, because that's where their favorite games are, and competitive online gaming is core to their gaming habit.

Actually if Sony charged for the online it is unclear if they would have more users than they have psn+ users. May be it would not be that bad, thing is (and it is not sony fault or responsibility more a matter of fact) I feel like if both MSFT and Sony goes with fee for online gaming it could have a pretty nasty effect on consoles sales/relevance overall. I mean quiet some costumers could move away from that model, there are no longer BC, content bought is lost, you have to pay to play on line, etc.
I could see a lot of gamers (and their parents for teens) just say fuck that, I'm not sure teenagers are to pay on monthly basis for online gaming when it is free on phone and PC and neither their parents.

I think there's a wall where people won't pay more (xmax family budget, etc..) At launch both PS3 and 360 were too expensive. 400 seems to be a good maximum price point for next gen (because inflation says hi), but if MS is 349 and Sony is 399 with some added value, I think they can still have a user base parity.

Well taking in account the production capacity they had (both) the price of the 360 was fine, and without the basically failed design...(though the system would have been significantly delayed) price could have gone down earlier. The ps3 well was worse the money but a stretch above the bar for (fast) mass market adoption.
When I think of cheap, I think cheap in my view Sony should launch @ 299$ for a complete sku. I would favor a Wii like price, 249$, with an empty HDD slot, and the same amount of flash as the late ps3. I would also hope they come with a design they can produce in high quantity and meet pretty fast with the demand.

There's been fuckups on both sides, but MS it could be resolved after the first redesign, and Sony's expensive Bluray and yield issues were solved with time and later shrinks.

Well Sony yields problem mostly affected their financial statements, MSFT sold a pretty much defective system to have a head start on SOny. Corporation are not people, are not good or evil, etc. those on those very fact it is not really disputable which committed the greatest deed

One thing the PSV proved is that a powerful console isn't enough without the games. The PSV is amazing technically, and I think the biggest problem was the impossibility of having BC, even when it launched in japan they kept buying the PSP for a while. I don't believe it was because of the price. Let's see if an upcoming Vita price cut proves me wrong

I think the price is definitely part of the issue as well as the screen size in a world where 7" tablets are more and more popular. THe problem they have now is when they are cheap enough tablets will have catch up in power. There are rumors of the nexus 7 hitting 150$ soon. Archos sells the gamepad 150$, a Chinese company just put together a soc which includes 4 A7 and a sgx 544MP2, that kind of chip could power the next generation of gamepad if it has any success.
I'm scared that by the time Sony can get the price of the psv "where it belongs" the competition will be even tougher, now they are in a situation where all they can do is to pray that neither Apple or Google, launch its own game oriented tablet (ala archos) and try to convince editor to port games of more significant scales that what is available now (pretty much there is no content that match what the psv offers as far as core games are concerned).

I'm aware I'm currently wishful thinking because I really want a powerful next gen. Not the cheap SoC everyone is talking about

Well you might actually be right, but with MSFT trying to monetize everything (including the browser functionality... /really?), the overall bad economic situation everywhere and likely if not already here double dip and Sony bad situation I'm actually concerned of Sony having a Sega moment So I (try to) think about what they could do that is not too risky (possibly not the most profitable option either) that could get them through the storm while minimizing risks. I've the odd feeling that they will prove me wrong and I hope I will also be wrong on the consequences but I've no trust in Sony executives, all the guys in charges now were in significant positions when Sony took many bad decisions on many of their activities.

 

[Persistantthug]

The question should be can Sony afford NOT to have the most powerful console next gen.

As has been stated on various chat forums across the net many times,

The most powerful console for each particular generation since the 90's has never been the most powerful.
-PS1 wasn't the most powerful during the 5th gen
-PS2 wasn't the most powerful during the 6th gen.
-Obviously, or perhaps not as obvious to everyone...the Wii won the 7th gen.


If having the most powerful console were the biggest factor, then the PS3 wouldn't still be trailing in 3rd place.

 

[dagamer]

As has been stated on various chat forums across the net many times,

The most powerful console for each particular generation since the 90's has never been the most powerful.
-PS1 wasn't the most powerful during the 5th gen
-PS2 wasn't the most powerful during the 6th gen.
-Obviously, or perhaps not as obvious to everyone...the Wii won the 7th gen.


If having the most powerful console were the biggest factor, then the PS3 wouldn't still be trailing in 3rd place.

Actually, I'd make the point that even though the PS3 launched a year later and was $200 more expensive than the 360 at launch, to be within 3 million units sold goes to show either how strong the PS3 was in its later years or how absurdly weak the 360 was in Japan(or both really). Even in Europe, the PS3 outsold the 360. While Sony is certainly weak compared to how it performed with the PS2 last generation, it's market position is not such doom and gloom (it's the rest of Sony that is floundering, not the Playstation division).

 

[bkilian]

On the other hands MSFT is having some pretty counter productive decision, like block the browser on silver live account, in 2012 really? I mean MSFT is running many goal at the same times, I feel like they are pushing it a bit too far, I think that there is a good opportunity to top them from the bottom if it makes sense.

I suspect MS would like to phase out silver entirely. My prediction, based on nothing more than seeing what they've been doing the last few years, since I had no insight or access to business plans, is that MS will require gold or a subsidized hardware 2year contract for the next console.

 

[Exophase]

I suspect MS would like to phase out silver entirely. My prediction, based on nothing more than seeing what they've been doing the last few years, since I had no insight or access to business plans, is that MS will require gold or a subsidized hardware 2year contract for the next console.

What would this entail exactly? I don't play online games so I don't really know what if any capabilities my silver account has there.. actually I just use my 360 to play the occasionally downloaded game. Surely MS wouldn't make me pay to get access to their store, that'd be pretty crazy.

 

[Nesh]

That's $21B CASH RESERVES. I think you're confusing it with CASH FLOW.

Cash Reserve vs Cash Flow.

No I didnt. Cash Reserves are affected by cash flows. Hence why you saw me mentioning them and hence why the very same link you posted says the exact same thing

 

[jonabbey]

I wonder if Sony has any big-picture strategy in mind with PlayStation at this point. My impression is that Microsoft got into XBox to prevent Sony from becoming a broader threat in computing / software / dominance of the home. With PS1 and PS2, Sony were selling single purpose gaming gadgets, while Microsoft made the play for online and services. With 360/PS3, both companies have online services and media sales, but neither has very successfully broadened beyond their consoles with them yet.

For the next generation, there's now an obviously much greater world out there in phones and tablets. Microsoft at least seems set to provide a unified story across all Win8 devices, at a minimum. Sony has.. what? They captured the high-def disc standard last time. Can they support Gakai gaming on iOS and Android devices? Will they have some sort of software / dev environment that would be attractive on other platforms? Will they incorporate Android into PS4 somehow?

I mean, so far they can't even let customers shop the PSN store from a web browser, for chrissakes.

 

[liolio]

I wonder if Sony has any big-picture strategy in mind with PlayStation at this point. My impression is that Microsoft got into XBox to prevent Sony from becoming a broader threat in computing / software / dominance of the home. With PS1 and PS2, Sony were selling single purpose gaming gadgets, while Microsoft made the play for online and services. With 360/PS3, both companies have online services and media sales, but neither has very successfully broadened beyond their consoles with them yet.

Well it is obvious that KK's line about the playstation wanting to be a computer did not do Sony any good.
As for why they (both) fail to broaden the use of their device is that TV/cable operators are not simply willing to give MSFT, Sony or anybody for that matter the use of their infrastructure to sell content they can sell them-selves.

For the next generation, there's now an obviously much greater world out there in phones and tablets. Microsoft at least seems set to provide a unified story across all Win8 devices, at a minimum. Sony has.. what? They captured the high-def disc standard last time. Can they support Gakai gaming on iOS and Android devices? Will they have some sort of software / dev environment that would be attractive on other platforms? Will they incorporate Android into PS4 somehow?

I mean, so far they can't even let customers shop the PSN store from a web browser, for chrissakes.

I'm still close to think that 300 millions was a missinvestment... Onlive after bankruptcy got bough for peanuts, before that it would have cost a significant amount of money to buy them. The market can indeed be wrong about the valuation of a company, once in a while.
I'm still curious about the cost of operating such infrastructure, I'm not sure it is going somewhere anytime soon.
Well for Android, my pov is that they should have found a way to have it running on the PSV already. MSFT has trouble fighting Android and iOS with Windows, that is something I fail to see how Sony can even try to fight against that, embrace it or be left behind...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I mean, so far they can't even let customers shop the PSN store from a web browser, for chrissakes.

You're a little late there. Sony opened the webstore on the 7th. Their music service, Music Unlimited, is supported on Android, and they have developed PlayStation Mobile as a platform for devs to target Vita and a subset of Android devices, and presumably that'll run on PS4 even if it doesn't come to PS3 (which it should). Sony are definitely moving on a strategy that's more open than MS's Windows platform, but in usual clumsy, indecisive Sony fashion.

 

[jonabbey]

Well for Android, my pov is that they should have found a way to have it running on the PSV already. MSFT has trouble fighting Android and iOS with Windows, that is something I fail to see how Sony can even try to fight against that, embrace it or be left behind...

Yeah, me too, though I don't know how much value there is to running Android on a non-touch screen device. Google TV is a thing, but I don't think it is big enough yet to be much of a factor for apps. More generally, I don't know how much the big screen in the living room is going to be a factor for anything other than watching video and playing controller-based games. A portable, high res screen close to the user with full touch is so much better for everything else.

The good news I guess is that a quad core x86 processor should be able to run Google TV as a hosted VM if nothing else, as well as being a home server, maybe automation for other appliances, etc. Nobody seems to have figured out a truly mass market for such things yet, though.

 

[kagemaru]

I agree. Having the most powerful system only seems to be perceived, if your multiplatform games look and perform better. If it's, generally, only the games that can fully take advantage of the system; it's usually seems to be written off.

I disagree. Regardless of reality, fanboys will always perceive their favourite system to be the most powerful regardless of how overwhelmingly their platform loses in almost every apples to apples comparison.

A couple of exclusive titles will work wonders to maintain the reality distortion field of the faithful.

Awesome post function. I honestly don't understand how he's still allowed to post here.

I suspect MS would like to phase out silver entirely. My prediction, based on nothing more than seeing what they've been doing the last few years, since I had no insight or access to business plans, is that MS will require gold or a subsidized hardware 2year contract for the next console.

If there's any chance of this being true, they already lost the next generation before it even started.

It's bad enough to lock major features behind a pay wall, but to lock the entire system behind it as well? That's just asking for failure.

 

[Entropy]

I wonder if Sony has any big-picture strategy in mind with PlayStation at this point. My impression is that Microsoft got into XBox to prevent Sony from becoming a broader threat in computing / software / dominance of the home.

Agreed. Ken Kutaragi was quite emphatic in his statements regarding the role of the PS2 as a computer, and it was also imported as a computer rather than entertainment applience in certain regions. Nevermind that it was for import duty reasons, Sony was making direct threats to what Microsoft regarded as their home turf, and Microsoft responded as we have seen - bought themselves into the market to preempt the perceived threat.

With PS1 and PS2, Sony were selling single purpose gaming gadgets, while Microsoft made the play for online and services. With 360/PS3, both companies have online services and media sales, but neither has very successfully broadened beyond their consoles with them yet.

And they may never, if you regard the market as a whole. iOS and Android devices outsell stationary consoles by incredible margins and I can't see that relationship changing other than in mobile devices dwarfing consoles ever more. Everything offers online and network services these days! The role of game consoles in the larger scheme of things when it comes to entertainment media, can never reach beyond the very marginal.

With 20/20 hindsight it is easy to criticize Microsoft for another money loosing foray to buy themselves into a business, joining the Zune, MSN messenger, Bing, TelCo, Kin, and so on where they tried to get into something that they thought might be threatening or get big and either failing or getting blindsided by the real deal. They need to do these things though, but the downside with their XBox venture is that it weakened their true cash cow - Windows/Office - in the home.

It would be ironic if the result of online/network/streaming capabilities becoming ubiquitous was that consoles refocused on gaming, to strengthen their identity rather than try to broaden their appeal. I don't believe it though.

 

[SMvenom]

Sony don't need to have the most powerful console, but they do need parity in power so that third party AAA games will run as well on the ps4 as they do on the nextbox. Sony also needs to rethink, innovate and vastly improve the consoles non gaming functions as well.

I have 2 nephews and they as well as all their gaming friends ditched Sony for MS midway through this gen, these are kids in their mid/early teens and they changed consoles for just 2 reasons. No1 cross game chat, and No2 COD tends to run better on the 360. You wouldn't think one games performance and chat could have such an impact, but it does.

 

[Squilliam]

I think Sony doesn't have the same justification for releasing the most powerful console as Microsoft does in the next generation. The most successful Playstation consoles have had solid performance and a reasonable price and the outlier which cost them is the PS3. Even if Sony wasn't in significant financial hardship I just don't see them wanting a repeat of the PS3 and having a simple console with solid performance with an appealing price from the get-go which can be expanded with services and accessories.

Microsoft needs a more powerful console because they need to power Kinect and to properly do that they likely need the equivalent of the entire resources of the Xbox 360 to devote to it and they need to better justify to the hardcore gamer that the subscription is worth it. I feel a large part of the justification of the Xbox 360 Live subscription was through choices made in the design of the Xbox 360 in terms of lower latency, better frame-rates etc which made the consoles online 'feel better' even if a large part of that advantage was local.

I think the best strategy for Sony is to give Microsoft a reasonable headroom and let them have the title of 'the most powerful' console rather than inviting another power competition. Microsoft needs the headroom more than Sony does and so long as they are reasonably close in performance with the scaleability of the engines today I don't think it'll make a huge difference if one console is say Full HD and the other one 1280/1080. Their competition would love to outspend them and their stockholders will not be tolerant of releasing another PS3.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

I disagree. Regardless of reality, fanboys will always perceive their favourite system to be the most powerful regardless of how overwhelmingly their platform loses in almost every apples to apples comparison.

A couple of exclusive titles will work wonders to maintain the reality distortion field of the faithful.

Then, of course, it's written off as fanboyism. Even when people try to say in the technical realm (exact numbers/features/functions), it's written off. It's written of as apples to oranges, etc. Not even considering the efficient use of clock cycles, they make excuses for the lack of clock cycle usage. They are SO MANY excuses. Then, fans of those people tend to lend credence by giving virtual "high fives".

That's why I say make the architecture so easy, a caveman could take full advantage of it. Of course, the trade off would be decreased maximum performance. Proven maximum performance only means something, when people take to time to learn how to achieve it. Simple, but ignored, concept.

 

[MrFox]

When the comparison between two consoles require the same game, and screenshots of the exact framing of the exact same moment of the game, looking at them for a few seconds to figure out what the differences are... only the geekiest fanboy would care. They are not equal, but they are similar enough that any sane gamer doesn't give a fuck.

The Wii was my first console that was obviously technologically inferior, I have an instant judgment just by looking at the screen. I haven't seen even the most hardcore Nintendo fans try to claim it has more powerful hardware than the competition. I only have a Wii because I love Nintendo games.

When you play a game, you can tell instantly which generation it is. PS1, PS2, and PS3 games are obvious to tell apart, even it they are completely different games. If the PS4 isn't significantly more powerful and allows a normal person to look at an AAA game and say "this is clearly not a PS3 game, it looks much better", they would fail to compete with themselves. That's the biggest reason to make a powerful console, make sure it's powerful enough to justify it's existence, otherwise they should simply continue to sell the PS3. A new kind of peripheral is no justification for a new console. Nor is a new online service, nor streaming. The only reason to come out with a new console is that the new base hardware gives a significant improvement, big enough to instantly wow people in their comparison to the previous generation.

 

[liolio]

If there's any chance of this being true, they already lost the next generation before it even started.

It's bad enough to lock major features behind a pay wall, but to lock the entire system behind it as well? That's just asking for failure.

Well that would be definitely a risky move, the ywould need something significantly better than the competition to pretty much secure the costumers that have both high expectations and buying power.

We are often focus on the user base but it doesn't say the whole story, like I said I would not be surprised if the 20 millions that have gold subscription makes more money to MSFT than the 40 other millions, though the 40 other millions still make them money.
Getting a significant part of those 40 millions to adopt a subscription model (like phones) is not that trivial), actually I think it could prove easier to steal Sony costumers that have high buying power and high expectations than to convince the average gamers, for which the console is if not a toy, a tool for entertainment to adopt a subscription based model (and also convincing parents to have another subscription on top of the phones, cable, etc.).
Those if you manage to secure those high end costumer, a niche could be enough to make a bunch of money.

I think it would be a pretty risky move and you better have a system akin to a neo geo of its time to convince as many people to adopt your business model.

 

[joker454]

Then, of course, it's written off as fanboyism. Even when people try to say in the technical realm (exact numbers/features/functions), it's written off. It's written of as apples to oranges, etc. Not even considering the efficient use of clock cycles, they make excuses for the lack of clock cycle usage. They are SO MANY excuses. Then, fans of those people tend to lend credence by giving virtual "high fives".

Part of the problem is that the "factual" information posted on forums is frequently very wrong. Example, I've read countless times about how high poly count ps3 exclusive games are with numbers posted all over the place, yet having seen gpad graphics dumps from said games I can tell you that people are frequently very wrong. Or, people thinking that because 1st party Sony devs are not publically complaining about the hardware means they must be content with it, when having privately spoken to many a 1st party Sony dev I can tell you that you would be utterly shocked as to what many really think of the ps3's hardware.

Naturally people can't speak publically about the graphics dumps we've seen, nor are we about to post publically about what 1st party devs tell us over drinks. So incorrect information continues to get posted on forums, then repeated ad nauseum, and hence false information ends up becoming fact. In the end we're left with people quoting wrong information as fact, and many of us simply give up and stop posting. That's because once the myth has become reality, there is no point into trying to fight it.

 

[eastmen]

As has been stated on various chat forums across the net many times,

The most powerful console for each particular generation since the 90's has never been the most powerful.
-PS1 wasn't the most powerful during the 5th gen
-PS2 wasn't the most powerful during the 6th gen.
-Obviously, or perhaps not as obvious to everyone...the Wii won the 7th gen.


If having the most powerful console were the biggest factor, then the PS3 wouldn't still be trailing in 3rd place.

Lets flip this on its head


The Saturn launched first but the ps1 was more powerful and was able to kill it before the n64 came out 18 months later.

The dreamcast came out first by a year but the ps2 was more powerful and was able to kill it before the xbox came out a year later


The xbox 360 launched first and was properly designed and managed to go from being a 125 m consoles behind the previous gen to being ahead for the majority of this gen (maybe still is) . The wii came out cheaper and less powerful yes but was also priced at half the cost and had a gimmick .

I think this gen shows that building more expensive consoles allows them to live for a longer time. The xbox 360 is now in its what 7th year and is still selling at $200 -$450 . Its launch price was $300-$400 . The ps3 is selling at what $250-$450 and its launch price was $500 to $600 . The wii u had much shorter legs the ps360 . Those consoles will continue selling for more years to come and can potentially have a ton of wii u ports in the future while they sell at the $100 or less mark.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

With 20/20 hindsight it is easy to criticize Microsoft for another money loosing foray to buy themselves into a business, joining the Zune, MSN messenger, Bing, TelCo, Kin, and so on where they tried to get into something that they thought might be threatening or get big and either failing or getting blindsided by the real deal. They need to do these things though, but the downside with their XBox venture is that it weakened their true cash cow - Windows/Office - in the home.

You could criticize them for the Xbox, but the whole Xbox division has turned out to be quite profitable for them with the X360, and the profits should only continue to grow in the future as long as they don't mess it up. Hence, it was a very good investment by them.

And has it really weakened their Windows/Office revenues? If so, it certainly hasn't done it by much. Microsoft still continues to increase profits year over year...every year...year in and year out. They may have a blip now and then where they don't make as much YoY, but that is extremely rare. I believe it's only happened once or twice in the past 10-20 years?

I mean really, how many businesses or corporations are going to replace their Windows Machines running Office with an X360?

People have been saying that Microsoft is going downhill since 1999. Every year someone comes out and says Microsoft is failing and Windows is weakening. And yet every year the install base grows, the revenue grows, and the profit grows.

Kin and Zune were failures sure, but they weren't devoid of value. Much of the things that were implemented in Kin and Zune has found its way into Windows Phone 7 and now 8 as well as Windows 8 and RT. So the investment that was put into those isn't entirely lost.

Every company has failures. If a company isn't afraid to try and fail...then the company has already failed. Both Microsoft and Google follow that mantra. Both have many failed projects, but not many useless projects. There's things that can be learned even if something doesn't perform in the marketplace.

Hence the lessons learned from the original Xbox helped Micorosft make the X360 a better and more attractive console to your average consumer.

And if Microsoft and Sony are smart, then they'll learn from this generation when they design their next generation. One of the takeaways? Being a lot more expensive than your competitor isn't necessarily a good idea. Another takeaway? Cross platform titles will try to be as similar as possible on both platforms. Hence, a more powerful console isn't necessarily going to be head and shoulders above, except in rare cases. IE - titles will be developed for the lowest common denominator.

Regards,
SB