"PlayStation 3 delay --a good thing?"
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DarkRage said:
They may delay for Blu-ray, but I don't think they'll delay for HDMI.
The actual term Kutaragi used for the launch window places it apparently between Nov 1 and Nov 11. Or more broadly, by Thanksgiving. It won't launch in all territories on the exact same day, but by Thanksgiving. At least we've gone from a window of a whole season to a window of 2 weeks or less, along with shipping goals for the next fiscal year..it is definitely more specific.
DarkRage said:
I know PLENTY of people here who weren't expecting it till March 2007. In any conversation I ever had with friends here about it, I was always painted as the optimist for even suggesting the mere possibility of a pre-Xmas launch.
That's what they say. Sony may stay away from Spring, that's their thing, but hey, we pray today that Nov may bring us the 'Stations to play!Titanio said:
Guilty Bystander said:
I have some unsubstantiated speculation on this.
Maybe, possibly, maybe:
A lot of PS3 devs aren't going to be able to take full advantage of this delay. As far as being more polished, sure, but they won't be able to make the same game they could have made with a ~6 month extension than they would have if they were given a development period 6 months longer at the outset.
At the time, designers had to factor in the cost of learning the quirks of a new platform versus getting ambitious and pushing things a little further in features and design.
Back when they laid the foundations of the software, they had to assume their work needed to fit into a given timeframe.
Now that the timeframe is extended, they can't go back and change the framework the games are built around.
This means titles that finally come out at release will be more polished, but only incrementally better than they would be otherwise. I'm sure the devs had a bunch of ideas they put in the "later" pile that would have rocked if they had an extra 6 months.
edit:
On second thought, maybe I shouldn't expect that. Unless the dev team has some serious clout, it may be more likely that the publisher or corprate heads will stick to the timeframe set down initially. Why upset the pipeline and spend time and money on a game set to complete development and QA anway, when they can move the team onto the next project as planned?
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If you think that a few extra months, maybe half a year, wouldn't hurt a game, then don't try to run your own business. A single month of extra work an a current average game would cost somewhere between $250.000 and $2.000.000 depending on the size of the project. There's a reason why only a few games are delayed significantly, not everyone is a Blizzard or id.
This delay may have long term consequences on the market. Microsoft guys are probably sending daily emails to Square, Konami and Rockstar by now.
This delay may have long term consequences on the market. Microsoft guys are probably sending daily emails to Square, Konami and Rockstar by now.
Laa-Yosh said:
Most likely companies like Square-Enix, Konami and Rockstar won't have games ready for November 06 so it wouldn't matter anyways.
Square has their hand full with PS2 titles, let alone developing FFXIII.
Konami; Kojima Productions are very early in MGS4. Team Silent Hill just announced that development is underway but usually have a turnaround time of 2 or 3 years. Silent hill 4 was prebaked garbage.
Rockstar, well, they have that ping pong game for 360 so you got that right!
I think the delay might be more inline with the publisher's schedule. However I think Sony may miss the boat on some of the other titles like SC: DA for the PS3.
Laa-Yosh good points but I get the feeling that devs have been targeting the winter of '06 from the start with PS3 development, so I wouldn't imagine this causes them to bleed aditionally to what they were already planning on bleeding. I mean you yourself have been a source of the November shift in the dev-space, so if nothing else, at least they weren't blindsided.
I agree though that every day that Sony's next-gen console isn't on the shelves is another day that Microsoft can try and tempt a publisher/developer to release something on their console in addition to - or just plain instead of - Sony's while the industry waits.
I do think the Konami's and the Square's of the world will be more resistant to Microsft's advances than most, but I would fully expect some new game announcements for 360 from un-anticipated directions come E3 (and beyond) this year.
Great breakdown Expletive btw.
I agree though that every day that Sony's next-gen console isn't on the shelves is another day that Microsoft can try and tempt a publisher/developer to release something on their console in addition to - or just plain instead of - Sony's while the industry waits.
I do think the Konami's and the Square's of the world will be more resistant to Microsft's advances than most, but I would fully expect some new game announcements for 360 from un-anticipated directions come E3 (and beyond) this year.
Great breakdown Expletive btw.
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Laa-Yosh said:
That's only one side of it though... If the game gets finished, there is no reason to continue work on it and it gets sat on (which does happen for various reasons) until release (which will probably be the case for the multiplatform games). It isn't as if a developer that finishes their game has to continue working on it for 8 more months at this point. Of course budgets are going to come into play, but this is likely not really going to affect much -- if the title isn't done it may end up as a launch title where it previously wasn't, and if it is done then it'll likely be put on the shelf for a while (or maybe a little more tweaking, but I don't see it likely that very many titles will use another 6 months of dev time -- as you said, that IS costly). It seems most publishers (especially the western ones) were already aiming for a fall release anyways -- the Eastern devs/publishers (outside of SCEI) probably didn't have many big budget things for launch anyways (generally launches are rather soft in JP title wise outside of first party, from what I've seen). We've seen hints that publishers were aiming for Fall regardless (although I admit I didn't necessarily give them much credence at the time). I'm not quite convinced this is so horrible for publishers... it's likely it's pretty much what they were expecting (outside of Japan, at least, which as I mentioned previous is generally pretty soft on titles outside of first party anyway).
It isn't a good thing to have a "delay," but when the delay is really only in one territory (with an arguable early release in another) it isn't as horrible as just saying "PS3 is delayed to november."
I think Laa Yosh was refering simply to the fact that in that dead space waiting for a game launch, the employees still have to be paid, and that is really your major expense to begin with. I agree though that I don't think the PS3 delay to November in particular is going to be overly negative - in part because devs already anticipated this - but certainly under normal circumstances a surprise delay could wreak havok on any project or team.
It's actually amusing to see publisher stocks rebounding on Wall Street today; seemingly the possibility of a missed Christmas launch had prior been priced into the shares.
It's actually amusing to see publisher stocks rebounding on Wall Street today; seemingly the possibility of a missed Christmas launch had prior been priced into the shares.
That was certainly my though in my reaction to the Novemeber release rumour (which came true). Developers must have been aware of this, because dumping such a delay on them as this is extremely costly. Or at least when they were considering producong a PS3 title Sony said to them "we'll launch somewhere from Spring 06 to Spring 07" and let the devs decide if they can work with that or not. If they not kept that well informed, risking a launch title is a potentially bankrupting gamble.xbdestroya said:
scooby_dooby
Legend
Edge said:
Whatever Edge, you're the same guy who was practically crying tears of Joy when 360 bombed in japan something like "I have been waiting for this moment for so long, I am so ecstatic right now, this is the greatest day of my life..." please.
You seem to take this stuff much more personally than most other people I see on this forum, your posts were so bad they were removed from the thread entirely.
xbdestroya said:
I don't disagree with Laa Yosh, because it's certainly reality that more dev time = more cost so devs don't just get some sort of free pass to automatically make their game rock because of a November launch. It's quite possible to, on the projects that are done too early, start new projects depending on the situation. I don't think dev teams really get a check from the publisher while they aren't working on a project though (unless its a publisher owned dev team where the dev team would likely start on something else pretty soon after finishing anyways). The extras on the team are generally let go -- you don't always need 100+ member teams -- and the core team starts something new or goes their own way.
Bobbler said:
I agree, the way a delay impacts a developer or a publisher definitely will vary on a case to case basis, and you made a good point originally that in truth it's likely *only* the Japanese devs that were at all impacted to begin with. Now granted, I believe that's probably also why Laa Yosh called out the Japanese companies in particular, but with Namco's recent comments and Koei and others being pretty easy-going on the whole matter of PS3's launch, I think they've probably been prepped for a Fall release for some time now.
Laa-Yosh said:
This would affect Japanese pubs more than westerns, since western publishers have been targetting late 06 from the start. But even for those Japanese developers, if they've finished a game to their satisfaction, or will do much sooner before launch than expected, they can simply reallocate resources to others, start new projects etc. and sit on the game till launch. I'd say many will take advantage of the time, though, or at least some of it, and for all we know, many might have been asking for that extra time.
There was a story in the new york times today about the PS3 delay. In it they quote Kutaragi as saying "we delayed the system to give devs some more time to polish games". They followed with a quote from an apparently disgruntled EA developer saying "Let's just say, we never asked Sony for extra time."
damisa said:
That's odd, EA seemed to be one of the publishers that were pretty much set on a fall launch from early on... And EA stuff isn't exactly big in the east, so I'm not really sure where this disgruntled dev is coming from. But, I suppose theres always more to the story than just a couple sentences.