I agree with most of your points, however I don't think the PS3 needs to undercut the 360's price. Following Kinect's holiday domination in America, Sony needs to regroup and put themselves back in a favorable position to take the overall #2 spot with competitive pricing and software line-up. It would've helped if GT5 wasn't mismanaged, but what's done is done.
NPD November 2010
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- npd npd november 2010
I agree with most of your points, however I don't think the PS3 needs to undercut the 360's price. Following Kinect's holiday domination in America, Sony needs to regroup and put themselves back in a favorable position to take the overall #2 spot with competitive pricing and software line-up. It would've helped if GT5 wasn't mismanaged, but what's done is done.
That's the problem.
How does Sony take the #2 spot at this point?
Competitive pricing isn't going to be enough to put them at an advantage to sway sales. The ps3 BOM will ensure that the MSRP is at or above xb360.
Software lineup is a tricky one. How do you create a Killer app? It isn't an easy formula to crack. They've tried with valiant efforts in Uncharted 1&2, Resistance 1&2, Killzone 2, LBP, GT5, etc. None of which suffered from lack of development time or resources.
So how does Sony position PS3 to gain on xb360 at this point?
I seriously don't see it.
The best chance they have for success at this point is focusing on ps4.
corduroygt
Banned
How about improving the system software? Make an easy to use interface and add cross game chat for starters, while advertising that it's free. I don't see how they can afford to drop 40M in an exclusive, but only have a few guys working on the actual system software, that's seriously messed up. Better usable interface and more system features will sell far more systems than Uncharted 3.
For motion control, they're better off researching full body tracking systems for next gen, and for Move, a making a licensed lightsaber game as a killer app would be a good start.
Of course they're not going to do any of this...
Do they drop 40m into an exclusive ?
Look at it this way.
Killzone 2 was rumored to cost 40m usd. But if it pushed 1m copies at $60 each. Even after gamestop gets a cut , sony is still bringing in $40 a copy. So its possible the game made the money back.
But now killzone 3 is coming out and its using the same engine and alot of the same texture work . So now the cost of killzone is spread over more titles.
How much money would dumping 40m into the ps3 software get them at this point ?
In the US, they don't. But NPD is not the world. Worldwide, they have closed the gap, despite their flagging US sales. It's quite possible Sony will take 2nd place worldwide and yet remain a distant third in the US. I don't think they will be unhappy with that scenario.
Microsoft is unlikely to support Blu-ray.
The momentum should continue, but the new Kinect casual gamers may not affect the existing core gamers, just like Wii gamers may not buy Wii core games.
In US ? First, they have to feel the need to adopt a market share strategy instead of a profit-first strategy. Right now, the profit first strategy may still be good enough for them since they are growing despite a weaker lineup compared to last year, and despite an aggressive blitz from MS. 4.1 million Move sold and shipped to retailer is still a good business for them. The base will only continue to grow.
Should they decide to gain marketshare, they will determine what segment they want to focus on (e.g., core gamers ?). Then they will redefine the experience, and business model to go after them. Along the way, they will rope in their content business, consumer electronic business, etc. You may even see them sell off their less lucrative units to gather their war chest.
But I don't Sony is interested in this type of play. They have too many options. ^_^
We will see what Stringer's new assistant will do next year.
They are more likely to take the long term, Sony group-wide view. If so, I hope they continue to improve the Blu-ray software stack. There are unplayed cards there in the digital age. ^_^
ms will need something next gen. So if they are forced to they will adopt it this gen.
I personaly would love to see them go with someonthing better than Blu-ray but unless flash drops alot before the next gen , I don't see it happening.
16 gig custom sd cards with good sustained writes could be very good coupled with a large 3.5inch 1TB to 2TB drive , would allow them to come in smaller than a system with an optical drive. But flash would have to drop alot unless they go with 8 gig cards to start with
It doesn't matter. Look at it this way. Its alot easier to sell halo 4 to a kinect owner than it is to sell it to a wii or playstation owner. At least with the kinect owner , they already own all the hardware needed to play halo 4. THe problem with the wii is you get the casual gamer buying it and then he hears all about his co workers or friends playing cod modern warfare. Well it sucks cause he can't play it with them. But hey wait now he has kinect for playing with his children or party games when he is entertaining. Oh all his friends are playing cod black ops ? Oh wait he can buy it on the 360 and enjoy it with his friends ?
Much better senario than the way it is now for moving to core games
Wasn't sony down 20% YOY for Nov , i wouldn't say its growing. Who knows what will happen in Dec . If sony stays under 1m units and both nintendo and ms go into the multi million unit territory its very bad news for sony. MS has been leading the market in the states the last few months and has been leading sony for the majority of this year. If kinect is just starting to take off then sony is in big trouble
I don't think its that easy. Moving targets for these companys is like turning the titanic , it takes alot of time and money to do so. The games coming out in 2011 and 2012 have been in development since at least 2009. they can't just suddenly say lets go target the casuals full force. They wont have enough software of any quality ready in time .
What options ? Looking at the USA they are down in a holiday month YOY , the 360 has greatly outsold the ps3 this year and may make the gap even larger with dec. The wii is still selling better than it.
They have a new gimick that is largely wii hd but they don't have the nintendo games to go with it. They seem to have some good hardcore titles going into next year , resistance , killzone and i think uncharted , but is that really enough. MS and nintendo will have exlclusives also and i'm sure looking at Black ops sales MS will get DLC on the next COD first again .
Looking world wide they are in better shape , but they aren't far enough ahead in europe to negate what ms has acomplished in the states and the western developers will continue to make the 360 a compelling platform coupled with kinect and ms's first party titles its hard to see where sony will really gain anything going foward.
Yes sony has moved 4.1m move units into retail , but they have done it with almost twice the time MS has had and if december follows nov's lead MS might just blow past them in terms of kinects sold vs move units sold .
To me , sony is done trying to win the states. I think its nintendo and ms left to fight it out , i don't see anything that sony can do that will bring them up into the number 1 spot. If anything I think it could end up ms then nintendo then sony .
WW sony could take the second spot , I don't know ms really has no traction in japan and i doubt kinect will change it , but in europe ms might gain with the kinect
Looking back over this generation for sony it seems to me that they were the mee too console. They went with similar performance as the 360 , they went with tons of fps games (resistance and killzone ) they tried to build an online community and then they copied nintendo's motion controller. I don't believe at any point they did anything to stand out or lead while I believe ms and nintendo both did that in thier own way this generation.
Hopefully next generation is more sucessful for them.
Well, drop ~10 exclusive games and instead spend 500 millions on advertising.
It doesnt make the product any better, it doesnt help the customer in the slightest, but hey... apparently thats the right way to push units, even for devices that were almost universally panned by anyone who wasted some critical thought on it.
corduroygt
Banned
It wouldn't take $40m to make decent system software for the PS3, given that each UC game costs around $20M to make, and they had to go to assembly language level for optimization. Imagine if they spent less money at PS Home and more on integration, I don't think PS3 owners would complain about that, and increased overall system and game sales would pay for the costs I think.
If Wii had just been a standard console with twice the power of GC it wouldn't have sold much at all.
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I think Teasy's point is Kinect in the next-gen console won't be a step up from Kinect on the current console. That is neXBox won't be differentiated from this gen in the same way Wii was from the previous gen. If MS wanted to play the XB*2 card, they should have launched Kinect as a new console. Now they have to ride out this gen with Kinect, but I think it'll work very well for them. XB360 is presumably now profitable and MS could potentially pull in significant numbers over 3 years without any direct competition for their experience, just as Wii's experience was unchallenged.
Exactly.
And patent protected as well to prevent many me-too type competing products.
My overall point WRT comparing Wii to what MS may introduce with xb720 is that without serious competition, MS will have significantly less pressure to introduce a high powered console which caters to the "core" gamer.
They don't care if they "lose" a small percentage to the PC which is also a MS platform. Especially if that small loss comes as a result to xb720 being cheaper to manufacture and likely profitable from day one.
Carrying this idea further, if MS is able to introduce xb720 for profit, why not push to have this profitable tech inside cable boxes?
It's the potential lack of competition that concerns me.
I fear Nintendo and Sony are both slowly being beat and drained of future options.
In fact, I'll call it...
Nintendo nor Sony will be in* the console games industry by themselves in 2020.
Either one or both may "team up" with Apple or Google, but they need a big hitter on their side to compete with MS in the future. That much is clear at this point.
*By "in" I mean competing at a high level and having a shot at market leadership.
Indeed.
With the current players still in the game, such a strategy will not work. The machine would be significantly outclassed by the competition.
That's why it is KEY that the competition gets it right.
So not really 'in' at all.
You don't have to be number one in a market to be successful. As long as you're turning a healthy profit, that's good enough. Indeed, by your above definition, neither MS nor Sony were 'in' this generation!With current trends being what they are as evidence by this NPD report, I'd argue that MS has taken the reigns in growth and will overtake Wii if given enough time.
That's what I'd classify as a "shot at market leadership".
Further,
I'd say Nintendo may very well regress further into their "kid" market and acquire someone like LeapFrog to go further down the chain in their demographic which would be a shell of their former self.
Catering to 3-10 year old kids in the education segment with some entertainment thrown in as well.
Sony,
Depends on how strong they are financially a few years from now. I think PSP2 without phone functionality is a poor decision and will be another financial hole. PS3 will likely not break even. If Sony is financially able to go toe to toe again with MS next gen and willing to take that risk, then I foresee a slow bleed if they continue on their own. By the time nextgen ps5 would be expected, mgmt will either be teaming with Apple/Google, or selling the games division to them.
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
I'm not sure where you are coming up with this. WW up to now Nintendo has by far the largest lead when you combine DS and Wii sales. That combined with the fact they've been making money since launch day.
PS3 WW is only slightly behind X360. Sony the corporation may be in rough financial waters, but the console as of right now isn't doing too badly. Kinect may or may not allow X360 to widen the lead worldwide, but PS3 itself has made a remarkable recovery after the massive stumble at launch.
Seriously, you're focusing WAY too much on US numbers. WW, Nintendo is far ahead of MS in the console arena. And WW, PS3 has almost caught up if they haven't done so already. The only problem for Sony is that they invested far more into the PS3 hardware and they also invested far FAR more into game developement than MS did, with much smaller ROI.
And they really need to get rid of Kevin Brown or whoever that PS3 guy is. He's gone from interesting, to fun to joke about, to being incredibly annoying for many people. I have a feeling he's turning off as many potential customers as he may be gaining. Time to retire that line of advertising, IMO.
I think that's one thing that MS has done way better than Sony this generation. Just their overall advertising has generally been spot on without being too goofy or too off the wall. Meanwhile Sony's advertising has been more of the, "Hey look at me while I make a fool out of myself and you." Or, "Hey look at me, I'm stupid and by extension stupid users should buy this console or game."
Regards,
SB
But by that same token, Nintendo and Sony might not be competing with MS next gen until three years in they reveal some new interface and suddenly pull ahead.
Or rather, at the beginning of this gen, without any possibility of Kinect turning things around, MS and Sony hadn't a hope of becoming market leaders, so by your definition weren't in the console biz. An neither Ms nor Nintendo were in the last generation either. And Nintendo and Sega weren't in the generation before that.
My suggestion is you retract the 'in' descriptor, and say that in your opinion, if Sony and Nintendo can't find some big partners, MS will be the runaway leaders of the console space and the market for a rival will be diminished to the point it'll be very questionable if a competitor should even try to challenge them.
I think that goes underappreciated. PS3 went from being the sure fire winner pre-release, to dead-in-the-water as the price crippled sales, to almost going-toe-toe while costing a lot more than 360. If it weren't for this second wind motion gaming shift, talk of MS running away with this or future generation wouldn't even be a possibility. And even now there's no real knowing what the legs of Kinect are, or if Sony can turn Move around with a few choice titles and some decent marketing. Extrapolating "MS will force out all rivals by 2020" from one month of Christmas sales of a new toy is a pretty extreme extrapolation IMHO.Silent_Buddha said:
