Sony would make a fantastic 3rd Party Developer/Publisher
- Thread starter TEXAN*
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Bear with me I am replying using my g1 instead of a pc I currently do not have access to so I appologize if I rant as that is not my intention but the reason I have to respond to your post is because it just seems to forget a lot of other things historically speaking.
But you failed to mention why, the way you said it implied that Sony by being strong just magically gained 3rd party support for PS1.
Sega was busy running around with too many hardware products released not just 2 measly years before Saturn and it just did not help consumers and later 3rd parties with all the erratic behavior before and after Saturn by again spreading out too many worthless pheripherals like netlink.
If someone were to post the losses at Sega from Sega CD to Dreamcast launch in late 98 we would hardly belive they were a focused competitor.
There were also numerous complaints by 3rd parties about how Sega treated them and it just did not help to prematurely talk about a next console when in Japan the Saturn enjoyed a healthy level of 3rd party support that did voice their concerns against rushing yet another Sega product.
Despite its high price the console sales exceeded any "hype" because gamers where not taking home an Emotion Engine, they were justifying the price to take home movie player that enhanced their PS1 graphics in the first year ending March 2001.
That alone created more demand, more hype and motivated game devs to support but it was not by "hype" alone.
I also seem to remember that EGM called November 2001 with a cover story of "too many games" being released that month if not that year starting with the summer release of GT3 bundle.
The cut in price was because the sales exceeded known expectations back then but also because the EE and GS were well being fabbed almost a year before the March 2000 launch and by then Sony was able to sell retail consoles with their target die size as well as ramp up die shrinks to increase production and drop the price with no economic pressure.
Well... there has always been speculation, did you read the ones that questioned Sega choosing the name Dreamcast (implying that it was a weak name)
No but you blamed it as the primary factor when Sony released statements that they could not meet production goals due to that factor as an excuse for not being able to flood stores during Nov and Dec 2006.
The single most important factor was Sony playing into imitating to out-penis-do Microsoft by doing a near simultanious ww launch that just did not help with the progression of software unlike having plenty of time with PS1 and PS2.
The rumors of warehouses holding PS3s in fear of riots at stores and then shipping said consoles as a surprise did not help consumers.
Despite the hardware failiures and other flaws Microsoft and X360 have had it a lot easier than Sega and Dreamcast, maybe despite the premature death of xbox 1 was forgiven by a promise of a "next gen halo" anf maybe the sales of that game are proof to the expectations but it would have been different if Sega had partner companies that sell game and pc magazines and host tv programs were your products are always being mentioned despite being more than six months after.
Then again it was not like Microsoft was sufferring major losses year after year...
And I pointed out that this Nov 09 will mark the PS3 on its third year as opposed to all the success the PS2 enjoyed in its first two years, hence your comparison being premature because the challenges are very different this time.
Nintendo does not have to worry about Samsung selling hdtvs or Apple selling ipods or Linux getting any type of market share because their company is only focused on game consoles.
As a matter of fact Nintendo does have to worry about some internal dev team wanting to contract some other company to make super expensive cutting edge arcade boards, in fact they do not bother with arcade games, they are voluntarily outsourced to others like Namco, etc.
More cash does not mean you have the same money.
No, sorry if you are mistakenly assuming the worst, my concern is historical accuracy because what I know is not a rosy glasses retrospective on innocent Dreamcast and evil PS2 hype.
I do not believe I blasted you or wandered all over the place so again sorry but that was never my intention.
I agree, thats why I'm saying hardware will be a lot closer to break even at launch than it has in the past.
I wonder how much closer to profitability both companies would be if Sony hadnt had Blu Ray and MS hadnt had RROD though?
That said I hope both companies dont go anywhere near the Wii route.
And I doubt they would. Never forget they dont have Nintendos family friendly IP. They dont have Mario. They have shooters.
Hardcore isnt a bad market anyways, it's just as big as the Wii market right now (PS3 and 360 combined) and arguably a lot more dependable and predictable.
It's hard to gauge. If Sony hadn't had Blu Ray, would they have been able to launch earlier? Like Early 2006? And would they still be stuck at $599? If that had happened differently I don't think Sony's profitability would be in question and we'd see the install-bases reversed.
With what software? Most launch games were pretty crap, imagine what they would have been 6 months earlier...
Yeah, but it's not like the 360 had anything really pushing it in early 2006, either. The PS2 was still eating its lunch. If the PS3 still had full BC, then that's where your games would come from -- people would be playing whatever was in their PS2 library, upscaled, plus we'd be seeing whatever it is the 360 got in early 2006.
If we're not allowing the PS3 to launch early, or cheaper, then without BRD the PS3 would be doing even worse than it is today. But I doubt that's what Rangers meant, as he's removing the 360's biggest hurdle and what may have been the PS3's.
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Wii sold on the strength of Wii Sports, a new IP. By comparison, Super Mario Galaxies has 'only' sold 8 million units to 50 million Wii owners.
Not only that, but Sony does have family-friendly IP -- I'm sure you, as a UKer knows this better than anyone subject to SCEA. Some of Sony's biggest successes are SCEE 'casual' games. They're not as strong in family-friendly games, but they did have three platformers last-gen, even if two are Teen games.
I always found it a bit ironic that the things I would look out for most in the PS3 BR, CELL and it's integration with other equipment (Displays, Audio) are the one that made me not buy a PS3.
As a 3rd party Dev. M$ is doing a much better job porting it's games to the PC for instance (albeit at a slow pace.) In the end I'm enjoying much better games at a PC price which I didn't buy for the 360.
As a 3rd party Dev. M$ is doing a much better job porting it's games to the PC for instance (albeit at a slow pace.) In the end I'm enjoying much better games at a PC price which I didn't buy for the 360.
The Personal Computer is a Microsoft (to you M$) platform that since Windows 98 over ten years ago has had an integrated Direct X API that game developers are required to use to make or port their games even if they use the non-Microsoft Open GL API.
So its a no brainer that Microsoft XBox, being that it is based on Microsoft Direct X (a Microsoft trademark and proprietary API) is going to make porting games to another Microsoft Direct X platform for PC users unless they were running Linux or some other Operating System not made by Microsoft as it would require reverse engineering and therefore be illegal.
As a result despite Playstation having some PC like components like the GPU being that it is NOT a Microsoft endorsed platform it just does not use Direct X or any of Microsoft's software, it instead uses Sony's traditional approach to their own consoles with custom dev tools.
How your post makes sense in a Sony themed thread is anyone's guess as I can interpret that you are implying that Microsoft's way is better.
Super Mario Brothers for NES sold alot of copies too but that game was included as a "pack in" bundle that helped introduce people to this game despite the fact that it was older.
Wii Sports is the default game sold with every Wii console so its no surprise that its going to have sold more copies than SMG that will need to rely on people actually going to the store and being aware that the title exists.
Then again the game is still $50 bucks too and well worth it for its reviews so its not part of a greatest hits line up yet but once it is, expect more sales.
Has MS ported any of its games to PC other than Halo? Maybe Crackdown and Fable?
Blu Ray had its reasons for existing reguardless of the "blame game" because it added to the progress of technology and making it harder for software piracy and console mod chip makers that were indirectly creating losses in game sales for PS2 and still are so the question is rather moot and pointless because it is a technology that was needed as part of progress.
Microsoft X360 not having the RROD would have been interesting but it only would have made sense if the heatsink fan set up inside the Xbox 360 actually would have made for an efficient design in combination with vents, etc. The basic answer is that you would not run into forum boards where people advise owners of dead consoles to pick up a $199 "Arcade" SKU and therefore a drop in sales.
It isn't like RROD is stopping Microsoft from selling consoles, then again if it was SEGA you would have likely seen angry mobs with torches and pitch forks, even with hardcore Sega fans
Nintendo made their choice, if you think about it what other GPU would they have been able to get if Nintendo would have spent more money? keeping in mind that ATI is also working with Microsoft.
Playstation is not really known for "shooters" thats Microsoft's legacy and the reason the XBox 360 was approved as the next home for the Halo series and then also became the Gears of Wars home.
It should not surprise anyone if Bungie has a special version or an only version of "Halo Reach" for the rumored "Xbox Natal" and it also should not be a surprise if Gears of War 3 turns into a next gen only game to help deliver a one two punch in making the hardcore Xbox gamer quickly migrate over to the new rumored console. The other route would be to take a Zelda TP approach but that is not such a great idea if you want your install base to quickly rise and hype to build is it?
Looking at the timing of Halo 2's launch sales in 2004 to the quick announcement of a new console to host a sequel in 2005 and then the proof that halo 3 sold over 8 million and counting should tell that being fresh in the minds of gamers the hardcore market paid off for Microsoft.
Looking at PS3 being that Sony lacked a hardware transform and lighting graphics chip (it was software) with the PS2 and Sony had to basically rely on top programming talent to prove the competition wrong on check list 3d features you can tell that Sony engineers went to lengths to make sure that the console was a complete technological upgrade in every way shape and form and such a message was aimed at the hardcore gamer.
By basically telling the hardcore gamer we put more tech, new tech into the 3rd game console, Sony sent a message that was ridiculed when it was discovered that there was a price for all the new performance.
2 years later and we have seen Sony's game devs deliver more complete and updated graphic libraries and tool sets that delivered on all of the technical demonstrations including the Killzone CGI trailer and despite the word being slow for the sales and an economic crisys playing havoc with gamers spending practices, this E3 saw Sony once again raise the bar to the hardcore gamers they are courting, weather they are listening or not of have just become Microsoft or Wii owners is still up in the air but the point is that more and more games are being released that are addressing any type of "weaknesses" the PS3 may have, at least Sony seems to be doing their homework.
If the console was estimated at costing $840 or so to make WITH Blu Ray then we can estimate the non-BR PS3 to still be a retail sell at $500 even.
Sony would have to wimp out and go cheap on the heatsink too as well as other ports and its still over $400 and still at a loss, they would have to wimp out again and lose the XDRDRAM and more things like the PS2 chips and eventually CellBE and still sell at a loss and we would really just see people clearly pointing out how there is no point in buying a console that does not offer anything but being a clone of the competition, that would make game consoles pointless really as is what this topic is asking for in Sony reducing to have all their games be multiplatform because that would mean they would all fall under the quote Microsoft platform unquote as Nintendo's specs just cannot handle these games unless you target that hardware specifically.
You already have Square-Enix, Konami, Capcom, Rockstar, etc being contracted to place the game titles that became million sellers and famous on the Playstation branded console to show up on the Microsoft console to give certain gamers less of a reason or making it pointless to go and buy a PS3 and now this thread asks some of the new ip to switch too, its just priceless
Almost anything that can happen in the worst way has already happened with Sega, since they also as part of some bright idea decided to port their games to PC back in the 90s instead of spending that money back into supporting their consoles they just kept spreading too thin.
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Only Fable 1 Lost Chapters was ported to PC.
Sony was given a hard time for the price at first, but what's hurting the PS3 now is that Sony launched it a year after 360 with a significantly weaker GPU and less memory / less freely usable memory.
Last gen, the PS2 had weaker graphics performance than the XBox, but it was cheaper and it had more games.
This gen, the PS3 has weaker graphics performance than the 360, but it is more expensive and it has fewer games.
That's a very poor combination for Sony. Perhaps they'll be able to get it cheaper than it is now, maybe even they'll try for parity with the 360, but they'll still have weaker graphics and fewer games, unless they pull a Wii and release a step-up PS3 with more memory or GPU and try to convince developers to write for a divided user base.
Neither of those can be quantified by most consumers. Of the top best looking games, the PS3 has more than it's share. As to the number of games, who counts them? The only thing hurting Sony is price, they are competing with two consoles which are half the price.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a PS3 gamer only. But too many games do have weaker graphics on PS3 than they do on the 360. Ghostbusters most recently, but BioShock and GTA4 were the same. The only multiplatform game that I think is genuinely visually superior on the PS3 is Fallout 3, as it has more storage on the Blu-Ray for textures, and it has a guaranteed hard drive to stream from.
Of course, just as the Wii is showing the financial benefits of making and selling cheaper games, the 360 and PS3 are (hopefully!) selling a lot of small content on their online stores. For those kinds of games, there's certainly no difference to be seen in most games.
In my dreams, Sony comes out with an updated PS3 soon, duct-tape style, in such a way that existing games could render at a higher resolution or with better anti-aliasing, but from what I understand that is just not likely to happen due to insufficient abstraction in the rendering system.. to say nothing of the economic reality of Sony's position.
I was going to reply to your earlier posts about you myth about RSX but its clear to me that you are under the spell of believing that a console needs to have feature parity for no other reason than to say "me too"
Multiplatform games are pretty useless to measure a console's graphic power, it only works for the desperate Microsoft PR rep who is hoping that gamers are not aware of how game consoles traditionaly work excluding the Microsoft game boxes.
In your dreams you can think anything and believe it but reality dictated that 65nm cpus/gpus were only going to be physically possible when they were so a decision was made to go for 90nm instead and thus your dreams of useless, unrealistic feature parity were dashed.
I could really try hard to make myself sound smarter than you by using complex words and do not missunderstand me or take it personal but a traditional game console like the PS3 is supposed to work best with graphic library dev tools provided by Sony to work within the known programing limitations documented as per the revisions of said tools.
That's why PS2 was eventually able to render games like Shadow of Colossus and mgs3 among others that displayed 3d effect features that were thought to not be possible simply because it is not about hardware but also software.
This should tell you why rumors of a new xbox are being mentioned as hitting retail sooner than Sony or Nintendo, because Microsoft has never really had plans to use the 360 components and will instead rely on a tech upgrade be it cpu, gpu, ram,etc duct taped to allow "more graphics" from being uttered by Microsoft reps as they just cannot compete agaisnt the refinements to programming code made on the traditional consoles.
No, Sony could have a lower priced console, and that would give it some addde value. Sony could have come out a year earlier, and that would give it some added value.
In the absence of that, I think that the 360 can make a good claim to greater value on the gaming front.
PS3 has Blu-Ray playback and Sony's first party wares, and that gives it substantial value for sure, but consoles are a game of network effects, and Microsoft is very, very good at focusing on driving network effects in their favor.
I called them dreams because I understand that it is not to pull out the duct tape until they are prepared to iterate the basic platform.
Yes, I understand that PS3 games written against a specific revision of the SDK will always have a fixed amount of memory available to them, even if the OS has been tweaked to permit more memory to the developer if they are targeting a newer SDK.
And I think I'd find it quite informative if you did use complex words. I love learning from folks here.
Which complex words did you have in mind? :smile:
Sure, developers can do amazing things with the PS3 if they develop for it from the ground up, and scale their graphics and art assets (geometry as well as textures) for it. But that's more expensive to do in development, for a console that is more expensive than the 360 and has a smaller user base.
If Sony were able to tweak their console to get better performance out of an updated GPU, and if Sony's libraries were designed to provide for scalability, such that games could run on both new hardware and old hardware with just a change in performance, then given Sony's 10 year lifetime goals, maybe it would be worth trying it. The vast majority of PS3s that will end up in homes will have to be sold after Sony has come out with the slim and lowered the price, after all. Pissing off the existing customer base isn't as important as selling the next 20 million PS3s.
That's two ifs, there. Sony might well not have that capability. That's fine.
But I hope they'll figure out something to do, because I'd like to be joined by many more PS3 users than Sony is generating right now.
Ah, I see. I imagine this statement is what got you upset.
Yeah, this was a pretty stupid thing to say.
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