Retailers and analysts across North America confirm that the hottest selling gaming c

I think what he meant was that it was necessary to end the XBox1 generation because so much money was being lost.

 

I think its given that Xbox360 will be able to hit the near 10 million userbase mark this holiday season. It will be uphill battle for Sony with the PS3, but I think the sheer playstation brand will get them to 10 million mark, without much effort (though they need to struggle to manufacture these things).

Same thing happened with PS2 (way better launch though, not with the games though). The playstation brand was what kept the PS2 alive. Same will most likely happen with PS3 until theyr killer apps hit the system, then it will start gaining the real momentum.

 

I object to his use of the term as a way to say launching early wasn't a brillant move. Regardless of it being necessary or not, MS's headstart combined with Sony's mis-steps makes the 360 very attractive right now.

One could make the same argument for Sony that it was necessary for them to launch the PS3 as early as possible to blunt the 360 early launch but one only has to look at Sony's execution thus far and conclude that maybe waiting would have been a better ideal.

 

That's a pretty dumb way of looking at it.

Even if Microsoft has less marketshare than Sony in 2010, how the hell can you say they'd be in a better position by launching a year later? It has helped them immensely, regardless of if they win or lose in the end (and having lower marketshare than Sony is not a good metric for losing).

The real masterstoke is that MS made a system with a comparable (and possibly better) graphics subsystem in a cheaper console that launched a year earlier than the makers of the freakin playstation. That's unbelievable when you think about it.

Superficially, that's always been the most identifiable difference between consoles. 2x or even 3x the CPU power just doesn't make a very noticeable difference in gameplay because this isn't the PC market. You scale the effects to match the system rather than fix the effects and let different systems run at different framerates. Software affects gameplay 10x more than CPU power. Yes, I could say the same about graphics, but I think it's pretty clear now that XB360 won't be lagging in this aspect.

MS needed the early launch badly. I don't think Sony's overall revenue will be impacted as much as Microsoft's by PS3's late launch, so IMO this is more a matter of Sony not laying the hammer down rather than dropping the ball.

 

I have an inkling that you're misinterpreting Gates here. AFAICS, he's saying that Sony will sell as many as they can make give or take a rounding error.

 

Really? It's a direct quote. As I read it, 360 will dominate 06 holiday sales, and the PS3's sales will be little more than rounding error amounts, pretty harsh!

You know, Sony can make 80,000 bricks, and people would buy them. So the real competition--you're going to see the impact of our innovation and all the momentum we have in Christmas 2007. This Christmas, the story is: Xbox 360 is going to sell super-well, and they'll sell the rounding error amounts they can make.

lol, surprised to see Bill trash talk like that, seems out of character!

 

I had a very difficult time interpreting that comment as well. I had to re-read it three or four times to figure out how what he meant. Using Scoob's perspective of the statement being a shot at Sony, I was finally able to infer that Gates was talking about consoles selling millions of units, and Sony being only able to produce in the thousands.

Thus.. whatever they are able to produce would essentially be 'a rounding error' if you were judging sales in millions.

Why else would he mention 'rounding error' if he wasn't referring to the fact that the two consoles are selling at such drastically different rates that they need to use different metrics to track them?

But I agree that his statement was very obscure and I didn't take it as a shot at Sony until Scoob mentioned it. When I originally read the article, that statement just made me go 'Huh?" and move on.

 

That's how I saw it too. Billion Gates is making fun of Sony's inability to manufacture consoles, not a lack of demand for them. If Sony could have manufactured 1 million consoles at launch, they would still all be gone right away and he would have no grounds for bashing Sony.

At the same time, Gates is backhandedly crediting the strong Playstation brand name by saying whatever they make, people will buy. I remember the same thing used to be said about Nintendo consoles.

 

Well.... Exactly. It's Nerds-Speak, and it took me a couple of times in order to figure out what it was he was saying.

My interpretation of what he said was that Sony can sell "X Amount of Anything" and a certain number of people will buy it just because it's "Made by Sony".

That was the first part of his statement.... it actually got the most play.

The second part of his statement was specifically in regard to this Holiday Season, where he said that Sony will only be able to ship/sell (not sure about the verbage here, it doesn't really matter), enough units that could essentially be considered irrelevant , because one of the comparison consoles sold in the millions while they other sold in the thousands... Thus, ALL of the consoles Sony sold over this period of time could be attributed to "rounded error"

If MS sells 3 million consoles in the holiday period and Sony sells half a million, its very possible that the ACTUAL NUMBERS were 2.8M for MS and 400K for Sony. Or 3.2M for MS and 425k for Sony, or whatever.

But the point is that Sony's numbers are using a different METRIC for sales, and when you compare them to MS's "absolute" numbers, whatever amount it is that Sony actually sold is SO INSIGNIFICANT that MS rounds that amount (up or down).

 

Sony HAD to launch in 2006. IN 2005:

Blue Ray wasnt ready (it still isnt.)...
HDMI wasnt ready (Sony's implementation still may not be)...
RSX wasnt ready...

Sony needed the year wait as much as MS needed the year early...

 

The electronics guy at the Super Walmart where I live told me they got 29 Wiis in and were expecting another 11 for black Friday. They also had 6 PS3's for launch, 4 60GB and 2 20GB.

 

Fixed it for you

 

I agree... too bad the rest of Sony basically used that money as lighter paper for their cigars...

 

Ahhh...touche

 

Walmart should be a good place to get an x360 on Black Friday from store opening until 11 am.

... or until it runs out of units.

 

What I recall correctly was that XBOX was bleeding money and yet even with a price cut and bundling still could not compete with the PS2...thus release XBOX early to cut it out and move on to X360. (It could also be said that maybe those that have bought into the X360 are making a bad investment being that MS could pull the same move down the line if that can't compete with the Wii or PS3). In addition, the X360 launch itself was shaky as well...soo no way was it a brillant move. And u can't interpreted that PS3 was launched earlier then expected (no proof) plus in the long run things can dramatically change. So whether it was ideal or not won't know until some time has past.

 

So what? Things do change in period of 5 years. I can't see the HDDVD making it into the 360 just yet, maybe in a couple of years, why not, but a HDMI port I can really see happeing quite soon, why not. The hardware is the same, that does not mean that it might not evolve and new features added that do not impact the core function of the machine. And being an early adopter always has risks and things like this have happened before. What will be next, the early adopters complaining that they don't have 65nm chips in their consoles?...

 

How can anybody take the position that the 360 adding HDDVD or HDMI is an admission of launching too early, and also believe the Wii is going to have a lifespan of more than a year?

Yes, certainly.. the PS3 has a feature set that isn't included on the 360. But the 360 has already been out for a year, and will likely be out for nearly TWO YEARS before the PS3 is readily available to compete with the 360 for market share.

That's just about half it's lifespan, folks. The console is only going to have legs for 5 years. And by launching early, what they've done is completely screw over Nintendo (who should have been able to launch the Wii two years ago, based upon it's tech level), and Sony. Because while the PS3 might be able to compete and win in years 4-5 of the 360's life, in years 4-5 of the 360's life, anybody who cares will be anticipating and discussing the X720.

Additionally, with the PS3's absurd manufacturing costs, it'll take them significantly longer to get profitable and the balance with price cuts is going to be a huge balancing act for them because of the competition from the 360.

When you compare the hardware between the Wii, the 360 and the PS3, it's pretty clear the 360 didn't launch early. The 360 launched on TIME, the Wii launched two years too late, and the PS3 launched a year too late.

This won't impact the Wii so much, because it's a low-cost (ha!) console that nobody expects to have the same lifespan as the others. Nintendo isn't expecting the Wii to last 5 years, they know they need to move into 'Next Gen' very soon, or give up the market altogether. Sony, on the other hand, has essentially thrown away this entire generation hoping that the revenue streams created from Cell and BR will compensate.

The PS3 is fighting an uphill battle right now against the 360, because the consoles are fairly even and the PS3 launched a year (or more.. I call 300k units a paper launch, myself) later. Can the fully realized PS3 compete against the launch titles of the X720? Of course not.

MS may have been forced to 'shorten the lifespan' of the Xbox for profitability, but they also might have done it because of the pressure it puts on their competitors. They are now in position to be the only manufacturer with a 'full' lifespan for their console, with both Nintendo and Sony launching their next consoles much sooner than they had in the past.

 

"It could also be said that maybe those that have bought into the X360 are making a bad investment being that MS could pull the same move down the line if that can't compete with the Wii or PS3."

I've yet seen an overwhelming backlash against the 360 by current xbox1 owners, who stated they made a bad investment by buying the xbox because the xbox 360 launched too early. So why should I formulate such an opinion of a hypothetical future early launch

"In addition, the X360 launch itself was shaky as well...soo no way was it a brillant move."

You are talking launch numbers and Im talking timing as in launching a year ahead of Sony. However, even with the limited production issue that the 360 faced it did so without any next gen competition to eat up sales, the same can not be said for Sony. The 360 comes into this holiday season with a userbase of 5 million + worldwide sales from July 2006-Oct 2006 with a supply of units that can't be match by the newly launched Wii or the PS3. Whats not brillant about that?

"And u can't interpreted that PS3 was launched earlier then expected (no proof) plus in the long run things can dramatically change."

The PS3 is actually late but the fact there were low launch number is evidence that they are launching a product that still dealing with production issues. Product issues that under normal circumstances would have been allowed to be ironed out before launch. In all likelihood Sony won't meet their targets of units shipped in 2006, target number that have been downgraded already. This is evidence enough of a "premature" (not early) launch.

"So whether it was ideal or not won't know until some time has past."

Whether something is ideal or not is fairly obvious from the beginning as Sony, MS or Nintendo can tell you what constitutes an ideal launch. Knowing the end result is not needed to determine whether or not something is idea. Sony can still win this generation, but that doesn't make their current situation, ideal. I highly doubt anyone would formulate a successful launch (if Sony maintains dominance) as:
1. postponing launch for 6 months
2. release launch and year end targets for units shipped
3. release new number for launch and year end targets that represent 50% reductions
4. launch with 50% less than the reprojected number for launch.
5. Watch as your competitors eat up sales.