Available != mature, or even usable at the level of manufacturing required for a console. Could they even find enough die space in 2012?
Do you think it would be a mistake for MS and/or Sony to launch in 2012?
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Available != mature, or even usable at the level of manufacturing required for a console. Could they even find enough die space in 2012?
Shipping, yes, but in what volume and with how complex chips? Also didn't TSCM start producing 90nm stuff a couple of years before last generation launched?
Shooting for 1m consoles to be shipped in 2012 would be reasonable.
I'm assuming that sense they are manufacturing high-end GPUs on the process with over 4b trans, it is workable.
Yeah, the pressure to balance long term interests with years results and dividends is always there.
Sony would have more reason to accelerate a launch if you assume that "dominant player" is what they see as attainable next generation, and if you assume that they feel they can deliver that platform next year. But Sony seems to be the least likely to launch next year, so either they don't see the "early launch" as the solution to their problems or they are flat out incapable of launching next year.
There's is no guarantee that MS can afford to launch next year and not weaken their position with retailers (who in America [worlds largest gaming market] and the UK are loving MS at the moment), weaken their position with publishers (who are finally [kind of] in control of production timetables, costs, technology, etc), sour their relationship with many of the millions have just jumped on board the 360, and prematurely sour the financial statements that are only recently making Xbox look like a rock star.
This rush to a new platform is not something that developers, publishers or retailers are actually feeling at the moment.
Whether a platform is late or early will only be decided in retrospect.
Absolutely. But neither is it a good idea to kill future generations while simultaneously killing off your current gen.
And have you noticed that it doesn't seem to be bothering them?
And if Sony had tired to beat the 360 to market they'd have lost Bluray, lost the PS2 early and god knows how bad their graphics chip would have been. Failure to control costs was the PS3's biggest enemy ...
The Sega Master System outright failed in Japan (the most important market to Sega) and in America (the largest console market in the world). That was the primary motivator to try again, and Nintendo's ill treatment of 3rd parties and utter shiteness of hardware (the NES was awful even compared to the Master System) was their window of opportunity.
Europe was always a third place concern to Sega, even when it was hugely more profitable for Sega than Japan was. Sega were prepared to accept stepping on the Master System's toes in Europe and third world countries because they wanted America for its riches and Japan for pride. Edit: Even then they took 2 years to launch the Megadrive here, while supporting the Master System - there must have been a strategic reason for that delay.
The Megadrive was vastly more successful here in Europe than the Master System anyway (by current standards the Master System was nothing). Sega made absolutely the right choice (amazingly). Had Sega been in Nintendo's shoes it would not have been the right choice.
Time passed isn't the only thing that determines when a console transition makes sense. The importance of pure hardware verses software engineering experience and service evolution has changed and consoles are far more extensible as platforms now. The rate of change hasn't lessened, only the need to swap out the hardware to support this rate of change.
And that's not even changed radically, it's just slowed down a little bit.*
*The Megadrive saw six years between introduction and the launch of the Saturn. If Sega had waited another year and let Yu Suzuki have his way with hardware (instead of trying to beat Sony to market with an expensive, limited suicide vest) they might have been in a better position.
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This is no different than a foot race and given a head start. While it may not be a given that a headstart automatically equals you crossing the finish line first, it does gaurantee that you will finish much closer to finish line at the end of the race. Thus a headstart is always important unless you know for absolutely sure that the advantage given to your competitor is easily one you can make up and still cross the finish line first.
The problem with the console market is that no manufacturer has the ability to reliably determine whether or not a competitors is easy to overcome especially for next gen where your two competitors are coming off last gen with the top 5-6 consoles of all time.
Furthermore, a year doesn't garuantee anything. Its been decades since a launch of a console that held the title of most technologically advanced and market leader. Tell me what an extra year bought the Nintendo's GC. Its was more technologically advanced and had a visual improvement over the PS2 that was readily apparent. You can say the say with the Xbox but Nintendo was a known capable producer of consoles. Its didn't come with the reservations that comes with a release of a console from a new manufactuer. But it got outsold 6:1 by the less advanced PS2 and is of now the worse selling Nintendo console ever. We're in the middle of a gen where the market leader hardware wise wouldn't be certified current gen if we labelled generation based on hardware performance instead of by year launched. A hardware advantage doesn't win market dominance.
If Sony had waited an extra year and launched with a $400 price tag and 1 gig of ram then only thing that would of happen is that the 360 and Wii would of shipped an extra 10-12 million consoles in their first and second year and they would of become more entrenched with developers and publishers.
You seem to dismiss that there exist disadvantages of delaying a launch. The biggest one is the increasing difficulty of encouraging publishers and developers to release their wares on your platform. That one year advantage of buying and encouraging support of third party pubs and devs support for the 360 is where MS gained its strongest ability to compete with the PS3. The 360's one year launch advantages end up giving the 360 a year window to show off its ability to move software. The Genesis, PS1 and the 360 are all examples where a launch advantage helped them gain third party support thats not typical outside of market leaders. Developers would jump at a 720 launch with far greater force than what was seen with the 360 without the need for MS to dump major dollars into investor laps.
What does an extra year buy over a PS4 buys MS? Its buys it the ability to release not as a successor of a 25 million Halo machine with very little third party support but as a successor of 60 million heavily support third party machine with its immediate competitor still in Sony's R&D department. MS has the opportunity to overshadow a PS4 holiday release and launch lineup with a more mature set of holiday titles and 5-8 million units available. They have the opportunity to do to Sony what the PS2 did to the Xbox, which is step on your competitor's neck before they even have a chance to get off the ground.
Basically, MS has the chance to redo the 360 launch without all consumers, pubs, and developers reservations that existed for the 360 in 2005, while not having to deal with all the high expectations and support that PS3 received as being the successor to the most popular console of all time.
+ most multiplatform games would probably not have done anything special for PS3 with the extra RAM as they will still have to work on the lower-specced console as well.
To be honest I fully expect that for first couple of years most next-gen multiplatform games would just upscaled from 720p/30FPS to 1080p/60FPS with perhaps a bit better quality assets and not much more. Obviously there will be a few console/generation exclusives as well but it would take a TON of convincing for devs to not support current gen HW that has >100M potential buyers.
Right. No-one knows who's running. Is it better to turn up early and get a head start, or turn up later having spent more time training? That question can never be answered until after the race has begun and been going a good while!
I never suggested that. Sony were already later. Another year wait would have been too long. But what if MS had launched the same time as PS3 only with 1 GB RAM; what would the outcome be then (we can of course only guess). My PS3 case was where hardware design and price are more important than release date, and a better designed PS3 launching a year after 360 with a better GPU, and lower pricetag or maybe more RAM (either or, not both) would have done much better than the current PS3 (possibly. No-one knows and it's all pie-in-the-sky guesswork). Or the other option, MS launch a year later than they did with XB360 and produce a more reliable system that didn't cost then the earth and had twice the RAM (or some other advantage). Hell, launching a year later with a working system would have saved them $1 billion. An economic case would need to be made with the amount of market that billion gained them and that it was a sound investment. Yes, there is an economic case, but impossible to prove.
No, I don't. I've said it has advantages.eg.
I even presented a list of factors MS can choose from to gain the best advantages which was headed by launching first. It's telling that no-one wanted to try and prioritise that list, but still will discuss one option in isolation.Me said:
Anyway, this is a tired discussion IMO that's going nowhere. There's no point repeating oneself ad infinitum.
Here's the deal, 2-9 do not need another year to come to fruition.
The Title of the thread is not: "where do you prioritize the first-mover advantage". The title and topic is, "would it be a mistake to launch 2012?"
It all depends on when MS started the process of xb720 and how forward looking and aggressive have they been in that endeavor. They could have had this thing cooking in 2006 as many of the preferable factors and predictions from way back when still apply today.
Tessellation - check
Symmetric multicore - check
Unified GPU architecture - check
Obviously, this is not an all encompassing list, but it shows they were very forward looking at the time of the launch of xb360, and technology exists IN 2012 to see a valid generational leap (8X) above and beyond the xb360.
So do they really need to wait till 2013 to realize how to engineer hardware not to RRoD #7+9? I don't think so.
Unified platform #3? Again, 2013 seems unnecessary unless they were late in picking out a target platform ... the EA reports of getting xb720 target dev kits from Early this year suggest that wasn't an issue.
Improved Kinect #2? This is a tricky one as the device they have right now isn't utilized to its fullest abilities and the motion control environment has shown that it has limited attractiveness among hardcore gamers (the ones dropping $300-400 on a launch console). This along with the fact that Kinect is still very new leads me to think that the priority to launch along side a brand new improved and more expensive Kinect is pretty low.
#4+5 Ram & Power - As I said, I'm of the opinion based on the knowledge we have of foundry abilities today, that there will be no significant advantage in waiting to 2013 vs 2012 for the ability to put more ram or more transistors in the box. 28nm is the best we can hope for in the 2012-2013 timeframe and they are shipping silicone at that node as we speak.
SSD #6 I would think is unnecessary. A Small pool of flash (8GB) will be more than enough as a base and if consumers want more, they can add a hdd which is still significantly cheaper than SSD even after the shortagges which should be cleared up by the time 2012 launch comes around.
#8 - you'll hate me for this but ... completely unnecessary. Having a console be "portable" would then draw the line of ZERO advantage over ipad and the like. The guts would have to be the same with the added disadvantage of not having thousands of apps and nowhere near the mindshare of the i world. At least in a console (preferably a standard av equipment 17" wide big boy that can have plenty of room to breathe air for those 4b transistors!) it can afford to stuff more technology in the box for the same price as an ipad. ... and besides, the point of the battle for the living room was to BE in the living room!
Who are "they" and how complex chips and how many of them are we talking about?
TSMC as reported below.
http://www.tsmc.com/tsmcdotcom/PRListingNewsAction.do?action=detail&newsid=6181
Yeah I've read that report but it doesn't really tell us anything useful.
Again, I'll remind people that 90nm was in "volume production" by TSMC 2 years before PS3 release and still they had major problems and RSX was closer to 110nm than 90.
This is a really good point.
The GC did have two negatives going for it, but before diving into those, This is the prime example of an established company facing a far superior marketing effort. Sony had a genus plan with ps2 and really nothing could stop it by the time it got rolling. Showing graphical glimpses of what the new ps2 could do way back in early 1999 (not really indicative of games performance). The whole fiasco with it being banned from certain middle eastern countries for fear of it being used to develop WMD as it was a "supercomputer" ... yeah, they were laying it on thick.
Good luck to anyone trying to compete with that!
Back to it - GC had two things going against it:
Disk size
Marketing/Dev support
Disk size is self explanatory, but it bears reminding that the two other consoles at the time were full size DVD based, and the one with smaller media was largely ignored (mostly because ps2 was selling gangbusters ... see above)
Marketing / Dev Support - this is a slash as it is a cause and effect. Nintendo never marketed their console as anything other than a "toy" (even the design speaks to this right along with the easy carry-along handle on the back and the kid friendly purple paint), thus the dev support was relatively difficult to come by for anything "mature". The big win for them was getting RE4 at the end of the consoles life when it was way too late. At least Xbox was getting most of the ps2 games ported to it.
Moral of this story?
Marketing trumps all.
Which goes back to another theme of "mindshare", which goes back to another element to compete on ...
First-mover advantage
As others have said, Nintendo is most certainly going to launch in 2012. But if they are going head to head against a "real" nextgen system, and this time without a compelling gimmick, I think Wuu will be quickly seen for what it is.
Such a comparison can be a huge leg-up in creating mindshare (the "real" nextgen system) and if they can match it with a sample of software that pushes the tech boundaries and offers something the hardcore gamer crowd can get behind, then all the better.
It then changes the game to "what will you trump this with Sony?"
If the answer is "nothing but our key franchises" due to Sony not wanting to expend any more than necessary (reasonable), then they can expect a shift of a certain percentage of their fanbase to move to the first mover.
Sony may try the smoke and mirrors route again (it would be a first of they didn't), but people are pretty quick to sniff those out anymore. And with the information age being what it is, the majority will see and know what is what in short order. There will be some of course that want to believe and will, but they will be fewer as the Sony marketing machine is significantly weaker without Kutaragi around.
I miss that guy.
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2007/11/vote-the-ken-ku/
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Was TSMC shipping 65nm when xb360 launched? My memory is a little fuzzy....
Edit: nm - Production was due to start December 2005.
Compared to their 65nm rollout in late 2005:
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The point is what other node would they use? You keep saying they waited 2 years and shipped on 90nm. What else would they do? MS ship xb360 a year earlier in 2004? ??
MS had to dump xbox asap, and try to catch Sony off guard with xb360. This forced Sony's hand.
The process node available was 90nm. 65nm, the next smallest node, was not ready for launch in 2005 and the rollout for it was slow as we saw HP scheduled to start 2006 and SOI only scheduled to appear in 2007.
Sony couldn't depend on such a slow adaption and so were forced to produce on the same node and the rest is history.
Let's contrast to the here and now...
28nm is shipping now.
Nextgen machines aren't expected until next year. A full 12 months after the first run of the full gamut of 28nm. Not just low power as the case was at the end of 2005 65nm.
In other words, this go around, there is a real possibility to ship on 28nm in 2012.
I was kind of trying to claim that even after TSMC had had 2 years of mass production experience at 90nm both consoles still had yield problems.
Yes the report that portions of the die weren't 90nm ... ok.
upnorthsox
Veteran
Sony didn't/doesn't use TSMC.
And I'll paraphrase back at you:
What is "Volume Production" and how complex chips and how many of them are we talking about?
upnorthsox
Veteran
To partially answer my own question, the ATI x1800 xt "paper" launched in oct. 2005 as the first 90nm GPU, a month before the xb360 release. In reality then, Xenos was the first "Volume Production" GPU at 90nm.