Panajev2001a
Veteran
No flames please.
The CELL project might be fully completed after the first CELL chips appear: we might see Sony paper launching or showing or even launching small scale CELL devices in 2005: they would not work as the Home Server ( which PlayStation 3 and PSX 2 will have to: they are clients ).
If we think about the Broadband Engine we think about something fairly complex and we should be careful when we predict the time this chip will be mass-manufactured at high volumes.
The big problem would have been if Xbox 2 launched in Q4 2004, but that does not seem likely any longer.
If they can manage a simultaneous Japanese and North American launch by mid 2006 it would not be bad for their business.
Sony will take losses on the Hardware, but they will also try to make sure these losses are minimized if they can do something about it.
They had an initial time-frame for the launch of the machine and probably quite a while ago they did push it back due to the speed of progress in the CELL OS and in the massive task that will be the final PlayStation 3 SDK ( I would say that they might not go as far as they did with PSP, but they should do quite a bit more compared to what they did for developers before PlayStation 2's launch in Japan ), due to the events of the upcoming Transformation 60 and seeing that their rivals were not going to release that much earlier ( it is to be seen if Microsoft wants to launch more than a few months in advance compared to what Sony and Nintendo choose ), etc...
Thinking about an early-mid 2006 release date we have about 2+ years ( 3 if we count the time the new launch date was probably choosen ).
There is plenty of time to revision the chips ( specs or the projection of them would be locked for the most part ) and to devise cheaper, but still of good quality componets to make sure things such as Blu-Ray ( Read-Only ) can be integrated without breaking the bank.
Yes, they would loose some competitive advantage in terms of RAW specs ( btw, since the 45 nm node will not be available till at least 1 year later it is not like if they targeted early-mid 2006 from the beginning instead of mid-late 2005 they would have been able to push in a massive jump of performance ), but they would be able to be more feature rich ( PlayStation 3 would look like adding more value for your money ) and cost less to Sony to manufacture.
PlayStation 3 will not be a pure gaming machine ( neither was PlayStation 2 ) so there is also more to it than the Broadband Engine and the Visualizer: it is better to delay the launch a little bit and make PlayStation 3 a more complete machine ( programming wise, extra-features wise, etc... ).
PlayStation 3's role in the living room will be a key of Sony's future business so they do want to make sure it goes well: they will spend a lot on the PlayStation strategy as a whole and lose money on its Hardware at launch ( because it is important to them in the long run ), but this will not be senseless spending ( like "hey, if we would lose $800 on each console we could make it SOOOOOOOO powerful" ).
The Saturn's 4 Months jump-start on PSOne did not help Sega in the long run.
The money they would lose launching PlayStation 3 and selling it with higher manufacturing costs is the money they could add to their marketing budget or the money they can use to finance more exclusive games.
They can also be more competitive with Microsoft and Nintendo being able to drop the price quite fast ( they are launching closer to the completion of Sony+Toshiba's CMOS6 manufacturing process with 45 nm SOI technology [with capacitor-less e-DRAM] ) while still racing very nicely towards profitability of the Hardware itself ( you start from a lower loss margin ).
Sony is the leader of this current generation and lead the past generation, but they are also in a moment in which as a whole they need to recover: we need to take all these informations we have and see how they can work together in scheduling a proper launch for PlayStation 3 in 2006.
PlayStation 3 needs Sony as much as Sony needs PlayStation 3: it is not a sound business strategy to send Sony corp. in almost chapter 11 conditions because you want an easier battle on the console front.
If Sony corp. were in the current condition and SCE came out of the current generation third and very weakened ( in image as well ) or if this were Sony's first entrance in the console business that someone else dominated, I would be very depressed as too many negatives would be working against each other and the strategy I have talked about so far would neither make sense nor make them money.
Ken Kutaragi, is staff and the rest of the high management will have to make the most of the positives ( the PlayStation brand is very powerful and popular [their competitors will have to follow their moves to a certain extent], they have very good relationships with 3rd parties and they have better and better first party quality software to enhance their line-ups, Blu-Ray hype, PlayStation 3 hype [the next-generation PlayStation], etc... ) to mitigate/counter the negatives ( launching in 2006, not being able to take incredibly high losses, Microsoft launching Xbox 2, Nintendo launching GCN 2/NES 5, etc... ) and being able to fight their competitors off in the next-generation.
The battle would be tough, but restoring Sony corp.'s health would allow them to work as hard on PlayStation 4 as they did on PlayStation 3 ( Microsoft will likely be still in the playing field with Xbox 3, you can at least assume that quite safely: PlayStation 3 making enormous losses [Microsoft this time is able to work harder on price reduction as they control chips' manufacturing more closely] might jeopardize the R&D efforts for PlayStation 4 which Microsoft would not find hard to capitalize with Xbox 3 and Xbox 4 ).
It would also allow PlayStation 3 to make a big come-back in the console arena if the competitors seemed tougher than what was foreseen by playing with the stronger collaboration between the various sub-divisions inside Sony.
If with a $299 PlayStation 3 launching in 2006 they do not have very low sales compared to what they would have had with a $299 PlayStation 3 launched in 2005 and making terrible losses ( which would push farther down the line the moment in which the platform would start to be profitable even considering the Software sales and the profits from royaltes from 3rd party games ), then their bet will have been a rather good one.
Sony and SCE would still be aggressive and technologically advanced, but they would keep in mind the big picture and not only the console industry.
A 2006 launch allows Sony to push PlayStation 3 very strongly, but not put the rest of Sony in too much danger by allowing also the other sub0divisons to receive a healthy amount of R&D money: this is something I think Sony and SCE can manage thanks to the really hard work they have done with PSOne and PlayStation 2 so far ).
The CELL project might be fully completed after the first CELL chips appear: we might see Sony paper launching or showing or even launching small scale CELL devices in 2005: they would not work as the Home Server ( which PlayStation 3 and PSX 2 will have to: they are clients ).
If we think about the Broadband Engine we think about something fairly complex and we should be careful when we predict the time this chip will be mass-manufactured at high volumes.
The big problem would have been if Xbox 2 launched in Q4 2004, but that does not seem likely any longer.
If they can manage a simultaneous Japanese and North American launch by mid 2006 it would not be bad for their business.
Sony will take losses on the Hardware, but they will also try to make sure these losses are minimized if they can do something about it.
They had an initial time-frame for the launch of the machine and probably quite a while ago they did push it back due to the speed of progress in the CELL OS and in the massive task that will be the final PlayStation 3 SDK ( I would say that they might not go as far as they did with PSP, but they should do quite a bit more compared to what they did for developers before PlayStation 2's launch in Japan ), due to the events of the upcoming Transformation 60 and seeing that their rivals were not going to release that much earlier ( it is to be seen if Microsoft wants to launch more than a few months in advance compared to what Sony and Nintendo choose ), etc...
Thinking about an early-mid 2006 release date we have about 2+ years ( 3 if we count the time the new launch date was probably choosen ).
There is plenty of time to revision the chips ( specs or the projection of them would be locked for the most part ) and to devise cheaper, but still of good quality componets to make sure things such as Blu-Ray ( Read-Only ) can be integrated without breaking the bank.
Yes, they would loose some competitive advantage in terms of RAW specs ( btw, since the 45 nm node will not be available till at least 1 year later it is not like if they targeted early-mid 2006 from the beginning instead of mid-late 2005 they would have been able to push in a massive jump of performance ), but they would be able to be more feature rich ( PlayStation 3 would look like adding more value for your money ) and cost less to Sony to manufacture.
PlayStation 3 will not be a pure gaming machine ( neither was PlayStation 2 ) so there is also more to it than the Broadband Engine and the Visualizer: it is better to delay the launch a little bit and make PlayStation 3 a more complete machine ( programming wise, extra-features wise, etc... ).
PlayStation 3's role in the living room will be a key of Sony's future business so they do want to make sure it goes well: they will spend a lot on the PlayStation strategy as a whole and lose money on its Hardware at launch ( because it is important to them in the long run ), but this will not be senseless spending ( like "hey, if we would lose $800 on each console we could make it SOOOOOOOO powerful" ).
The Saturn's 4 Months jump-start on PSOne did not help Sega in the long run.
The money they would lose launching PlayStation 3 and selling it with higher manufacturing costs is the money they could add to their marketing budget or the money they can use to finance more exclusive games.
They can also be more competitive with Microsoft and Nintendo being able to drop the price quite fast ( they are launching closer to the completion of Sony+Toshiba's CMOS6 manufacturing process with 45 nm SOI technology [with capacitor-less e-DRAM] ) while still racing very nicely towards profitability of the Hardware itself ( you start from a lower loss margin ).
Sony is the leader of this current generation and lead the past generation, but they are also in a moment in which as a whole they need to recover: we need to take all these informations we have and see how they can work together in scheduling a proper launch for PlayStation 3 in 2006.
PlayStation 3 needs Sony as much as Sony needs PlayStation 3: it is not a sound business strategy to send Sony corp. in almost chapter 11 conditions because you want an easier battle on the console front.
If Sony corp. were in the current condition and SCE came out of the current generation third and very weakened ( in image as well ) or if this were Sony's first entrance in the console business that someone else dominated, I would be very depressed as too many negatives would be working against each other and the strategy I have talked about so far would neither make sense nor make them money.
Ken Kutaragi, is staff and the rest of the high management will have to make the most of the positives ( the PlayStation brand is very powerful and popular [their competitors will have to follow their moves to a certain extent], they have very good relationships with 3rd parties and they have better and better first party quality software to enhance their line-ups, Blu-Ray hype, PlayStation 3 hype [the next-generation PlayStation], etc... ) to mitigate/counter the negatives ( launching in 2006, not being able to take incredibly high losses, Microsoft launching Xbox 2, Nintendo launching GCN 2/NES 5, etc... ) and being able to fight their competitors off in the next-generation.
The battle would be tough, but restoring Sony corp.'s health would allow them to work as hard on PlayStation 4 as they did on PlayStation 3 ( Microsoft will likely be still in the playing field with Xbox 3, you can at least assume that quite safely: PlayStation 3 making enormous losses [Microsoft this time is able to work harder on price reduction as they control chips' manufacturing more closely] might jeopardize the R&D efforts for PlayStation 4 which Microsoft would not find hard to capitalize with Xbox 3 and Xbox 4 ).
It would also allow PlayStation 3 to make a big come-back in the console arena if the competitors seemed tougher than what was foreseen by playing with the stronger collaboration between the various sub-divisions inside Sony.
If with a $299 PlayStation 3 launching in 2006 they do not have very low sales compared to what they would have had with a $299 PlayStation 3 launched in 2005 and making terrible losses ( which would push farther down the line the moment in which the platform would start to be profitable even considering the Software sales and the profits from royaltes from 3rd party games ), then their bet will have been a rather good one.
Sony and SCE would still be aggressive and technologically advanced, but they would keep in mind the big picture and not only the console industry.
A 2006 launch allows Sony to push PlayStation 3 very strongly, but not put the rest of Sony in too much danger by allowing also the other sub0divisons to receive a healthy amount of R&D money: this is something I think Sony and SCE can manage thanks to the really hard work they have done with PSOne and PlayStation 2 so far ).
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