PS3 Strategy/Confidence Retrospective

[Carl B]

Fine, but I'm talking about Sony. They want to sell BD players, and have a $399 model competing with Toshiba's HD-DVD players. If you make the former cheaper, what's the point in buying the latter? A half million subsidized BD players would cement BR into first place a lot more solidly than a few million PS3's, especially since this scenario also means reduced sales for HD-DVD.

I'm not saying I agree or disagree - but I am saying that the reasons that saw the BD drive be included in the PS3 were logical reasons, whether or not it turned out to be a misstep ultiamtely. I'm sure if you were leading a case study into why Sony put the BD drive into PS3, you would likely find yourself echoing some of the same points that are being made here.

Several people in this thread have made this point, and it makes no sense to me.

How does buying a half million diodes for BD players cost more than 5 million diodes for PS3? How does the latter reduce sourcing woes when it accounts for the bulk of the demand?

Teething pains are there regardless of whether the PS3 has BR or not. If anything, PS3 increased those costs because Sony had to fix issue as fast as possible. Low yeild would have affected far fewer discs if PS3 didn't have BR.

The PS3 provided the volume catalyst to justify a replicator build-out for both diodes and discs. In an absolute sense, yes, it likely cost them more. But since at the time it was something they had to do anyway, they probably viewed it as synergistic. In fact, it goes without saying that they viewed PS3 and BD as synergistic, which is why I don't understand your hostility towards the presented points. Again, I'm not here saying it was a good, smart, or any other kind of move. I'm just saying: this is why it happened. If you disagree that these were factors in the decision to incorporate BD, all I would ask that you offer up alternative reasons as to why you think Sony put BD in the PS3, rather than disparaging the choice itself... at least insofar as our own side conversation is concerned.

 

[deathkiller]

What I think that they should have done is:

1- Only one model at launch.
2- No HDD, instead MemoryStick/USB (Online?) storage support, include a 128MB MS.
3- 6 SPU Cell design (Kutaragi forced the 8 SPU design).
4- No PS2 BC support.

They also should have invested way more in having a good software development environment from day 1.

Sony lost $841M in it's game division in the last quarter, it's not like they aren't willing to have loses to reduce the PS3 price. I don't think that ditching the Blu-ray would have been a good decision since in the long term it will be cheap.

 

[Gubbi]

Clearly its the 5-10gb of uncompressed audio that they can throw on there that will make BR worthwhile.

You forgot the sarcastic smiley.

Cheers

 

[Arwin]

Believe it or not, you're just proving my point. Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey are not only small potatoes, but multiple discs don't interfere with gameplay.

... because they can't. If they did, there wasn't an alternative. So the games had to be designed so that it wouldn't interfere. Compare this with other small potatoes game series like Final Fantasy, in which for instance X-2 allowed you to go back to any part of the world map whenever you liked.

PS3 examples are irrelevent. I just told that devs will use the space if its there, but it's not a big priority. You completely missed the whole point of my post:

No I didn't. Note that I said things like having Hard Boiled the movie on the same disc as the game. For that game, it certainly improves the marketability. Now let's take that one step further. What if all Disney/Pixar based games came with the HD version of the movie on the same disc. Would that increase the marketability? Sure, you can also just include multiple discs, but what about if that game used real scenes from the BluRay disc as in-game HD cutscenes? Would that impact the marketability af the game? What if you could select multiple audio tracks, like you can do on DVD, and choose to play Final Fantasy in Japanese with subtitles or just plainly in English, or in Spanish. Would that increase the marketability of the game? What if a sports game came with all the highlights of a season, and had a mission mode in which you could first view the highlight in HD, and then try to recreate that highlight in the game. Would that increase the marketability of the game? What about having Singstar out there with 30 HD videos on the disc? Or a Quizz game with lots of HD video content?

Now how about the quality of a game. Just for a moment completely disregarding PS2 logic, which had a meagre 32MB and still managed to have some great games make good use of all or at least the main part of the DVD. 512MB is 16x the amount of RAM available in the PS2, but somehow this increase in RAM can easily be filled up with the same storage medium. You're saying you don't see complaints about worlds being too tiny or games having too much environmental repetition, but isn't that only because the PS3 hasn't been around long enough?

I don't see complaints about worlds being too tiny or games having too much environmental repetition. Permanent storage space is not a limiting factor right now.

I don't think people would have complained if Heavenly Sword was twice the length it was now, and I expect a God of War 3 to be twice that length, and use at least the same amount of data per area (probably more).

The problem is you don't understand the meaning of "enough room". You are not going to get better screenshots with more storage space. It's very unlikely that you'll get higher review scores with more storage space. You're not going to get higher sales with more storage space.

I understand the meaning of enough room allright. We just seriously disagree on the capabilities in this generation of hardware to consume dataspace in a meaningful way, or what makes a game marketable.

All the evidence is already out there, but if you try hard enough, I'm sure you won't see it.

 

[Gubbi]

I don't think people would have complained if Heavenly Sword was twice the length it was now, and I expect a God of War 3 to be twice that length, and use at least the same amount of data per area (probably more).

Don't think the length of HS was limited by the storage capacity, but rather by budget.

Cheers

 

[Laa-Yosh]

To a large extent, sony has thrown their pearl before swine. They're looking to market to the wrong crowd.

It's amazing how we've arrived at the conclusion that not only was Sony not arrogant at all, it's actually not their strategy that's wrong but the entire market.

They were arrogant. They've thought they can force their new HD media format down the users' throats, and make them pay at least half the cost of their new dominant position, because their position is strong enough even for that.
All the apologism is beyond me, that people go out of their way to defend a greedy corporation...

By the way... As of now there's about 2.4 million BR discs sold worldwide. DVD in the US is at 7.2 billion.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

All BR will buy you is variety from one point in the game to the other, and even that will only be true if the studio is willing to author more content. I don't see complaints about worlds being too tiny or games having too much environmental repetition. Permanent storage space is not a limiting factor right now.

If id software can fit several levels with a 128K megatexture on a DVD (I know, the complete game will need two discs), then I can't see anyone else having serious problems with texture storage.
HD videos, multiple language voice files, now that's another case - but it won't make any game noticeably better...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

2- No HDD, instead MemoryStick/USB (Online?) storage support, include a 128MB MS.

The HDD is there for Home, in particular for the microtransaction part. Sony wants a piece of the online revenue pie and it's their choice of implementation for it.

 

[Arwin]

Don't think the length of HS was limited by the storage capacity, but rather by budget.

Cheers

Of course, HS was a BluRay game after all, so clearly storage capacity wasn't it's limit. The problem that Heavenly Sword had was that developing on new hardware, they probably had to work over their assets a few times to make them match the final capabilities of their engine, they hadn't streamlined their tools, etc. I'm sure nAo could say a few meaningful things on this. The point is though, looking at the amount of data required for 6 hours of gameplay in this engine, then 12 hours would take a lot more. There have been plenty bits of analysis out there showing how the Art creation process is becoming more important (number of artists in a team grows fast), and more and more work is spent on streamlining that process. This results in more and more tools being created to increase the Art team's output, making it easier to adjust graphics to different graphical capabilities (and different LODs). Art creation will become easier and cheaper as this generation progresses, and with the hardest part of adjusting to the new hardware and its capabilities now behind us, more and more focus will go into content creation. Ratchett is a good example, using an improved version of basically the Resistance engine, to create a pretty big and great looking platformer and Insomniac seem to have a very streamlined art creation process to get such a polished game out so quickly. I'm just using it as an example of how art creation / budgets are unlikely to be a problem for creating the amount of content required to fill a BluRay disc (and I think it is also a good example of a game for which this amount of content is necessary - cf the length of PS2 R&C games - and visibly beneficial)

 

[aselto]

I think some people here are too obsessed with technology to really tell how it can impact future sales of consoles. IMO the biggest factor in console sales will be a)hardcore games that score 90%+ average on metacritics b)casual games that are fun. These factors can spur much more excitement around a platform than the hardware, especially the latter. The fact that the biggest queues at Leipzig Games Convention were to Wii Sports, game available for 9 months already, tells you exactly why Nintendo is beating the competition so much at the moment (and is likely to do so for a long while, probably for Wii's entire lifespan).

The fact that PS3 has Blu-Ray and 360 does not will not ultimately matter in the grand scheme of things. It is software that will decide winner between the two.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It's amazing how we've arrived at the conclusion that not only was Sony not arrogant at all, it's actually not their strategy that's wrong but the entire market.

What amazes me is that Sony can only be 100% arrogant with that determining every action they make, or 100% innocent and humble, and that some people can't even consider that such polarized views aren't the only explanations...

 

[Arwin]

They were arrogant. They've thought they can force their new HD media format down the users' throats, and make them pay at least half the cost of their new dominant position, because their position is strong enough even for that.
All the apologism is beyond me, that people go out of their way to defend a greedy corporation...

By the way... As of now there's about 2.4 million BR discs sold worldwide. DVD in the US is at 7.2 billion.

Ironically I'm not taking issue with the 'they were arrogant' part. Very obviously, they were arrogant. But it is equally much beyond my comprehension that you don't see that at best, if Microsoft was right that DVD is large enough for this generation, then that was their brilliance, because they noticed that something that had been an essential part of every preceding generation's move forward, was suddenly no longer important in this generation.

Never mind that it's beyond me that people fail to see that BluRay is actually necessary for this generation of consoles (I may have my own limitations), but it is very weird for me to see Sony being faulted for assuming that BluRay in PS3 made as much sense as DVD and CD did in the PS2 and PS1. The fact that there were actually even more benefits to Sony this time seems to blind some people to the fact that all the benefits of the previous generations are also still there.

Time will tell not whether or not sticking to DVD was a sacrifice, but how much of a sacrifice.

 

[deathkiller]

The HDD is there for Home, in particular for the microtransaction part. Sony wants a piece of the online revenue pie and it's their choice of implementation for it.

Square Enix asked Sony to make the HDD default for the MMO games but even if you add all the revenue of every microtransaction it won't justify a HDD in every PS3, using FLASH storage would be better in the long term (lower capacity but far better minimum cost). I don't see the current Sony's online content strategy bringing them a lot revenue in sort/long term.

As long as you don't use a proprietary/exclusive storage consumers can use the storage that they want for cheap (you can use an external USB HDD with the PS3 if you want).

 

[Paul_G]

Ironically I'm not taking issue with the 'they were arrogant' part. Very obviously, they were arrogant. But it is equally much beyond my comprehension that you don't see that at best, if Microsoft was right that DVD is large enough for this generation, then that was their brilliance, because they noticed that something that had been an essential part of every preceding generation's move forward, was suddenly no longer important in this generation.

Never mind that it's beyond me that people fail to see that BluRay is actually necessary for this generation of consoles (I may have my own limitations), but it is very weird for me to see Sony being faulted for assuming that BluRay in PS3 made as much sense as DVD and CD did in the PS2 and PS1. The fact that there were actually even more benefits to Sony this time seems to blind some people to the fact that all the benefits of the previous generations are also still there.

Time will tell not whether or not sticking to DVD was a sacrifice, but how much of a sacrifice.

Isn't moving to a new generation of media each console generation unsustainable though? If you think about it, CD had been around for at least 10 years before consoles started using it. DVD was around for 4 years before consoles made use of it, and now BD is in use at pretty much the launch of the media. Next generation, what can they do? I personally think MS saw the same thing, and decided a high definition format wasn't viable. Next generation is likely to be much more about digital distribution, so maybe it won't be such an issue, but maybe we're at a point where demand for increasing storage looks to be outstripping the physical means, and MS and Sony have simply gone in different directions. Who is right isn't something we can say right now, though i have to say had it been my choice, i would have done what MS did. DVD media is cheap, so extra discs are no problem, and it never did the Playstation any harm to have multi-disc games.

 

[Arwin]

Isn't moving to a new generation of media each console generation unsustainable though? If you think about it, CD had been around for at least 10 years before consoles started using it. DVD was around for 4 years before consoles made use of it, and now BD is in use at pretty much the launch of the media. Next generation, what can they do?

I agree that for next generation that could be an interesting problem. Most people feel that digital distribution will become the norm by then, which is possible. It is certainly not extremely likely that we'll see another disc-based media that soon, though they may up the amount of layers on the BD-drive to 8. Then again, there's also the 1TB new optical 3d stuff, so you never know, but again, it doesn't seem too likely.

Does that mean that next-gen software won't need any kind of solution to this problem though? And so for this generation the issue was a little more obvious - we were preparing to move to HD and BD was coming for HD media anyway, so the choice was easy, especially for Sony. Microsoft was in a hurry and they chose their priorities, but it was a surprise to many that they didn't at least go for the built in HD-DVD drive (something which now seems to have been completely forgotten).

I personally think MS saw the same thing, and decided a high definition format wasn't viable. Next generation is likely to be much more about digital distribution, so maybe it won't be such an issue, but maybe we're at a point where demand for increasing storage looks to be outstripping the physical means, and MS and Sony have simply gone in different directions.

Which of the two platform holders is actually selling retail games online today though? So I wouldn't go so far as saying that they have 'simply' gone into different directions. They both know what is coming, but Sony also believes that BluRay will be necessary in the transition period and believe they are right.

and it never did the Playstation any harm to have multi-disc games.

But that was in a time when everyone said that CD based games were overkill and completely unnecessary. Do you catch the irony there? I guarantee that unless the PS3 dies an unexpected and sudden death, I'm willing to bet we will even see multi-disc BD games. Is the situation really that different from the days of the PS1 and the CD? I'm still not seeing it. Whenever someone like AlphaWolf sarcastically remarks that we need it for uncompressed audio', I remember identical comments on how CD based games 'need it for pointless FMV sequences'.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Next generation is likely to be much more about digital distribution.

I seriously question that. It might have a stronger presence, well it's bound to, but I doubt you could rely on it alone without recourse to use a hard media. Even if most games don't exceed a DVD this gen, they'll be bound to next-gen with the more complex assets. 20 GB downloads aren't very practical on 2 and 8 Mb broadband uplinks which a lot of folk might still be on. Then there's the storage to worry about. Maybe a terabyte HDD will be feasible, but this gen the choice of HDDs has been woefully below the large-scale mainstream. More likely we'll get a 250GB HDD IMO, or even smaller capacity in flash mem. Chances are there won't be much room for storing lots of games, which means having to manage them deleting unused ones and then redownloading when you want to play. If people aren't given a choice, it'll happen, but people won't like it. ISPs won't like it! They whinge and moan on anything above a few gigs a month here in the UK! A commitment to no disc means chopping out potential customers. Perhaps the console company/ies will decided the savings are worth it, and those people will just have to go without consoles, but I wouldn't go that route myself.

Instead high capacity discs which'll be way beyond anything actually needed for games, which'll probably not even hit 50 GB tops next-gen, will be cheap and more than capable, and dependable up until to world has a strong enough, broad enough internet infrastructure to handle a download only system that offers the same level of experience, and also appease the retail chains.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

...

Exactly. MS decided against the transition not because they've believed DVD would be enough, but because the next gen media format wasn't ready at the beginning of this generation.

Speed is a far more limiting factor anyway. I want instant loads, or at least 3 seconds instead of 30, and BR can't solve that either.

 

[Crossbar]

The loading times can probably be reduced significantly on both the 360 and PS3 if they organise the data cleverly on the disk and store some data on the HDD as well, allow background loading etc.. I guess it is has not been prioritised much so far, the loading times of the games for prev-gen were significantly enhanced in many titles over time.

 

[archangelmorph]

The loading times can probably be reduced significantly on both the 360 and PS3 if they organise the data cleverly on the disk and store some data on the HDD as well, allow background loading etc.. I guess it is has not been prioritised much so far, the loading times of the games for prev-gen were significantly enhanced in many titles over time.

No comparison considering the sheer amount of data required off the disc was much lower...

Devs have consistently been battling with loading requirements for a while and many games have very few whilst others still have pretty noticable ones..

 

[Carl B]

I think the thread through post #225 has been very constructive and civil, but it's starting to get a little heated and hostile. Let's try to remember that this thread is just a high-level reflection on Sony's strategy/environment leading up to the PS3 launch. No reason for folk to get so worked up either in defense of decisions or in accusation, as most of what we're talking about is already in the past anyway.