Yeah, software. Wii Sports is a software enabled by the remote. Why do you pick up Wii Sports in the former part and then dismiss Blu-ray (and Cell, standard HDD) in the latter part?
PS3 Strategy/Confidence Retrospective
- Thread starter scooby_dooby
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Okay Laa-Yosh and others, here's an analogy that I hope explains my point.
A minibus of third-rate Brit Rockers, the infamous 'Greek Sheep' band, pulls into town for a gig. The streets are packed with parked cars and the only clear place to park within reasonable walking distance from the venue is in front of someone's drive. The level-headed drummer driver clearly isn't happy with parking here and blocking someone in. The discussion in the van is such (sans copious amounts of swearing)...
Lead Singer : "Just park here man. We're flippin' Rock Stars! We can park wherever we want!"
Drummer : "But we'd be blocking these people in."
Lead Guitar : "There's nowhere else to go. These streets are marmalade, man."
Bassist : "What about the car park back that way? Had spaces."
Lead Guitar : "You wanna lug our gear all that way?"
Drummer : "Maybe we can drive around a bit and a space will appear."
Singer : "Didn't you hear me?! We're Rock Stars! We're flippin' late for the gig as it is!"
Lead Guitar : "Yeah, but that skirt was worth it!" (lecherous sniggers all round)
Drummer : "Well, I can't really lug my kit from that car park. It's gonna be a trek as it is."
Bassist : "They're probably not gonna notice us here anyway. It's only a couple of hours."
Lead Singer : "C'mon guys! Stop wastin' time. My public can't last without me!"
So the drummer reluctantly pulls up in front of the drive. They carry their gear in two trips, get a bawling for being late to which the drummer, bassist and guitarist apologise, and then the Singer notices he left behind his radio-mic transmitter so goes back to the van.
When there he meets the furious owner of the home who's driveway they are blocking.
"What the hell do you think you're doing! I've been here 5 minutes. You can't damn well block my drive!"
"Shut it, bitch! We're soddin' Rock Stars and we can do whatever we want!". The singer grabs his stuff and leaves the woman blocking the road with her oversized SUV as a number of other drivers behind her start beeping their horns.
Does the woman think the van owners are arrogant? Was the behaviour and mentality of the Singer arrogant? Was the decision making process the led the Drummer to park in front of the drive based on an arrogant over-opinion of self-worth, or a rational consideration of the pros and cons of the different available choices?
A minibus of third-rate Brit Rockers, the infamous 'Greek Sheep' band, pulls into town for a gig. The streets are packed with parked cars and the only clear place to park within reasonable walking distance from the venue is in front of someone's drive. The level-headed drummer driver clearly isn't happy with parking here and blocking someone in. The discussion in the van is such (sans copious amounts of swearing)...
Lead Singer : "Just park here man. We're flippin' Rock Stars! We can park wherever we want!"
Drummer : "But we'd be blocking these people in."
Lead Guitar : "There's nowhere else to go. These streets are marmalade, man."
Bassist : "What about the car park back that way? Had spaces."
Lead Guitar : "You wanna lug our gear all that way?"
Drummer : "Maybe we can drive around a bit and a space will appear."
Singer : "Didn't you hear me?! We're Rock Stars! We're flippin' late for the gig as it is!"
Lead Guitar : "Yeah, but that skirt was worth it!" (lecherous sniggers all round)
Drummer : "Well, I can't really lug my kit from that car park. It's gonna be a trek as it is."
Bassist : "They're probably not gonna notice us here anyway. It's only a couple of hours."
Lead Singer : "C'mon guys! Stop wastin' time. My public can't last without me!"
So the drummer reluctantly pulls up in front of the drive. They carry their gear in two trips, get a bawling for being late to which the drummer, bassist and guitarist apologise, and then the Singer notices he left behind his radio-mic transmitter so goes back to the van.
When there he meets the furious owner of the home who's driveway they are blocking.
"What the hell do you think you're doing! I've been here 5 minutes. You can't damn well block my drive!"
"Shut it, bitch! We're soddin' Rock Stars and we can do whatever we want!". The singer grabs his stuff and leaves the woman blocking the road with her oversized SUV as a number of other drivers behind her start beeping their horns.
Does the woman think the van owners are arrogant? Was the behaviour and mentality of the Singer arrogant? Was the decision making process the led the Drummer to park in front of the drive based on an arrogant over-opinion of self-worth, or a rational consideration of the pros and cons of the different available choices?
scooby_dooby
Legend
As does Blue Dragon.
I agree. I see digital distribution becoming apart of TV and movies sales but outside of downloadable game content we see now, I doubt full fledge next gen console titles will make the transition. We are bound to see optical media for quite some time.
However, the move to digital distribution by other facets of the entertainment industry is bound to affect the profit potential of any HD optical media.
I read HD optical media licensing fees will be worth 10 billion over 10 years. However, with the current format wars slowing adoption and digital distribution becoming more and more mainstream, a wonder if that figures includes those variables.
I got this off of gaf posted by chris0701http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=202533
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/fina.../07q2_sony.pdf
Some interesting figures.
Sony's PS3 LTD shipped figures are at 5.9 million
Sony's game divison lost an additional 841 million
Sony's game division won't see a profit until fiscal year ending in March 09 (changed from 08)
If the PS3 doesn't rebound some of that 10 billion over 10 years will go to cover the billion dollars lost due to the PS3. Whats worse if the PS3 doesn't rebound and BluRay doesn't become the standard format for HD then this will probably turn out to be one of the biggest gaffes in CE history.
MS launched first while aggressively going after devs for support.
Sony sat back on that front while launching a year later (as soon as BD was ready!) and still didn't have full support from their internal devs. All the while knowing their machine would be facing an uphill battle with a very high price and a headstart by ms.
If the comment wasn't matched to the action, the action/plan alone would just be stupid. When combined with the arrogant comment, it becomes overconfidence/arrogance. Whatever, the word really isn't what's important. What IS important is their actions ... or in some cases, lack thereof.
The only other one that possibly falls into this category is Nintendo, but even they were aiming to load their lunch with familiar/successful software, but much of it was delayed.
Difference is, they were trying because they knew their strategy was a risk.
MS had an okay launch lineup, but they were a year ahead of the comp and they secured gta4 and aimed for halo3 to counter ps3.
Sony acted as if failure was not an option, thus, load up the machine with as many potential revenue streams as possible. Such a strategy risked the only sure thing they had going for them:
Games/playstaion.
No doubt, but at the end ofd the day, Management decided this was not only the best route for success, but the only route. Lack of any contigency plan suggests this and I'm quite sure their research didn't tell them that this was a slam dunk plan.
Just as it doesn't matter to the owner if the rest of the band is pretty nice people, it doesn't matter to the market if 90% of Sony's people thought that they shouldn't do it.
Either we judge Sony based on its actions, whatever internal struggles preceeded them - or we can't treat it as a single entity at all. There's a lot of different voices within, but they're irrelevant to this discussion.
Either we judge Sony based on its actions, whatever internal struggles preceeded them - or we can't treat it as a single entity at all. There's a lot of different voices within, but they're irrelevant to this discussion.
Exactly.
Userbase dictates software.
Price+games dictates Userbase.
The cycle continues.
digital distribution won't take over. There are too many people without broadband, and too many with download caps. I don't think that will change by the time the next consoles are out. You'll still need some form of physical media for games distribution, at least. Other media like movies will probably see an increase in digital distribution, but I don't know who will make the money off of it. They have to choose between building in set-top capabilities so you can use your Playstation or xbox with your existing television service, or providing the content themselves. The former makes more sense to me than the latter, even though it would cut off revenues from the console makers.
I think Bluray or HD DVD is the way to be going right now. Next generation, the world will still not be ready for a DD focussed system. I'm just not sure if the world wanted a Bluray console right now.
I think Bluray or HD DVD is the way to be going right now. Next generation, the world will still not be ready for a DD focussed system. I'm just not sure if the world wanted a Bluray console right now.
They're not irrelevant to the discussion because the starting point of the discussion was 'Sony's actions were based on an arrogant decision-making process that didn't consider anything other than their impunity to market forces'. The discussion on if Sony's choices have really backfired is independent from the discussion on what was their motivation, even though both debates have been squeezed into this one thread. I agree wholeheartedly Sony's choices have cost them significant market presence, though I hold out on calling them the wrong choices until enough time has passed to see if any of their big intentions come to pass, like mass BRD adoption, or bucketloads of download sales, or if they can turnaround the sales of their platform. I agree that they look to have placed too much confidence in the value of the brand, but that's something a lot of us did. We all thought PS3 was gonna do well, until we noticed the price-tag. If Sony knew it'd cost so much back when they were planning this thing but thought they could ride it on brand, that's probably arrogance, but I don't assume the $600 proce point is thing happening exactly according to Sony's master plan. I also agree some comments are from the mouths of arrogant %&*#@'s and the state of PS3 is a humbling slap to their faces that they hopefully learn from.
But I disagree with the view that Sony went into this race in the blind-faith of their brand, and that they haven't put in any effort because it'd be a walk in the park. I disagree that the reason Sony hasn't any software is because they didn't bother, when consoles not having software for the first year is ordinary practice. I disagree that the reason their tools 'suxxorz' isn't because they felt they needn't bother, but because their efforts produced the results they have because of the complexities involved. You can't just magic up first rate titles, especially on weird hardware! I also don't see much difference between Sony and the others in this respect. Whether they overloaded their system with too much pressure or not, doesn't change the fact that making software is hard and has held back every console company. Ultimately my whole reason to enter this debate was to try and inject a bit of moderation and hopefully remind people that you can't pin all the ills facing a platform on a bad attitude - that lack of development tools, lack of early AAA 1st party titles, like of online services, is a not likely a result of some senior execs feeling they could rest on their laurels, but far more probably, the same for all those companies who haven't dominated for 10 years, because the people given the job of designing and implementing the systems can only do so much. Saying Sony didn't bother to make good tools and software is insulting to the software engineers at Sony who have been working on these projects for years, no? Saying HS not being out for launch is because Ninja Theory didn't really try hard enough is insulting to them.
That's not the point though. Wii Sports could be a wiimote based game and be complete garbage and no one would care. It wouldn't be a system seller to that many people. According to Julian Eggebrecht, Lair is totally impossible to be recreated on Xbox 360 because of Cell, Blu-Ray and so on. Yet no one seems to care about that fact and the game sold poorly despite that and didn't move many systems. Games' quality decide about system sales in the end (among other factors, but they are not as important) and you can create incredible game experience on all 3 platforms. The question is whether or not all of them will have that and in susstainable guantities.
The Lair example is interesting, it's a PR issue and a software development management issue. Blu-ray and Cell are more costly to exploit than the Wii remote, and SIXAXIS needs better PR, Nintendo paid huge PR money for Wii after all. But these are not something unexpected, did you see a great software in the launch period of PS2? Lair is a game criticized for its game design identical to a last-gen game, I don't think it's a good piece to show off what Cell is. Also PS3 is $600, they want to have more fun in Resistance and don't buy another software so soon. What I found unclear in your comment was "will not ultimately matter in the grand scheme of things". I'd like to know what are in that grand scheme.
No, the point is that whatever threats and risks Sony considered, they've decided that it wasn't important enough to care about them. They clearly didn't have any contingency plans either. The process might not have been arrogant, but the result is, and it has been emphasized even further by their PR talk.
I disagree, and this image supports me:
Their entire strategy fell apart, because they apparently didn't expect anything even remotely similar to the current situation. That's why I talk about arrogance.
Sony doesn't really deserve credit for HS as it was a last minute decision to have it locked up for ps3 anyways and initially, they weren't a Sony dev.
HS is a bonus to Sony, they are lucky to have them.
Sony needed to tell their internal studios: "ps3 is the priority".
As you said, software isn't easy or predictable. So they would need all the help they could get to put quality titles out early.
They would need: funding, time, and tools.
Sony didn't sufficiently meet these demands for their own internal studios. Some things you can't fault them for, but Sony should have known they would need their studio's best efforts early to overcome the "probable" high price of throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the ps3's INTERNALLY REQUIRED spec sheet.
Sony absolutely deserves credit for HS - and this is very off topic - but they funded the project when others wouldn't, gave them wide breadth to pursue their vision, and were working in tandem as the publisher for over two years before release. I think you need to speak to the HS devs yourself before making these statements, or redefine your definition of 'last-minute' at the minimum. 
I think Sony must have known the PS3 price would be very high. When they were listed the initial features it was going to carry, which of course was cut back, I don't see how they could have thought they'd be able to bring it in at a more reasonable price. I think they knew it would be expensive, and thought the brand would carry the sales anyway. Of course, they did have a limit because the cut back on features to get to their launch price, but I think they really thought it was reasonable. That seems a bit overconfident/arrogant to me. Still, they did have the strongest brand, and I don't think it would have been so unreasonable if there was a better library of games in the first year (something that never happens).
Sony absolutely deserves credit for HS - and this is very off topic - but they funded the project when others wouldn't, gave them wide breadth to pursue their vision, and were working in tandem as the publisher for over two years before release. I think you need to speak to the HS devs yourself before making these statements, or redefine your definition of 'last-minute' at the minimum.
By "Credit" I mean in terms of deeming ps3 development THE priority.
NT wasn't an internal Sony dev back then so Sony doesn't get credit for shifting a resource toward ps3.
Cell is 40 times as powerful as Emotion Engine. If devs can't show substantial gameplay mechanics difference from that processing power difference, why would they be able to show it between X360 and PS where the power difference between Cell and Xenon is (assumption for comparison's sake) 2x? Besides, if a game has cool (and sophisticated) gameplay mechanics most people will just praise the actual game and its creators more than hardware it is running on. Although if this game is by chance exclusive to a platform, I'm sure it'll increase platform's sales.
1)No amount of marketing money is going to convince me that sixaxis is something special or interesting.
2)I'm sure that's the exact opposite of what is trying to do.
I'm just saying that inclusion of Blu-Ray won't impact consoles sales all that much as: 1)at some point standalone players will be as cheap or cheaper than PS3 2)it doesn't make substantial change to gameplay experience. (No Arwin, switching discs in Blue Dragon is not a deal breaker
). Far more important factors are games the systems will have and marketing push behind the consoles and the future exclusives.I'm just saying that inclusion of Blu-Ray won't impact consoles sales all that much as: 1)at some point standalone players will be as cheap or cheaper than PS3 2)it doesn't make substantial change to gameplay experience. (No Arwin, switching discs in Blue Dragon is not a deal breaker
Well if the games will look better over time thanks to Blu-Ray it will sell consoles. And even if there are players out there that at some point will be cheaper, they will not include a PS3.
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