PS3 Strategy/Confidence Retrospective

1) Why? BR

2) Why? Greed

3) Why? BR/Greed/no games(planning! priorities!)

4) It isn't one thing really and that's my point. Sony screwed up on so many of these things that all point to overconfidence/arrogance/lack of respect for their competition.


PS3 is a clinic on how to lose dominance in the console realm. It was completely unavoidable.

 

That's very true as well. After Nintendo announced a Fall '06 launch, I always thought that Sony would do well to delay to Spring '07 - give them an opportunity to work out some kinks as well. To anyone that was at E3 '06, it was obvious that a direct match-up against Wii was a situation you wouldn't want to gamble on. Only one system can emerge as the "it" system on a joint-launch afterall.

The "so many of these things" you point out all lead back to BD. BD, not BR. And again, the jury is out on whether it was the right or wrong move for Sony... we won't know until the format war dust settles, and the cost/rewards are tallied up. But we can all agree it is why we are here having this thread here today. I'm sure we can also agree that as much of a cost albatross as BD has been for the PS3 up until now, the format itself would be near-buried if it hadn't been included. Like I said earlier, Sony was forced to gamble... but at the time they made their bet, *every* decision was a gamble.

 

You're missing the point.

Yes they made a nice profit of the gow2 franchise on ps2.

How many highly anticipated games have come out for ps3 in the near 12 months it has been on the market?

How well do you think a title as strong as gow2 would sell on a system with as few "must-haves" as ps3?

And really, it isn't even about direct sales. It's about stiring up positive press and impressions for your new system and establishing desire.

 

Do you believe if Wii bombed, suddenly there would been more people who buy a $599 console?

 

Before writing I'm missing the point, you should state why you believe GoW must be an easy title to realize on PS3 among all franchises. I already wrote about the risk of having a crap game for a famous franchise on PS3.

Cell & RSX are both more expensive than what Xbox 360 have. And PS3 had EE+GS too.

 

Imo they could and should have made a unified format with Toshiba instead of gambling, imagine how much faster the adoption of HD movies would be if that had happened, now you probably now more about that situation as well, but I always got the feeling that instead of making the smart business choice, those two Japanese companies opted out to have a "samurai battle" instead, even though I seem to remember that there were some hope for the unified disc even at the very end.

 

Actually, no. They don't.

It is the main culprit, but not the only.

-Games
-Price (BR err BD)
-Timing
-Dev tools
-Marketing/PR

They may have been perfectly fine with BD and a $600 price tag in 2006 and a subpar toolset ... If they had a load of killer games.

These are the main components of establishing a console and Sony missed the boat on all of them.

 

Well, I agree they should've combined formats. I'll point out that my man Kutaragi was a big proponent of such, and if he had been CEO I wouldn't be surprised if that would be what happened, especially given his warm relations with Toshiba in general. But Stringer probably didn't want to agitate the engineers telling him BD was a sure thing, and being a studio exec, he may have been convinced that they had enough of an army ready to go. And the truth is, it is HD DVD that has the uphill struggle, and indeed BD was more than Sony to begin with - it may have been viewed as poor form for them to abandon Matsushita and Phillips and go with a Toshiba compromise (it really was about the physical make-up at that point).

But anyway, I'm right there with you is my point.

Are they though? Beyond being fabbed at IBM and OTSS originally, the RSX was a straightforward die and the Cell had the yield-increasing SPE hit it could take. I'd be surprised if the XeCPU and the Xenos with daughter-die packaging, both outsourced across three companies, would have been much less expensive.

Well, I think "dev kits" and "games" is a problem of your own creation - I simply don't acknowledge them as 'failings.' Price and BD, well... that's BD. Marketing is a different failing, I agree, but it definitely has been a failing.

 

Who said anything about easy or crap port?

Sony has some of the best devs in the world. I'm sure they can figure out how to get quality SW on their machine without cutting corners. And no, it didn't have to be a launch title. If it were on it's way now it would still do wonders for them. By bypassing this route and pushing it off on ps2, they go for the easy money up front while ignoring ps3's impending lack of sw library.

If Sony had a gang of quality sw coming, it wouldn't make a difference. The fact they are in a drought though kinda emphasizes my point.

 

sure, but if you don't think BD was a significant driver in their costs you'd be mistaken.

 

BD is essentially "free" now compared to the competition's US$349 price point (with 5 free movies too). Next major stop is the "Arcade" pricepoint (with "free" BD drive). No idea how they can make it.

 

Wonder? You blame SDK and OS memory footprint at one hand while believing they can do wonders on the other hand... please make a better argument next time. Having COD4 and UT3 on PS3 now is more important than having a rushed port of GoW2 on PS3, if you ask me. You don't mention Ratchet & Clank PS3 which is already showing your selective point of view.

 

Hmm? I wouldn't go as far as to say "poor dev tools". It is just harder to develop for I think. Shifty already pointed to you Sony's efforts to provide developers with the necessary tools and help

Sony has nothing to do with the release of few games. Sony's studios alone are making many games. They are just too long in development. Third party developers would have filled PS3 with much more games if there was no competition.

Additionally I see nothing wrong with proprietary media if it contributes positively

Also I doubt there is a company in existence that wouldnt have exploited their position if they were alone.

Lastly it is not like Sony was selling PS3 at a profit. They were selling it at their expense. Even at that price

 

Making less losses, not more profit.

Gah... I forgot about the Arcade pack. Will have to see how well it goes.
Still compared to the $349 one, the BD drive is essentially "free" to the consumers. Kaz said they lose less per unit too.

 

I think I'm misunderstood here.

I don't mean "the games suck!" and "the sdk sucks!". I mean they aren't good enough to overcome the systems other liabilities in the context of the systems current market situation.

If they put their full dev effort behind ps3 in 2004 and signed a few key exclusives, they may have got away with the price, timing, BD, etc. as they would currently be releasing a flood of killer software.

 

Eh, you're talking about MS and Windows here... DirectX on a PC vs Sony with experience on Nintendo's console, PS1 and PS2. Who would know more about minimalist OS? Definitely not MS. Who should feel more at home? It think it's obvious...but it didn't turned out that way.

I think we both in agreement that Sony's software left the hardware team hanging. So marketing did what it can with the cards it dealt with. Unfortunately, I think marketing instead of making the proper alignment, such as asking the hardware team to adjust the hardware initially, told world that they're should be happy to work overtime to get a PS3.

Marketing should have realized that $600 console without software isn't going to sell like hotcakes, and push back on the hardware.

Of course, we can say whatever we want, with 20/20 hindsight. I'm sure Sony execs don't have that luxury knowing that software won't be there. Or that it won't be there even after launch window.

No they don't. They're too rich already. Kidding...

A lot of time, you have to smart and cut your loses. If a project is over budget and over schedule, you should really start analyzing whether you're going to make money on what you think the market will bare. If you don't think so, you'll cancel the project, because if you don't you might dig a deeper hole for your grave.

Now, I'm not saying Vista will be that, but I wonder how long it'll take MS to recover their investment....of even if.

 

Why do that when PS2 was very alive and kicking? They would have hurt their PS2 business and then the PS3 business when MS would have come up with a console that raped the PS3 technologically and Nintendo would have came up with Wii would have sold like hotcakes and visually more competitive with the PS3 than it is now.

Or are you saying that that Sony should have started work on the PS3 from 2004?