NPD December 2008

[Asher]

This is quasi-related:
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/44067/Playstation-3-Development-Is-Deliberately-Difficult

Relevant excerpt:

Hirai also addressed the complex architecture of the PS3, which developers have openly struggled to get to grips with.

"We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?" explained Hirai.

Is there a more polite way to say this than, Hirai is out to lunch?

 

[Richard]

WTH? Is this because of a poor translation or something? Can we get the interviewer to rephrase the question michael-jackson-on-60-minutes style?

 

[Tap In]

This is quasi-related:
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/44067/Playstation-3-Development-Is-Deliberately-Difficult

Relevant excerpt:


Is there a more polite way to say this than, Hirai is out to lunch?

Is he saying that "anyone would be able to dev for it easily and this way sony 1st party games get an edge"? It's either that, a poor translation or it's a delusional rationalization

 

[AlNom]

WTH? Is this because of a poor translation or something? Can we get the interviewer to rephrase the question michael-jackson-on-60-minutes style?

You'd hope it was a bad translation... Doesn't he speak english though?

If I didn't know any better, I would have said he had gone mad...

 

[Scott_Arm]

It must have been meant as a sarcastic joke. That kind of thing usually gets lost in print. The idea that Sony would make a difficult platform to keep developers busy is absurd.

 

[Tap In]

The idea that Sony would make a difficult platform to keep developers busy is absurd.

of course but since it has that reputation, trying to mitigate or rationalize it in an interview when asked about it is evidently a PR nightmare.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Or, maybe none of that matters at all and the only thing that really influences consumer consumption is absolute cost. Not value or utility per dollar.

Unless your of the belief that the average consumer is completely irrational, utility per dollar is what drives\influences consumumtion, percieved utility per dollar anyway.

This is a point I made back when people were crowing over a PS3 'price cut', which was nothing of the sort. Adding value, whether by increasing HDD capacity (Sony) or bundling games and memory cards (MS), is not equal to dropping the cost and is not perceived by the consumer as equal.

Of course it does not, adding value never equals price cuts, anybody who argues that it is are morons. You are correct. However this does not mean that utility per dollar does not influence consumtion, its just that "the added value" by increasing HDD capacity or bundling games have a very small effect on percieved utility per dollar.

 

[midorigreenwood]

wow, Nintendo is going on crazy marketing mode in Australia. The amount of money they must spend on ads throughout the world is mindblowing.

The Australian Open (tennis) is on right now, and I watched about 2 hours spread out throughout the day and there were fricking 8 Wiisports ads (the ones featuring olympians Keiren Perkins and James Tomkins playing wii tennis) on the highest rating channel.

Funnily enough when I watched the 2nd highest rating channel there were two Wii Sports ads too >,>

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Well they are making outrageous amounts of money so why not. Also, there arnt exactly many people living in australia. Relative speaking it wont be that expensive to get your ads on tv.

 

[midorigreenwood]

well, It is nearly February so its past Christmas and New Years shopping madness.... and australia is a reasonably big market for its population size.

If you also look at the sales charts, the same types of games are selling like the rest of the world so you can probably make the assumption that if they're spending this much effort on us, they're probably doing the same thing worldwide.

 

[Nesh]

Or, maybe none of that matters at all and the only thing that really influences consumer consumption is absolute cost. Not value or utility per dollar.

This is a point I made back when people were crowing over a PS3 'price cut', which was nothing of the sort. Adding value, whether by increasing HDD capacity (Sony) or bundling games and memory cards (MS), is not equal to dropping the cost and is not perceived by the consumer as equal.

Utility per dollar is only important to those consumers who actually value the extra features.

For example, PS3 going from a 40GB to 60GB HDD at the same price point doesn't appeal to me. I'd prefer a price cut, I'm not going to use that extra space. The 360 packing in 'Kung Fu Panda' doesn't appeal to me, I'd never so much as rent that game, drop the price $40 instead.

Well we are saying almost the same thing

This is a pure economics on consumer preferences. The price on the 360 has been reduced so much that the extra differentiating factors such as a bigger HDD in the PS3 comparatively have an insignificant increase in value. Almost non-existing. Simply not enough to compete the value consumers perceive on a very cheap 360.

In circumstances where pricing is competitive, the more impactful would the added value be. At this point Sony can not compete by adding value through features without reducing price because MS is already too competitive with the features they offer at the current price.

Obviously neither I nor others are trying to say that 360 and PS3 are 100% equal. When we say PS3 can't differentiate itself, we mean it's not different enough.

Sony has a lot of cost in the PS3 tied up in things that add too little value to justify the cost. Due to the PS2 momentum and MS's RRoD problem (which admittedly Sony could not predict), all Sony had to do was match MS in price and feature to win the HD half of this generation by a considerable margin. That MS overcame both the Playstation brand's power and the RRoD PR nightmare is a testament to how little value was placed on PS3's expensive bonuses.

Well yeah. Sony simply took their selves out of competition because they lacked pricing flexibility to generate a constant flow of consumers. They already squeezed almost completely the potential consumers that were willing to buy it at a $399. They needed a price drop to pool the consumers willing to spend lower. The extra features dont do much anymore. Their marketing was also not so strong. So MS was given lots of room to improve their market presence and brand compared to competition. They were comparatively more dynamic. From now on as long as Sony doesnt reduce their price, an extra feature MS offers on the 360 the more effective it will be in creating interest. This cant happen with the PS3. Especially if they are things such as a bigger HDD. How does a consumer experience a bigger HDD? There are a tons of demographics that are interested in other features they can experience directly such as games. They just need a better price.

I think Sony isnt in a very good situation to reduce their price significantly so they rely on adding small extra features as their last resort. Not very effective though.

 

[Nesh]

This is quasi-related:
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/44067/Playstation-3-Development-Is-Deliberately-Difficult

Relevant excerpt:


Is there a more polite way to say this than, Hirai is out to lunch?

If thats not a poor translation they should have him replaced.

 

[zed]

If you also look at the sales charts, the same types of games are selling like the rest of the world so you can probably make the assumption that if they're spending this much effort on us, they're probably doing the same thing worldwide.

http://www.gfk.com.au/Charts/Entertainment/Top 10 All Full Priced Gam.gif
(*) 01 Wii Wii Play
(*) 02 Wii Mario Kart Wii
(*) 03 Wii Wii Fit
(-) 04 Wii Mario & Sonic At Olympics
(^) 05 PS3 Resistance 2
(^) 06 DS Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
(v) 07 DS Brain Training
(^) 08 PS3 Call of Duty: World at War
(^) 09 PC Call of Duty: World at War
(-) 10 DS More Brain Training
http://www.gfk.com.au/Charts/Entertainment/Top 10 NZ All Full Priced Gam.gif
(^) 01 PS2 Smackdown Vs Raw 2009
(v) 02 Wii Wii Play
(*) 03 PS2 Need For Speed: Undercover
(^) 04 PS3 Call of Duty: World at War
(*) 05 360 Gears Of War 2
(^) 06 PC Call of Duty: World at War
(^) 07 PC WOW Wrath of Lich King
(v) 08 Wii Wii Fit
(^) 09 PS3 Little Big Planet
(*) 10 PS3 Need For Speed: Undercover

wow theres even some wii stuff in the nz chart, whats happening!!
btw whats happened with the company spin after the NPD, its become a lot more lowkey

 

[mrcorbo]

I just did some research into exactly how exclusives have sold historically in terms of attach rate during launch month on the 360 and PS3. To clarify: I compared the launch month sales of exclusives that charted in NPD (and that I therefore had easy access to sales numbers for) to the LTD hardware sales of the console as of that month for as many exclusives as I could find.

I'm not going to attempt to say anything definitive from this very incomplete data, but I found that broadly, PS3 exclusives have performed roughly equivalently to the 360's exclusives. However, the 360 has had 3 titles that stand above all the others. Halo 3, Gears 1 and Gears 2 which hit attach rates of around 48%!!!!!!, 33% and 13% respectively. Sony's only standout title is MGS 4 at 16%. Now clearly we run into the problem of being limited by the available data (no PSN downloads, no titles that maybe just missed charting in a big release month), but I don't think having this data would change the picture dramatically.

It's not that PS3 exclusives have been unappealing. They just haven't had anything comparable to a Halo 3 or a Gears 1. I think it is the subconscious desire to see a title succeed on this level that causes some to hype these Sony exclusives ("just wait till....") to the point where they can't help but be disappointments. Take away Halo 3 and Gears 1 from the 360, though, and the sales performance of the exclusives for the 2 systems is a lot more comparable and maybe even in the PS3s favor once you factor in the 360's own disappointments (Too Human, most if not all of the Rare stuff, I'm looking at you).

 

[mrcorbo]

If thats not a poor translation they should have him replaced.

Kaz speaks English (and is also apparently fluent in a borderline-insane dialect of PR-ese).

 

[Pete]

The idea that Sony would make a difficult platform to keep developers busy is absurd.

There's nothing wrong with speaking truth from power once in a while, and I'm not sure there's much in this truth to take offense with. Obviously Sony gambled on more hardware up front in return for longer platform life, assuming their market dominance would cushion if not completely absorb the initial price shock (i.e., devs would be compelled to work on PS3 b/c it promised a larger audience and so potential returns). I'm not sure how this affects consumers (which I presume is where the shock is coming from), and I'm not sure why this would surprise developers (or at least engine programmers).

Which is basically what he said at the end of that VE3D quote:

"So it's a kind of - I wouldn't say a double-edged sword - but it's hard to program for, and a lot of people see the negatives of it, but if you flip that around, it means the hardware has a lot more to offer," he said.

Saving throw!

But the reality is, will gamers expect a $200 console to last as long as a $400 one? I guess if consoles have truly expanded to media platforms, as Sony expected, then it's a different question (not to mention different price comparison). This long-tail dev cycle sounds great strictly from a gaming POV, but it's hard to argue PS3 doesn't have its eye on more than just gaming.

Plus, you know, gamers are one market I wouldn't exactly bet on making decisions with an eye toward long-term rewards. So, in that respect, the price hurt Sony as much as their name helped them.

Really, the most eye-opening part of that Eurogamer quote from an OPM article was this:

Sony Computer Entertainment boss Kaz Hirai has dismissed Microsoft and Nintendo as competitors because he sees PlayStation as the "official" industry leader.

"This is not meant in terms of numbers, or who's got the biggest install base, or who's selling most in any particular week or month, but I'd like to think that we continue official leadership in this industry," Hirai told Official PlayStation Magazine.

"It's difficult to talk about Nintendo, because we don't look at their console as being a competitor. They're a different world, and we operate in our world - that's the kind of way I look at things.

"And with the Xbox - again, I can't come up with one word to fit. You need a word that describes something that lacks longevity," he added with a laugh.

Assuming Eurogamer wasn't so selective in its excerpts that it demolished all context, that's where I think he kind of got lazy. I mean, alright, we get it, every console is its own monopoly, bully for you. The rest sounds like he spun himself out of control. A PS3 is more of an investment than a 360, granted, but I didn't realize it was an investment in the very future of gaming (according to Sony). Is a $200 console (read: gaming, not media, platform) meant to last as long as a $400 one? When Xbox Next and PS4 show up at about the same time and about the same price with about the same capabilities, will the guy who invested $200 on a 360 be as reluctant to upgrade as the guy who ponied up $400 for a PS3? Or is buying a weird Wii or disposable 360 supposed to be like an unwise alternative that's not good for gaming's future?

"We want to expand the demographics from just a videogaming audience to something that's a little bit more massive," Hirai concluded.

Wait. So, Sony wants in on Wii's world, after all? :smile: I think we've come full circle, Kaz. Well spun.

 

[assen]

I'm not sure there's much in this truth to take offense with. Obviously Sony gambled on more hardware up front in return for longer platform life...

What I take offense with is the idea, often expressed in this forum, that it's good to have hidden performance in your system, in the form of it being difficult to master - so that you get better games in the long run.

No matter how transparent the technology is and how easy it is to use, there will always be a difference between the game produced in year -1 (launch titles) and year 5, as artists come to grips with the new pipeline, and with more of the development time spent on non-tech aspects of the game.

Thought experiment: If a console manufacturer released their console downclocked to 30% of its maximum clock rate and allowed only 30% of the RAM to be used, then unlocked an additional 10% of each every year - would that be a good thing?

If no, how is achieving the same thing through developer suffering a good thing?

 

[PARANOiA]

Thought experiment: If a console manufacturer released their console downclocked to 30% of its maximum clock rate and allowed only 30% of the RAM to be used, then unlocked an additional 10% of each every year - would that be a good thing?

If no, how is achieving the same thing through developer suffering a good thing?

PSPing a console?

 

[catisfit]

Thats my point though. These games should be selling because the 360 was able to sell games at the same price point.

Asserting that game sales rely solely on the price of the platform is well wide of the mark.

Game sales rely on a combination of install base, attach rate, gamer interest in the game/genre, competition within that genre, competition from other genres on the same platform, reviews, advertising, the wider economic situation, and a whole bunch of other things.

The only point at which the price of the platform would even come into it is if you're talking about people who are going to buy that console to play that game. Then you have to start looking at the platform in comparison to it's competition in terms of features, price, brand, desirability, reviews, advertising, the wider economic situation...

 

[ShadowRunner]

What I take offense with is the idea, often expressed in this forum, that it's good to have hidden performance in your system, in the form of it being difficult to master - so that you get better games in the long run.

No matter how transparent the technology is and how easy it is to use, there will always be a difference between the game produced in year -1 (launch titles) and year 5, as artists come to grips with the new pipeline, and with more of the development time spent on non-tech aspects of the game.

Thought experiment: If a console manufacturer released their console downclocked to 30% of its maximum clock rate and allowed only 30% of the RAM to be used, then unlocked an additional 10% of each every year - would that be a good thing?

If no, how is achieving the same thing through developer suffering a good thing?

I dont think it is ment like that at all. I think what he is trying to say is that there are tradeoffs, you can have a machine that is easy to program for but less powerfull or a machine that is more powerfull but harder to program for.

I dont think he is saying that they intentionally took a system that was easy to program for and then handicapped it, hes just saying that they took the root of providing an exotic architecture (with the hope the exotic architecture you create is more powerful at peak than a less ambitious alternative), which due to this was harder to program for, and a nice byproduct of taking this root means that more power can be 'unlocked' as time goes on, this buyproduct could be deemed as a big enough positive to make going that root worthwhile.

There is nothing wrong with this as long as it holds true. If you have a machine that is easy to program for and is maxed out 100% from the moment of release and has a performance rating of 10, and you have the harder to program system that starts at 60% utilization but has a performance rating of 8 but moves on to a rating of 14 over time, which is better? Obvilously im not saying this is the case here but the idea in itself is not something that should be frowned upon in my opinion.