Microsoft Posts Huge Xbox Losses

[Magnum PI]

I think I was pretty clear when I said that it's quite obvious how next Playstation console would have a hard drive - Microsoft or not, Xbox or not. Releasing a HD as an add-on for PS2 was more than a hint for that.

history proved your reasonning is wrong

3D glasses were an add-on on some consoles, did it become standard on their successors ? *NO*

same for lightgun..

so the fact HDD was available as an add-on for the PS2 isn't a hint of it being integrated in the PS2.

it isn't so obvious.

 

[Guest]

PS3 will use Bluray and hence eliminating the nedd for HDD!

 

[London Geezer]

PS3 will use Bluray and hence eliminating the nedd for HDD!

....and you know because Kutaragi's son is your best friend and he's got a prototype of a PS3 and he made u play with MGS5......


i dont think blueray ELIMINATES the need for a HDD but i could be wrong... i just dont think its transfer speed would be high enough to eliminate the need of a HDD... and also you have to think about piracy and at this moment i do not see how having a completely writable disc with ur game on it can not hurt Sony in the long run.... but well...

 

[Crusher]

I'd rather have a hard drive than a memory card just for save games, if nothing else. It would be a lot cheaper for one thing, and would allow for saving much more information, which in turn allows for much more interactive games. I don't know how much they take up on the console versions, but for the PC versions I have save games that range from 4.3-7.7 MB each for Deus Ex (33 MB total), and I have 28 MB of savegames for Morrowind. How much are memory cards these days? $25 for 8 MB or something like that? You could get a 10 GB hard drive for that price.

 

[maskrider]

I'd rather have a hard drive than a memory card just for save games, if nothing else. It would be a lot cheaper for one thing, and would allow for saving much more information, which in turn allows for much more interactive games. I don't know how much they take up on the console versions, but for the PC versions I have save games that range from 4.3-7.7 MB each for Deus Ex (33 MB total), and I have 28 MB of savegames for Morrowind. How much are memory cards these days? $25 for 8 MB or something like that? You could get a 10 GB hard drive for that price.

The hard drive in the X-BOX cannot be replaced and the save games cannot be copied out to memory cards. I bought one for backup purpose, but it disappointed me that the saves cannot be copied unless you have mod-chip you can save the files on PC. This is a really really stupid and non-sense design.

Should the hard drive fail I will lost many hours worth of game saves. I have recently ordered a mod-chip to facilitate game saves backup and cheats.

And looks like only PC and X-BOX game saves are that big, save files on PS2 are relatively small (some tenth kilo bytes to a couple of kilo bytes) and I can copy them from card to card or the HDD or the PC (I have the card reading tools) when I want to.

And I can bring the memory card to a friend to play there. Hard disks are cheap, but they are not very reliable and portable.

 

[Glonk]

The hard drive in the X-BOX cannot be replaced and the save games cannot be copied out to memory cards. I bought one for backup purpose, but it disappointed me that the saves cannot be copied unless you have mod-chip you can save the files on PC. This is a really really stupid and non-sense design.

That's odd...for the majority of games I play I can copy my saved games over to the memory card from the Xbox Dashboard without issue. And my Xbox certainly isn't modded.

 

[maskrider]

The hard drive in the X-BOX cannot be replaced and the save games cannot be copied out to memory cards. I bought one for backup purpose, but it disappointed me that the saves cannot be copied unless you have mod-chip you can save the files on PC. This is a really really stupid and non-sense design.

That's odd...for the majority of games I play I can copy my saved games over to the memory card from the Xbox Dashboard without issue. And my Xbox certainly isn't modded.

Which games ? The saves that I will care are PDO (7 blocks), PGR (17 blocks), DOA3 (5 blocks) and DOAXVB (7 blocks). GT2002 save is too big to fit to a card, SplinterCell weight in 469 blocks. I have spent many hours on them and don't want to lose the saves. There is only DELETE in the action list on all game saves.

The save card have 502 blocks (no save there indeed).

 

[Heretic]

Sony is obviously going to ship their next console with a hard drive and network adaptor, that is a given.

Given all the patter leading up this statement, along with the following quote, the only thing really obvious is that Ben is a big fat MS fan (not that there's anything wrong with that! )

Sony is obviously looking for a radical new architecture

Me thinks they've already found one and it ain't so new no more. Do ya suppose they learned anything from the EE/GS combo? I do

At comparable life cycle points MS and Nintendo are both within spitting distance of where Sony was

There are none so blind as those wearing nerdy green Xmen goggles...

Now take a peek through my cool blue PS2fanboi shades;

With two xmas seasons under their belts (when the bulk of sales are made)

PS2- 30 mil plus
XB&GC- 8 mil minus for each

That's a long ass ways to spit

 

[marconelly!]

history proved your reasonning is wrong

Well, I'm sure history also proved it right several times (SegaCD comes to mind) but given that Sony has been touting their Playstations as a broadband, content delivery machines, and selling HDD as an add-on, they would have no choice but to implement HDD or other mass media device in their next machine. Again, Microsoft or no Microsoft...

 

[BenSkywalker]

Given all the patter leading up this statement, along with the following quote, the only thing really obvious is that Ben is a big fat MS fan

I'm back to being a MS fan? Just last week I was a Nintendo fan. For the record- GC games I own- 23, XBox- 5(had six, traded in LOTR for pure suckage factor), PS2- 2.

Me thinks they've already found one and it ain't so new no more.

CELL hasn't been built yet, I would classify that as well within the 'new' range.

There are none so blind as those wearing nerdy green Xmen goggles...

Comparing actual console sales from the point of their initial launch isn't valid...? How the hell does that make any sense?

Maskrider

Which games ? The saves that I will care are PDO (7 blocks), PGR (17 blocks), DOA3 (5 blocks) and DOAXVB (7 blocks). GT2002 save is too big to fit to a card, SplinterCell weight in 469 blocks. I have spent many hours on them and don't want to lose the saves. There is only DELETE in the action list on all game saves.

Odd, my dashboard has a copy option on it to move games to mem card. You sure your mem card is OK?

 

[marconelly!]

Comparing actual console sales from the point of their initial launch isn't valid...? How the hell does that make any sense?

Just out of curiosity, what was the number Sony reported for their worldwide PS2 sales 15 months in the lifecycle?

 

[BenSkywalker]

Marco-

IIRC it was ten million shipped after just over twelve months although I can't find the press release on Sony's site any more. They hit 30Million shipped in May of '02 http://www.us.playstation.com/news/PressReleases/415014851.asp

That was 27 months after initial launch.

 

[marconelly!]

10 million after 12 months, 50 million after 36 months. That's quite a jump...

 

[BenSkywalker]

That kind of sales spike is normal in the console market on a percentage basis. The PSX actually saw quite a bit larger percentage spike IIRC at comparable points however it started at much lower sales levels.

 

[marconelly!]

Then what makes you think Xbox or GC won't have the same spike now that they were close to the PS2 at their respective points in time? Why do you think MS will reach merely 40M units after five years?

 

[Guest]

I wish i was Kutaragi son. At least i can make sure the ol' man do not jaggified the PS3 again!

 

[archie4oz]

Yep, I agree. I also feel the hard drive as we know it will be going the way of the dodo sooner rather than later.

I disagree. There's still tons of opportunities for HDDs in consumer electronics. (Plus it'll be hard to beat in terms of $/MB for quite some time still)

So you think Nin was right sticking with carts for the N64?

Well to some degree (in terms of 'console survivability) yeah! CD drives and HDDs do add more failure points and increase the rate of failure. Aside from that, internal power supplies are the next most common failure point (or cause of failures of other components)... Notice that the BigN still uses external bricks???

Sony forced the issue of optical media.

Well technically NEC is the one that forced the issue... Sony just happened to be the one that exploited it the most and made the biggest success off of it.

Very good point. Just like the SNES having a port for a CD-ROM drive proved that the N64 was going to have a CD-ROM drive built in, and the multi-tap for the PSX proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the PS2 was going to have four controller ports, and the N64 having the 64DD was proof positive that the GameCube was going to include a sizeable rewriteable media drive included.

Well the SFC port was for 'generic expansion' and it was used for the BS-X module (I've still got mine!)... Multi-taps on the PSX were nothing new either as the PC Engine (with it's '1' port) started the trend of multi-taps, and the Saturn exploited this the most (supporting 10 players, Saturn Bomberman!!!)... Sorry, got nothing for the 64DD/GCN...

However, the difference between your analogy and the PS2 was that Sony showcased the HDD with the PS2 (even though it wasn't release 'till much later), along with both external HDD configuration (due to the V1, V2 design) while the V3 based models were mockup (obviously due to the lack of 'expected parts' )

Odd, my dashboard has a copy option on it to move games to mem card. You sure your mem card is OK?

Aside from his Xbox having problems, there is no requirement by MS that the game save be able to 'fit' within the memory card or that saves store every parameter of the saved data...

Why do you think MS will reach merely 40M units after five years?

If they don't diversify their software lineup it sure as hell won't... (unless it existed in a relative vacuum).

 

[BenSkywalker]

Then what makes you think Xbox or GC won't have the same spike now that they were close to the PS2 at their respective points in time? Why do you think MS will reach merely 40M units after five years?

The 40Million number was what MS could move losing the same amount of money they are now per console without any improvement whatsoever on the financial end and stay within their budget. The simple fact that they are selling a good amount of software will obviously continue to improve things, I was simply giving catastrophic case in terms of financial losses. With $2Billion set aside they can sell as many units as the NES did, that should put things into perspective for people.

As far as the sales spike trend, by the time the XBox is at three points in to its life cycle we will be very close to the end of this generation. The PS2 actually launched ~18 months prior to the XBox. Could the XBox hit 50Million or so consoles? I think it is certainly within reason but far from assured, same with the GameCube. The N64 saw a massive spike in sales in a like period that we are discussin but not nearly as large as the PSX and it ended up selling roughly one third of what the N64 did. The XBox could increase sales 200%-300% looking at comparable life cycle points and it would still fall short of the PS2 although it would certainly have gained an enormous amount of mindshare(as they had next to none at the start of this gen).

Archie-

If they don't diversify their software lineup it sure as hell won't... (unless it existed in a relative vacuum).

With the Rare acquisition I feel that some diversification is all but assured. It's not like MS needs Rare to boost their standings in the FPS genre

 

[archie4oz]

Rare is nice, but not enough... They'll likely help out with the "younger" audiences, but they don't expand the boundaries of non-traditional gamer audiences like ArtDink, Nana-On-Sha, and Harmonix have done for Sony...

 

[BenSkywalker]

They'll likely help out with the "younger" audiences, but they don't expand the boundaries of non-traditional gamer audiences like ArtDink, Nana-On-Sha, and Harmonix have done for Sony...

Uhhh, what are the US titles of those games? I've never heard a thing about any of them.