NPD September 2007

[one]

PC gaming is falling back at an incredible rate.

I don't know if it's what's happening but Intel seems very concerned about games lately :smile:

Also, since you cited Capcom, Capcom has been making not-so-great PC ports but in this gen PC is their main development platform with MT Framework and also one of the important markets. They offer Lost Planet on Steam and services Monster Hunter Frontier MMOG, with DMC4/RE5 announced already. As you know they announced Lost Planet for PS3 last week, it has download contents on 360 and bonus contents on PC on one Blu-ray, with 16-player MP.

 

[scooby_dooby]

By "so much wrong" do you mean any other thing than the $600 price tag and the scarcity of games?

- Launched late and delayed
- Totally overpriced for the market (consumers have rejected the 'value' proposition)
- Introduction of no less than FOUR sku's in the first year.
- Lack of quality exclusives in year 1
- No big name franchise titles released in year 1 other than R&C
- Loss of GTA as a timed exclusive
- Poor development tools initially, relative to MS

You add all that together, bundle it up, and this is the reason PS3 is where it is.

The PS3 apologists need to stop. We've heard all the argument, the rationale behind why PS3 'should' sell, we've heard the value comparisons, we've heard it all for the last two years. You're all totally out of touch with the actual consumers.

It's now time to accept reality, and that is that the PS3 is selling horribly, and the 360 is gathering extreme momentum.

Bottom line, if the PS3 doesn't start moving huge numbers with it's next pricedrop, their chances of ever overcoming MS's headstart are nonexistant.

 

[one]

- Launched late and delayed
- Totally overpriced for the market (consumers have rejected the 'value' proposition)
- Introduction of no less than FOUR sku's in the first year.
- Lack of quality exclusives in year 1
- No big name franchise titles released in year 1 other than R&C
- Loss of GTA as a timed exclusive
- Poor development tools initially, relative to MS

Then you have a different opinion from Pozer to whom I was responding, he wrote Sony should have delayed the launch to the end of 2007 All points about games can be integrated into "- Poor development tools initially, relative to MS". Oh and I don't see what's wrong with "Introduction of no less than FOUR sku's in the first year". Are you against cost reduction?

 

[Paul_G]

Then you have a different opinion from Pozer to whom I was responding to, he wrote Sony should have delayed the launch to the end of 2007 Oh and I don't see what's wrong with "Introduction of no less than FOUR sku's in the first year". Are you against cost reduction?

This isn't cost reduction in the accepted sense though. Cost reduction has generally meant smaller, cheaper components, and if components are removed, their removal is transparent to the user. Sony are actively removing bits to make it cheaper. Also, historically there has only really been 1 unit on sale at any one time, save for a month or two of overlap. There is the very real prospect of 3 completely different models being available, with three different sets of features for far longer than a month or two. You may argue that the 360 has 3 different SKU's, so what's the problem, but that is clearly a tiered, structured range. the PS3 range is far less coherent, depending on what you want, with a 60GB model being more capable in some ways than the 80GB model, and the 40GB model running cooler than either. To me, it's not that there have been so many SKU's in so little time, it's the total lack of coherent strategy and confusion for the consumer

EDIT: I am aware that there is precedent for this btw, such as the removal of certain ports on the PS2, but those changes took place over far longer, and were not considered to be major features like BC might be

 

[Laa-Yosh]

NPD is retail, it does not track downloads. I'll wager that Steam has taken a significant chunk of the sales of The Orange Box.

Orange box wasn't available in September. World in Conflict, Bioshock and Medal of Honor were the best selling hardcore games, and they've made 35-37 thousand copies. It's ridiculous. It actually makes you wonder why anyone bothers with PC development at all.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Oh and I don't see what's wrong with "Introduction of no less than FOUR sku's in the first year". Are you against cost reduction?

It wasn't about price reduction, more about they haven't had a clear vision of what they actually want to sell.

 

[woundingchaney]

Ports from PC will favor PS3 soon with ever-increasing data size. UT3, Rage, they don't fit on 1 DVD without cutting maps on consoles as told by the developers themselves. Then there can be more deals with PC MMO developers such as NCsoft.

Well Reins statement was a maybe nothing else to suggest that they needed to, as well as Rage is releasing on 2 dvds. If there is a market for these games its not as if they arent going to be available on the 360 (particularly since the 360 contains the user base they are geared towards).

MMO developers can release a hdd mandatory title for the 360 and install to the hdd. With approx 90+ percent of the userbase having the hdd I dont see this being a problem for MMO titles and once again on the 360 you have a user base very accustomed to online gaming.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Orange box wasn't available in September. World in Conflict, Bioshock and Medal of Honor were the best selling hardcore games, and they've made 35-37 thousand copies. It's ridiculous. It actually makes you wonder why anyone bothers with PC development at all.

Bioshock is another title that was available by Steam. I really don't think you are getting an accurate market sample just by looking at NPD data when comparing PC and consoles.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Even if Bioshock's Steam sales are 5 times higher, it still doesn't make the PC gaming business look good. And what about WIC, MOH and the rest? Epic, Valve and Id turning to consoles should be another indicator of the trouble. I expect Blizzard's next game to come for the X360 and PS3 as well, just as Crysis. Consoles have matured to a point where the overall gaming experience beats the PC in most genres, and it shows.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Even if Bioshock's Steam sales are 5 times higher, it still doesn't make the PC gaming business look good. And what about WIC, MOH and the rest? Epic, Valve and Id turning to consoles should be another indicator of the trouble. I expect Blizzard's next game to come for the X360 and PS3 as well, just as Crysis. Consoles have matured to a point where the overall gaming experience beats the PC in most genres, and it shows.

SC2 for the x360? That would be news.

I don't think pc gaming is dead or going to die, but its going to have to evolve. I used to be a pc gamer pretty much exclusively, I bought a ps2 about 5 years ago and started to realize how much more I preferred gaming on the couch with certain titles (sports, and fighting games for example). I bought my 360 with cod2 madden and kameo and I've now pretty much eliminated pc gaming once I overcame my stigma of fps on a controller now they just need to do RTS right. I'm actually looking forward to trying halo wars to see how they handle the issues of the controller.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I've meant whatever unannounced game Blizzard's working on A Diablo 3 would work pretty well on consoles, for example.

 

[Acert93]

All points about games can be integrated into "- Poor development tools initially, relative to MS".

I disagree.

It isn't just an issue of development tools but their choice of hardware design, a focus on the PS2 well into 2005 (and even beyond), a delay/price that put them at an install base disadvantage that lead to them loosing their grip on "lead SKU/base platform" status as well as giving their competition a software library lead and budget library advantage, adn so forth.

Many of their moves (price, delay, design, software dev focus, etc) are interconnected/related with the end results. We can either list the issues or the end results, but summerizing the results as all related to one issue ignores how Sony has quite a few issues that shared in breeding a number of net results.

Oh and I don't see what's wrong with "Introduction of no less than FOUR sku's in the first year". Are you against cost reduction?

You don't need to add new SKUs to cost reduce.

Just like... HD Era

Yeah, the talk of dual HDMI, 1080p, and 120Hz doesn't reflect well when you allow games on your platform with sub-30Hz framerates and less-than-720p resolution.

Deflecting the issue doesn't really address the fact Sony has found themselves in a hole. All 3 have made mistakes, so the real issue is how has Sony found themselves in a deeper hole relative to their competitors.

Even if Bioshock's Steam sales are 5 times higher, it still doesn't make the PC gaming business look good. And what about WIC, MOH and the rest? Epic, Valve and Id turning to consoles should be another indicator of the trouble. I expect Blizzard's next game to come for the X360 and PS3 as well, just as Crysis. Consoles have matured to a point where the overall gaming experience beats the PC in most genres, and it shows.

With something like 9M users I don't think WoW2 will jump off the PC anytime soon. It is a money machine, and it was designed to work on older hardware. If in 2009 Blizzard does WoW2 they could probably get away with DX9 SM2.0 and have millions of users available on the PC.

And to be frank, I think WoW is a major reason for PC sales being the way they are. That and piracy (was reading a nice little article recently that demonstrated, at least in the territory in question, that piracy had a direct impact on sales).

 

[wco81]

Even if Bioshock's Steam sales are 5 times higher, it still doesn't make the PC gaming business look good. And what about WIC, MOH and the rest? Epic, Valve and Id turning to consoles should be another indicator of the trouble. I expect Blizzard's next game to come for the X360 and PS3 as well, just as Crysis. Consoles have matured to a point where the overall gaming experience beats the PC in most genres, and it shows.

There's still a diehard core of PC gamers but perhaps some of them are being chipped away to consoles each generation.

If sales of $600 or higher video cards dry up, what's going to fund R&D on GPUs for consoles?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, WoW has an obvious negative effect, and they've still sold some 60 thousand untis in september. But again, all signs indicate at least two other projects going on at Blizzard.

 

[wco81]

These are indeed dark days for the PS3 but remember, it's still less than a year old.

Maybe it remains in third place by the end of the decade, a complete fall from first to last.

But unless there's some law of physics preventing the cost-reduction of the components in the PS3, it will come down in price to the mass market and sales will then pick up. That along with games which the PS3 will eventually get which will stimulate hardware sales.

Even some of those bowing up and down to the X360 now will pick up PS3s as second consoles as the price comes down (unless they have to keep buying new X360s to get more reliable hardware), just as occurred with Xbox sales once it dropped to $199 and lower price points.

So the installed base of PS3 will reach a critical mass, some number which may not be enough to overcome the competition but still enough to compel most of the multi-platform publisher/developers to continue developing for the PS3.

All this talk of widespread abandonment of PS3 games development is premature to put it charitably.

 

[Nesh]

You don't need to add new SKUs to cost reduce.

Depends. If you want to immediately sell something that is less expensive to produce you might design another model with some features cut away.

 

[one]

You may argue that the 360 has 3 different SKU's, so what's the problem, but that is clearly a tiered, structured range. the PS3 range is far less coherent, depending on what you want, with a 60GB model being more capable in some ways than the 80GB model, and the 40GB model running cooler than either.

Does an ordinary consumer really care about things like that other than the difference in HDD sizes and price tags? I've never seen someone attributes why PS3 is not much selling to 'incoherency' in the models outside of this forum. The 20GB model was discontinued early and the 60GB will soon. This is cost reduction & price cut which mends scooby_dooby's second point about the high entry price. And importantly, "in the first year." Anyway I don't know a historical example of $600 console selling millions.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

There's still a diehard core of PC gamers but perhaps some of them are being chipped away to consoles each generation.

We're growing up, we get lazy, we spend the upgrade money on other things, and so on

 

[scooby_dooby]

Does an ordinary consumer really care about things like that other than the difference in HDD sizes and price tags? I've never seen someone attributes why PS3 is not much selling to 'incoherency' in the models outside of this forum. The 20GB model was discontinued early and the 60GB will soon. This is cost reduction & price cut which mends scooby_dooby's second point about the high entry price. And importantly, "in the first year." Anyway I don't know a historical example of $600 console selling millions.

The sku's is not a large factor IMO, but it certainly added to the general confusion and apathy among consumers with regards to the PS3.

The way the initial 20GB sku was handled points to a total lack of vision and clear strategy.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I disagree.

It isn't just an issue of development tools but their choice of hardware design, a focus on the PS2 well into 2005 (and even beyond), a delay/price that put them at an install base disadvantage that lead to them loosing their grip on "lead SKU/base platform" status as well as giving their competition a software library lead and budget library advantage, adn so forth.

Indeed, and I think the hardware choice is the one choice to rule them all. Much as I love adventurous hardware, presenting developers with a problem platform when a competing platform is much easier is a decision that you can't take lightly, and that you have to live with the consequences for better or worse. Perhaps the success with PS2 despite it's lousy development tools gave Sony false encouragement that they could easily pull off the same again? Or maybe they were blinkered with a nerd-attack and let the engineers have too much input without considering the 'end users' (as if engineers would act such a way!)? Whatever the reasons, Sony's platform isn't developer friendly which doesn't win them friends. At least from the vocal reports we hear, they are generally being helpful and supportive as best they can, but kind intentions can only help so much!