No European PS3 launch until March

[expletive]

Seeds of an interesting strategy there --instead of a price cut to greet PS3, which they've mostly ruled out, bundle the online. Defend your price point, get more people in the online community, remove an irritant for some.

I think MS will hold fast until its 100% clear on what Sony and Nintendo's definition of 'free' is, and what exactly it is that they are giving away.

For example, if the Sony service makes players in the lobby watch a 30 second commercial before every new map, or a majority of the promised functionality is delayed indefinitely, MS may well feel their online pricing is well justified (the consumer may as well).

I dont think MS will have all the information it needs to make this call until right up until the PS3 launch. Its only then that we'll see the entire system online and in the hands of the gamers.

 

[Geo]

Well, I wouldn't advise MS to do anything the first few months anyway. They certainly can't have any impact at all on what Sony is going to sell in November and December in North America at those volumes.

Something for Europe might be interesting, and gives MS a few months to look over the real situation first.

 

[darkblu]

Do you consider anything you pay for a rip-off?

gwad, no. but multiple things i use on a daily basis are. welcome to the world of monopolies and duopolies.

I look at it this way: I buy, say, 10 AAA titles per year.

10 quality titles a year, especially on a single console, is a little bit generous by my standards. i have neither the time, nor the justification. nor the consoles i own tend to get so many AAA titles a year. or if they do, i don't play every single one of them, just because i may not enjoy some of the genres. but nevermind, let's assume people with broad interests can get 10 quality titles a year on the average.

Now, I can spend 60 bucks on top of that, either for Xbox Live Gold, which will enable me to play multiplayer online on those 10 titles, or buy one additional title. Which brings more marginal value to me? Easily the 10 online modes.

and that's a rather moot generalisation. it could easily be that this particular 11th game would bring you more value than online for all the rest 10 titles, but tough luck, you're over budget.

Online multiplayer is not "free"; it's just that some console manufacturers might choose to subsidize it the way other choose to subsidize their consoles.

nobody ever assumed for a single moment multiplayer was free for the provider. nothing is - life 101. how does that relate to the price the end customer is paying for it, though?

Look, I can understand the "There are exactly zero 360 titles that I would like to play" argument against choosing the 360. What I can't understand is the stubborn insistence that $600 with free online play is fair and square while $400+$60 for online play is a ripoff which should not be tolerated, and the attempts to justify it with some economical reasoning.

first off, $600 is a rip-off. that's why many people won't be buying a ps3 at this price.
second, it's not $400+$60, unless you plan to play online for a single year only. and whereas the price of the console may drop, the online fee may or may not follow.
third, last time i checked the HDDVD addon for the 'box was ~200 bucks. in the eyes of many consumers who buy consoles based on features (i'm not one of them but that's irrelevant) this practically equalizes the base value of the station and the 'box.

does this suffice to you as economical reasoning or not?

 

[assen]

third, last time i checked the HDDVD addon for the 'box was ~200 bucks. in the eyes of many consumers who buy consoles based on features (i'm not one of them but that's irrelevant) this practically equalizes the base value of the station and the 'box.

And this is a prime example of why arguments on this and similar forums never go anywhere: they jump from point to point. It has free online multiplayer, but it's too expensive, but it has Blu-Ray, but there will be shortages, but they will be worth the wait because of the Japanese exclusives, but they lost GTA, but the Cell is all-powerful, but the Xenos has EDRAM, but no one is using it effectively, repeat around the cobbler's bench ad nauseam.

$60 is the price of XBL Gold here and now, for this next one year. I don't know how much it will cost next year. I doubt it's a significant revenue stream for Microsoft's Xbox division, in the grand scheme of things. Maybe they will waive it. Maybe they'll redeem you with marketplace points. Maybe they'll double it.

All in all, my point is that $60/year (put it another way, $5/month!) is insignificant next to the total amount you pay to feed your gaming habit.

By the way, if you're right - in the sense that most consumers think like you - MS will drop the price of XBL Gold, or make it free. So I'm rooting for you, in a sense

 

[darkblu]

All in all, my point is that $60/year (put it another way, $5/month!) is insignificant next to the total amount you pay to feed your gaming habit.

i think i got your point right from the start. what you keep missing, though, is that for many people going on and spending the better half of a grand for something which no matter how you look at it can be qualified as one thing only - a toy, is a rather tough decision. on top of that, a related recurrent fee makes that decision only tougher. yes, it's largely psychological, but no, it's not religious (60 bucks can be half your monthly utilities), and unless you see the right psychological reasons behind it you'll keep missing the point. your logic that people spend proportionally for everything is simply not true. expenditures' absolute value matters too.

By the way, if you're right - in the sense that most consumers think like you - MS will drop the price of XBL Gold, or make it free. So I'm rooting for you, in a sense

nah, i'm of the 'not interested' group.

 

[patsu]

assen, different people do have different preferences. This is proven in the different pricing schemes for MMO games. Even in enterprise software, there are people who still prefer software licenses as opposed to ASP model (even if the former cost more per year).

And this is a prime example of why arguments on this and similar forums never go anywhere: they jump from point to point. It has free online multiplayer, but it's too expensive, but it has Blu-Ray, but there will be shortages, but they will be worth the wait because of the Japanese exclusives, but they lost GTA, but the Cell is all-powerful, but the Xenos has EDRAM, but no one is using it effectively, repeat around the cobbler's bench ad nauseam.

That's because it's the total package that close a sale. Different people may value individual features differently. But the consumers only get to buy the entire thing.

Sometimes, the purchase decision is not logical (or is influenced by other factors). This is why marketing is hard, and is modelled using statistics instead of a rule-based system.

$60 is the price of XBL Gold here and now, for this next one year. I don't know how much it will cost next year. I doubt it's a significant revenue stream for Microsoft's Xbox division, in the grand scheme of things. Maybe they will waive it. Maybe they'll redeem you with marketplace points. Maybe they'll double it.

All in all, my point is that $60/year (put it another way, $5/month!) is insignificant next to the total amount you pay to feed your gaming habit.

It depends on your utility. If someone like me does not value online gaming highly, I'll never pay for it even if it's $5/year. Remember that I still have to run a cable or buy a WiFi adaptor for my console to begin with. However this does not mean that I won't feel the online itch once in a while.

By the way, if you're right - in the sense that most consumers think like you - MS will drop the price of XBL Gold, or make it free. So I'm rooting for you, in a sense

It's economics and consumer behaviour. MS has to figure out its own formula.

 

[wco81]

Now this is a line of reasoning I completely fail to understand.

You paid, what, $500-1000 for your HDTV.
You are willing to put down hard money on a preorder (e.g. give up on the discount of the advance payment), and buy a $600 console instead of a $400 one.
You are paying $20-40 a month for a decent Net connection?
And your time is worth at least $5-10 an hour - wildly guessing that you don't live/work in Elbonia. You'll spend at least several hundred hours in multiplayer gaming in a year.

Yet you can't justify $50-70 a year for online gaming.
Seems to me a religious thing, nothing to do with rational economic behavior.

I can afford to pay for XBL. But I don't like paying for something which I don't really value. I can use IM on the computer to communicate.

When I said dealbreaker, I meant it more in the sense of the clinching thing. Xbox games, especially the FPS ones, don't appeal to me. PGR and Forza might. So might a few other exclusives.

But most of the online gaming I do is with sports games, mainly Madden. So I don't need to pay for a friends list for that.

 

[Mariner]

Watching some of the Champions League games this evening, I noticed many large and prominent adverts for PS3 - most of them behind/near the goals for maximum effect.

I'd guess the advertising deal (which undoubtedly costs a pretty penny) was agreed long before the European delay was announced - either that or Sony are really into advance advertising!

 

[StefanS]

Watching some of the Champions League games this evening, I noticed many large and prominent adverts for PS3 - most of them behind/near the goals for maximum effect.

I'd guess the advertising deal (which undoubtedly costs a pretty penny) was agreed long before the European delay was announced - either that or Sony are really into advance advertising!

Yeah, I noticed that as well. I guess, you can't start early enough. Seriously, they've probably made the deal before the delay.

 

[avaya]

Actually they aren't losing anything on the Champions League advertising; they've been sponsoring it for what seems like forever, leveraging any Sony product they wanted. They recently extended the deal. It all started off after they decided to expand on just club based advertising at the end of their deal with Juventus back in the late 90's.

If they didn't want PS3 boards up there they could easily have PS2 boards in place. However I think the boards were printed and sent-out to competing clubs before the announced PS3 delay, so in that sense, the stadia with no dot-matrix advertising hoardings will be stuck with PS3 ads. Replacements can be made at the Round of 16 and again for the final. Stadia with dot-matrix (Bernabeu, Emirates, Old Trafford, Nou Camp, Allianz Arena just off the top of my head) can adapt (BRAVIA/PS2/Sony). Let's see what happens for tomorrow’s matches and for matchday 2 in 2 weeks time.

Actually by the time the CL reaches it's nitty gritty stage at the Round of 16 (late February) PS3 Euro launch should be just under 2-3weeks away. The viewership/coverage really increases at the knock-out stages, so as the CL builds up to its crescendo in May, PS3 should be available in Europe.

 

[wco81]

By coincidence, I signed up for a CL fantasy league at the UEFA site this morning. Invited by someone.

Lot of Sony sponsorships evident on the site and among the prizes for the game include the PS3 as well as PS2 and PSP.