Sony may lose grip in next game consoles war: Article

[Deepak]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051121/tc_nm/japan_sony_dc;_ylt=Aime1jWabyEbC41qj41ZMMdU.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTA4ZnRnZjhkBHNlYwMxNjk1

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp. (6758.T), the maker of Playstation game consoles, may lose its iron grip on the market for game machines as rival Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) launches a new model just in time for the holiday season.

Analysts and game fans say PS3 is the sexier game machine with twice the processing speed of Xbox 360 , next-generation DVD technology Blu-ray, and seven control pads that can connect wirelessly to the console.

Sony, the world's second-largest consumer electronics maker that dominates the console market with its Playstation 2 (PS2), may lose more than 20 percentage points of its 70 percent market share with much of that going to Microsoft.

"The risks are surprisingly higher than people think because unless they can replicate its 70 percent dominant market position, things are going to be very difficult for them going forward," said Hiroshi Kamide, a Tokyo-based game analyst for KBC Securities.

Wedbush Morgan Securities said in an industry report in July that it expected worldwide PS3 and Xbox 360 sales to be tied at 23 million units each in 2007.

Sony's game business accounts for about 12.6 percent of the group's total revenues, and it has sold 102.5 million Playstations and 96 million PS2 machines to date.

 

[Qroach]

"twice the processing speed of Xbox 360"

oh brother... sony's hype machine at work. I Can't say I didn't see this coming...

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051121/tc_nm/japan_sony_dc;_ylt=Aime1jWabyEbC41qj41ZMMdU.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTA4ZnRnZjhkBHNlYwMxNjk1

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp. (6758.T), the maker of Playstation game consoles, may lose its iron grip on the market for game machines as rival Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) launches a new model just in time for the holiday season.

Analysts and game fans say PS3 is the sexier game machine with twice the marketing bullshit, next-generation DVD technology Blu-ray, and seven control pads that can connect wirelessly to the console.

Ahhh...fixed. It's easier to read now.

Well they have twice the thoretical power? In flops.

Even if it went down 20% they would still have half of the market, I don't think 360 will have the whole other half.

Theoretical power more often than not are never achieved. Why is this? Because they are invented by a bunch of marketing guys in suits and not by real engineers.

Edit: And as always, some of you are still recklessly predicting that Sony will dominate this generation as well when analysts agree that Sony won't have as easy a time as they've had in the past.

 

[weaksauce]

"twice the processing speed of Xbox 360"

oh brother... sony's hype machine at work. I Can't say I didn't see this coming...

Well they have twice the thoretical power? In flops.

Even if it went down 20% they would still have half of the market, I don't think 360 will have the whole other half.

 

[weaksauce]

Theoretical power more often than not are never achieved. Why is this? Because they are invented by a bunch of marketing guys in suits and not by real engineers.

Edit: And as always, some of you are still recklessly predicting that Sony will dominate this generation as well when analysts agree that Sony won't have as easy a time as they've had in the past.

And the 118flps XO makes is also theoretical, isn't it?

Judgning from the forumpolls that I see sometimes, PS3 seems to be winner.

 

[Deepak]

Calm down people, no need to get excited. It is not if Sony has said that PS3 has twice the power of 360. They are article writer's words.

Can we have some fruitful discussions now? Anyway I think the position where Sony (PS2) is right now, they can only lose market share, it will be extremely difficult for them to increase marketshare further. Crucial thing is Rev here, no-one knows how well it will do, will it gain marketshare or lose.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Not that we need another Analyst thread, but why is it assumed whenever an article mentions PS3 being better than XB360, it's Sony's unstoppable hype machine? Not every overblown comment is a result of Sony. Like the PS2 can render StarWars in realtime nonsense, which came from George Lucas. And can you really trust the average non-tech-savvy journalist to really know what the numbers mean and how to convey those meanings to the public?

Anyhow, this is another of those totally useless threads that serves no purpose. As the FAQ says, when you post an article or thread, you're supposed to have an idea of what constructive discussion comes from it, or what it adds to the forum knowledge. The OP ias also supposed to add opinions or interpretation, or ask intelligent questions based on an article's content. Here we see some analyst numbers, same as we've seen a dozen times before, and what constructive criticism? Only the same old beaten-to-death-zombie-points of Sony's hype, make-believe Cell Specs, Sony are going to lose market share/not going to lose market share. Don't you people get tired of saying the same old things over and over? We've heard it all before. There's no point to constantly reiterate you think Cell's numbers misleading or RSX won't match Xenos shader power or RSX has 2x Xenos shader power, when it's all been said before.

Regards the article, what useful constructive debate can be derived from it? It's the usual sum-up-the-entire-gaming-industry-in-one-article sweeping casual journalism that's got no more info than everything we already have. Unless it's bringing in some new numbers (in which case the thread ought to be 'New PS2 sales figures' or something honing in on the point being raised for discussion) is there any need to post it?

 

[Powderkeg]

Not that we need another Analyst thread, but why is it assumed whenever an article mentions PS3 being better than XB360, it's Sony's unstoppable hype machine?

Because the specific claims are unrealistic.

For instance, it it had said "The PS3 processor has twice the FLOP rating of the Xbox 360 CPU" I don't think too many people would have argued, but saying the processor is "Twice the processing speed" is absolute BS.

Both processors are 3.2 GHZ. Both have the same processing speed. One may be more efficient than the other, one may be able to process larger amounts of data per clock cycle than the other, but both are processing at the same speed.

It's an unjustified remark and the author could only ahve come to that conclusion if they got their figures from Sony.

 

[Bobbler]

What does Market share really matter as long as total sales continue to increase? If Sony sells more PS3's than PS2s and PS1s but lose some market share then is it really a bad thing? It just means MS/Nintendo have actually gained sales, but not necessarily at the loss of Sony -- I have a feeling this is what will be happening, to some extent at least.

I think PS3 will sell more than PS2 (or at least as much), but I also think X360/Rev will sell more than Xbox/GC -- every generation the market has seemingly expanded quite a bit, and I don't see why it won't happen this gen. This gen's total sales (including DC), up until now, has been around 150 million consoles, previous gen was around ~125 mil? and the one before that, around ~100 mil? -- next gen will probably be around 170-180mil, and if Sony pulls up ~half the market, like many predict, thats still ~equal to PS2's sales.

 

[Bobbler]

It's an unjustified remark and the author could only ahve come to that conclusion if they got their figures from Sony.

It's more likely that the author doesn't really understand the difference, not that Sony told them to say that. Regardless, it doesn't really matter -- people will misconstrue things for the positive and negative. Sony has gotten bad press already from people not knowing what they are talking about things (Router cut? Toy Story? Disabling rented/used games on PS3? etc, etc), its the way it works. Journalists often make mistakes.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Because the specific claims are unrealistic.

For instance, it it had said "The PS3 processor has twice the FLOP rating of the Xbox 360 CPU" I don't think too many people would have argued, but saying the processor is "Twice the processing speed" is absolute BS.

Firstly how do you know it's absolute BS when we haven't put the XeCPU and PS3 head to head? For all we know Cell is 2x the speed of XeCPU.

But more importantly, these journo's have all got the same peak-figures for the processors that IBM have given out and based on those figures alone, the journalist not knowing about potential bottlenecks, see PS3 is rated 2x XB360.

Both processors are 3.2 GHZ. One may be more efficient than the other, one may be able to process larger amounts of data per clock cycle than the other, but both are processing at the same speed.

It says twice the processing speed, which means it processes 2x faster. It didn't say 2x the speed which could be interpretted as clock speed, and even if it did you're arguing symantecs. T the genral populace for whom the casual article is aimed, "Twice the speed" means just that...it's twice as fast, without qualifying where that speed is. That's the problem with casual journalism, not the figure providers.

It's an unjustified remark and the author could only ahve come to that conclusion if they got their figures from Sony.

Or from IBM and MS's figures, or from gaming press that misunderstood or misrepresented the data. You paint a picture of Sony contacting journalists telling them how their machine is faster than their rivals!

 

[Powderkeg]

It's more likely that the author doesn't really understand the difference, not that Sony told them to say that.

I didn't say Sony told them to say that, only that they got their numbers from Sony. MS hasn't released specs that say they have half the processing speed of Sony, so a journalist who came to such a conclusion must have used Sony's specs. (Specifically their FLOP comparison)

Part of being a great hype machine is to give out just enough information that others make assumptions (In your favor) and then announce their mistaken assumptions as facts.

 

[Powderkeg]

Firstly how do you know it's absolute BS when we haven't put the XeCPU and PS3 head to head? For all we know Cell is 2x the speed of XeCPU.

Impossible.

But more importantly, these journo's have all got the same peak-figures for the processors that IBM have given out and based on those figures alone, the journalist not knowing about potential bottlenecks, see PS3 is rated 2x XB360.

Funny, I don't recall IBM putting out info that said the PS3 is twice as powerful as the 360 CPU in MIPS. Care to show me that link?

It says twice the processing speed, which means it processes 2x faster.

And it doesn't.

"Twice the speed" means just that...it's twice as fast, without qualifying where that speed is. "

Not possible.

The only way you could come up with "twice the speed" is if you compared FLOP performance only.

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

And the 118flps XO makes is also theoretical, isn't it?

Judgning from the forumpolls that I see sometimes, PS3 seems to be winner.

Forum polls...right.

 

[Edge]

I love how the specs of one console, is described at BS, theoretical, or just plain "marketing talk", as if those specs had no reflections on reality.

Is it because those specifications are TWICE as powerful as the Xbox 360 CPU, or is it because of some other reason? If it was HALF as powerful as the Xbox 360 CPU, would we be downplaying those specs?

CELL has:
- More than twice the internal bandwidth
- More than twice the external bandwidth
- More than twice the number of processors
- More than twice the amount of on-chip memories
- More than twice the floating point rate
of the Xbox 360 CPU.

Hey, sounds twice as powerful to me!!! Hard to argue against reality.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Impossible.

Why?

Funny, I don't recall IBM putting out info that said the PS3 is twice as powerful as the 360 CPU in MIPS. Care to show me that link?

Alas no. I've got MS's official assertion that XB360 has half the GFlops though.
http://www.majornelson.com/2005/05/20/xbox-360-vs-ps3-part-1-of-4/
But of course I wasn't thinking MIPS, as MIPS are a diabolical performance measure, and I doubt the journalist was either because they probably don't know what a MIP is. I was thinking the given specs, the rough numbers, that we have for the consoles. I'm not sure of all the sources but AFAIK officailly we have 100+ GFlops for XeCPU (IBM? MS? B3D? Actually they're calulateable fromthe Major Nelson article specs so can be considered MS figures), and 200+ GFlops for Cell (IBM), 1 Teraflop total system performance for XB360 (that was from MS) and 2 Teraflops for PS3 (from Sony), clockspeeds and everything else similar for both systems.

Now can you please provide me with the links that show Sony provided the figures that show PS3 to be 2x as powerful as XB360, as you claim here...

MS hasn't released specs that say they have half the processing speed of Sony, so a journalist who came to such a conclusion must have used Sony's specs. (Specifically their FLOP comparison)

Where have Sony said what the XB360's specs are? AFAIK they've only given PS3 figures, and MS/IBM(?)/ATi have given XB360 figures. I think the most important figure ignorant journalists have latched onto was the 1 and 2 Teraflop system figures, but that's going by the values MS and Sony provided. You can't blame Sony for MS releasing their system performance as 1 Teraflop. As a journalist I'd read MS talk about their machine, and Sony talk about theirs, and both use this metric I don't understand and yet assume is a fair comparison which shows PS3 has 2x as much terrorflops as XB360 so must be 2x better.

The only way you could come up with "twice the speed" is if you compared FLOP performance only.

Not true. Firstly there's things like integer operations, ADDs and such, that Cell can process more of than XB360 (going by the official figures) and secondly there's real world performance. For all you know in the real world when runnig real games PS3 does manage to process 2x as much per second as XB360 (or vice versa). Unless you've actually got information showing this isn't the case, which I'm guessing you must have seeing as you're so adamant PS3 hasn't 2x the real-world useable processing power of XB360, any idea of what the real performance differential between the two is purely conjecture at this point. Certainly I won't be saying PS3 is or isn't 2x as fast at processing than XB360 in real world usage. I don't know how anyone could be confident to make such claims, especially when we still don't even know what the GPU is going to be capable of. 'Impossible' is quite a claim and I'm eager to see you've evidence for it!

 

[Mythos]

What does Market share really matter as long as total sales continue to increase? If Sony sells more PS3's than PS2s and PS1s but lose some market share then is it really a bad thing? It just means MS/Nintendo have actually gained sales, but not necessarily at the loss of Sony -- I have a feeling this is what will be happening, to some extent at least.

I think PS3 will sell more than PS2 (or at least as much), but I also think X360/Rev will sell more than Xbox/GC -- every generation the market has seemingly expanded quite a bit, and I don't see why it won't happen this gen. This gen's total sales (including DC), up until now, has been around 150 million consoles, previous gen was around ~125 mil? and the one before that, around ~100 mil? -- next gen will probably be around 170-180mil, and if Sony pulls up ~half the market, like many predict, thats still ~equal to PS2's sales.

Right on...The only fall back is if one of the console makers either F@#$k's up or another gains on mindshare then some mometum can build but for the most part..right on.

 

[Nesh]

Not that we need another Analyst thread, but why is it assumed whenever an article mentions PS3 being better than XB360, it's Sony's unstoppable hype machine? Not every overblown comment is a result of Sony. Like the PS2 can render StarWars in realtime nonsense, which came from George Lucas. And can you really trust the average non-tech-savvy journalist to really know what the numbers mean and how to convey those meanings to the public?

Anyhow, this is another of those totally useless threads that serves no purpose. As the FAQ says, when you post an article or thread, you're supposed to have an idea of what constructive discussion comes from it, or what it adds to the forum knowledge. The OP ias also supposed to add opinions or interpretation, or ask intelligent questions based on an article's content. Here we see some analyst numbers, same as we've seen a dozen times before, and what constructive criticism? Only the same old beaten-to-death-zombie-points of Sony's hype, make-believe Cell Specs, Sony are going to lose market share/not going to lose market share. Don't you people get tired of saying the same old things over and over? We've heard it all before. There's no point to constantly reiterate you think Cell's numbers misleading or RSX won't match Xenos shader power or RSX has 2x Xenos shader power, when it's all been said before.

Regards the article, what useful constructive debate can be derived from it? It's the usual sum-up-the-entire-gaming-industry-in-one-article sweeping casual journalism that's got no more info than everything we already have. Unless it's bringing in some new numbers (in which case the thread ought to be 'New PS2 sales figures' or something honing in on the point being raised for discussion) is there any need to post it?

Probem is despite that they have been discussed a billion times there is no final conclusion yet agreed by everyone

 

[Powderkeg]

Why?

Because it would require a level of inefficiency that does not exist.

Alas no. I've got MS's official assertion that XB360 has half the GFlops though.
http://www.majornelson.com/2005/05/20/xbox-360-vs-ps3-part-1-of-4/

That's not official, and that's not half.

But of course I wasn't thinking MIPS, as MIPS are a diabolical performance measure, and I doubt the journalist was either because they probably don't know what a MIP is. I was thinking the given specs, the rough numbers, that we have for the consoles. I'm not sure of all the sources but AFAIK officailly we have 100+ GFlops for XeCPU (IBM? MS? B3D? Actually they're calulateable fromthe Major Nelson article specs so can be considered MS figures), and 200+ GFlops for Cell (IBM), 1 Teraflop total system performance for XB360 (that was from MS) and 2 Teraflops for PS3 (from Sony), clockspeeds and everything else similar for both systems.

Again, it's only if you compare Flops and nothing else, and the only way you could arrive at that as the sole comparison is if you got your specs from Sony.

Now can you please provide me with the links that show Sony provided the figures that show PS3 to be 2x as powerful as XB360, as you claim here...

Oh come on. Be realistic.

If they got specs from IBM then they got a lot more than just the Flops. So why pick out just the flops and make your whole statement based on that alone?

Especially if you are a journalist who is supposed to present an unbiased presentation of the data at hand?

Where have Sony said what the XB360's specs are? AFAIK they've only given PS3 figures, and MS/IBM(?)/ATi have given XB360 figures. I think the most important figure ignorant journalists have latched onto was the 1 and 2 Teraflop system figures, but that's going by the values MS and Sony provided. You can't blame Sony for MS releasing their system performance as 1 Teraflop. As a journalist I'd read MS talk about their machine, and Sony talk about theirs, and both use this metric I don't understand and yet assume is a fair comparison which shows PS3 has 2x as much terrorflops as XB360 so must be 2x better.

But again, that's only 1 spec out of many? And FYI, the Tereflops comparison was for the entire system (Complete with slide), not just the CPU which is what this comment is specifically about. So why attach the comment to the CPU alone?

Not true. Firstly there's things like integer operations, ADDs and such, that Cell can process more of than XB360 (going by the official figures)

Link?

Because I am quite sure the reverse is true. The 360 has significantly better integer performance.

and secondly there's real world performance. For all you know in the real world when runnig real games PS3 does manage to process 2x as much per second as XB360 (or vice versa). Unless you've actually got information showing this isn't the case, which I'm guessing you must have seeing as you're so adamant PS3 hasn't 2x the real-world useable processing power of XB360, any idea of what the real performance differential between the two is purely conjecture at this point. Certainly I won't be saying PS3 is or isn't 2x as fast at processing than XB360 in real world usage. I don't know how anyone could be confident to make such claims, especially when we still don't even know what the GPU is going to be capable of. 'Impossible' is quite a claim and I'm eager to see you've evidence for it!

Considering that the PS3 does not exist in the real world how could this journalist possibly be making that comparison?

And yes, it's impossible for a CPU that does not exist to be twice the performance of one that does. It's quite an imaginative world you live in if the opposite were true.

 

[Titanio]

Lads and lassies, would you get a grip. It's a Yahoo article. Seriously, if we're gonna start having multi-page debates about "power" every time something like this crops up..