The new PS3 sales pitch: Better gaming, better technology, better value

[Crossbar]

Ever heard of the Amiga? It was a fixed platform with a great dedicated graphics card that had a huge userbase. Users around the globe contributed apps and games for it. The PS3 can do all of those things you listed above, it's got linux for the software, and USB ports for the hardware. Whether it will be done, who knows, but it's more flexible than you think.

Pretty interesting you bring up the Amiga which still has a lot of fans. Where did the Amiga fail so miserable?

I would say they failed in KISS and in lack of marketing power.

Sony may have a few things to learn from the Amiga though they are coming from the other direction (i.e. coming from multimedia CE and entering the PC space).

EDIT: the hw cost may have been another factor that brought the Amiga down (limitied possibility of cost reductions).

 

[one]

Pretty interesting you bring up the Amiga which still has a lot of fans. Where did the Amiga fail so miserable?

I would say they failed in KISS and in lack of marketing power.

Sony may have a few things to learn from the Amiga though they are coming from the other direction (i.e. coming from multimedia CE and entering the PC space).

EDIT: the hw cost may have been another factor that brought the Amiga down (limitied possibility of cost reductions).

Did the Amiga hardware have a single advantage over contemporary PCs available in the same price range in 1990s?

 

[NavNucST3]

akaik the 360 wifi adapter is a/b/g, where the PS3 one is b/g. The reasoning being that you really need 802.11a to stream high def movies over a wifi connection that is also in use by other machines. I remember wathcing a channel9 interview where they stated even a clean g connection would be difficult to get uninterrupted playback at 720p30.

This would help explain the price and also why it is an add-on. The cheapest a/b/g pci-card I have found here in NZ is $130nz, whereas b/g's are $60. But I didn't look that hard...
[edit]
360 wifi adapter is sold for $180 here, which isn't too bad a markup all things considered.

I only use G, and I stream HD material to my 360s using a wireless adapter on each machine. FWIW, I think I got MUCH better throughput with my D-link gaming adapter, but when I bought it, it cost more than the 360 adapter (but it does do turbo unlike the 360 wifi), and now the gaming adapter is tied to the second Vonage router (what a waste). Anyway, I stream 720p and 1080i with no problems whatsoever to the living room 360, and minimal issues to the bedroom 360.

 

[NavNucST3]

That's why PS3 has a built in Blu-ray player, so there's not that much need for streaming HD video.
The "a" routers are still a bit hard to get, at least here. For example I couldn't even find a price for such after a quick browsing of local bigger shops online.
The other option is downloading HD video to PS3 HDD, either by using wired or wireless connection to 'net.
I was hoping the PS3 would be able to stream content wirelessly from my PC, but it seems Sony wants the PS3 to be the centre of our media, guess I'll just have to copy them from my PC to PS3 then (though even the 60 gig will soon become too small).

Does the PS3 have an IR port? I don't recall ever seeing there being one.
If so, there propably won't be a dedicated remote control for the PS3 as there is for the xbox360.
The controller will of course work as a sort of remote, but it's not as good as a real remote.
A Bluetooth remote is of course possible, but Sony has yet to announce any such, have they? Also with a Bluetooth, or even WiFi remote you won't be able to teach the PS3 to your universal remote (or use your PS3 with the universal for that matter...)

You shouldn't need to use the PS3 hdd, this is why they will allow USB hdds, so you can buy a 500GB drive and store your videos on that, the question is which formats will it play. I have to use two different programs (free and very easy to setup) to get my 360s to recognize my .ts files (hdtv) and divx, xvid, and to stream DVDs. transcode 360 does everything but the .ts files, which is handled by hdtvpump. I would imagine the same types of programs will come to the PS3.

 

[Arwin]

Did the Amiga hardware have a single advantage over contemporary PCs available in the same price range in 1990s?

Nearly all competing machines (Apple, Atari, Amiga) had plenty of advantages over the PC. You do realise the Amiga was released not in the 1990s but in 1985? Here's a bit of history:

"The Commodore Amiga was officially launched in September 1985 for £1,500. The world's first Amiga magazine - Amiga World - was launched soon after. At the time this price was a major detractor that placed it in the high-end region occupied by the Apple Macintosh. In comparison, the Atari ST was selling for less than half the price. It was later recognized that this was Commodores' first mistake. Rather than promoting the Amiga as a professional machine, they sought to replicate the success of the Atari ST. However, the Atari ST had built a steady market since its launch that made it a difficult adversary, with the Amiga playing second fiddle to the ST regarding game releases.

It is difficult to indicate just how advanced the Amiga was compared to other systems. Apple had a graphical interface but was largely restricted to the black and white monitor display, whilst PCs were still horrible text based systems. The Amiga also had an ace up its sleeve by the fact that it was TV compatible and could be used for editing footage. A task that even now the Mac and PC cannot do as standard. The Juggler demo, consisting of a character juggling reflective balls in a 3D environment, attracted customers to the graphical capabilities. This spurred Electronic Arts to rewrite their IBM PC package, Prism (which was an enhanced port of Doodle for Xerox machines) and release it for the Amiga during September. The rewrite was christened Deluxe Paint and the rest is history. "
- source: http://www.amigau.com/aig/ahistory.html

To bring that back to topic, there's a clear lesson here that it's not at all about having the best hardware in this business. It can certainly help, but strategy is key.

 

[Crossbar]

Thanks Arwin, you beat me to it. :smile:

 

[LunchBox]

Acert,

you did a great job in the PR dept. You actually did better than a good lot of some marketing companies.

Would be cool if you make another spiff like "How MS will combat Sony's PR."

 

[_phil_]

Pretty interesting you bring up the Amiga which still has a lot of fans. Where did the Amiga fail so miserable?

I would say they failed in KISS and in lack of marketing power.

Sony may have a few things to learn from the Amiga though they are coming from the other direction (i.e. coming from multimedia CE and entering the PC space).

EDIT: the hw cost may have been another factor that brought the Amiga down (limitied possibility of cost reductions).

Piracy killed the amiga.

 

[one]

Nearly all competing machines (Apple, Atari, Amiga) had plenty of advantages over the PC. You do realise the Amiga was released not in the 1990s but in 1985?

I meant later years of Amiga, specifically around 1995. If it stayed in the same price range as Mac, no wonder it failed.

 

[Crossbar]

Piracy killed the amiga.

Would you care to elaborate on that?

 

[Gubbi]

Piracy killed the amiga.

No, the fact that Commodore didn't do any serious development on the system killed the Amiga. In 1985 Amiga was head and shoulders above PCs. In 1991, you'd only buy an Amiga for the games because PCs were 4-6 times faster for the same amount of $$$.

Commodore failed to evolve the 8-bit sound capabilities. They failed to evolve graphics; - a 4 x increase in performance and virtually no evolution in capabilities in 8 years were never going to cut it. They failed to provide faster CPUs (You can argue that this is as much Motorola's fault). On the software side they failed to provide an OS with memory protection.

They just plain failed

Cheers

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Piracy killed the amiga.

Crap business sense killed the Amiga. Devs didn't pull out of the business due to piracy, but the hardware wasn't developed or marketted, and once PCs got into the 3D space (Wolfenstein and DOOM) Amiga's 2D advantages were lost.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Yep, it was the 3D that killed the Amiga.
I remember, I was there and I saw it. That b*stard 3D!!!

I think CD was also involved in that heinous act.

...and a hard disk.

They killed Paula, Agnus, Elise (was there Elise?) and fat Bertha!!

 

[Crossbar]

They just plain failed

Perhaps, "jack of all trades, and master of none" would apply in the Amiga case?

 

[Gubbi]

Perhaps, "jack of all trades, and master of none" would apply in the Amiga case?

I think, "Complete and utter incompetence" would apply to Commodore.

Cheers

 

[rabidrabbit]

Perhaps, "jack of all trades, and master of none" would apply in the Amiga case?

Nooo, you're just trying to tie this to today and PS3, aren't you

If anything, the Amiga was not a jack of enough trades and had become too old a master of what it used to be.
Amiga was killed because it was not capable of good 3D and had too little storage as standard (now there's something to tie to today!)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I meant later years of Amiga, specifically around 1995. If it stayed in the same price range as Mac, no wonder it failed.

Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, effecitvely ending Amiga production, although enthusiasts were still able to buy nichely expensive Amiga hardware. Price wise it wasn't competitive in the end. At first through the 80's there wasn't anything to touch the Amiga for price : performance. PC's processor power rose over time but in a lot of areas it was still backward, especially at games. Which is unsurprising. It's a business computer designed for business, becoming more powerful to facilitate business needs with a type of power that wasn't good at games. My friend's 120MHz 486 DX4 couldn't produce a smooth-scrolling, jitter free platformer or shooter to rival the 7 MHz 68000 (28MHz system though) A500 which was designed for that, though he'd trounce it on raytracing. But that PC power and graphics format was good for 3D in a way Amiga wasn't, and that's what ruined Amiga as a gaming platform in the end. The world was evolving but the Amiga wasn't, because from the original idea that was fantastic, it was bought by suits who ran it lie incompetant suits and didn't understand what they had or how to develop it.

I think it worth noting that the Amiga loyalty was such that Amiga users would rather have had an underpowered more-costly Amiga (A3000/A4000 class) than a top-end PC in the end, despite the poor economy of it. For a start it was a lot easier to use, with a proper GUI OS and no need to poke around with config.sys files to try and get your sound card to work on a particularly game (hardware incompatibilities still plague PCs ), had loads of software diversity with new genres appearing, and it had a reputation from when it was the best that drove it. Even though A4000 was totally underpowered+overpriced for what it was, brand loyalty made the fans oblivious to that. This phenomenum I expect to be exhibited with PS3. It's riding a wave of success. Unless something ruins that in the same way the switch to 3D gaming ruined Amiga, some field the rival(s) have which PS3 hasn't and which becomes the new fad, I doubt it'll lose mindshare.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yep, it was the 3D that killed the Amiga.
I remember, I was there and I saw it. That b*stard 3D!!!

Those were painful times. Remember the Amiga 3D games like AlienBreed3D, that ran in postage stamp sized windows of like 120x80 pixels to get any framerate, or the full screen 4x4 pixel blocky graphics? They tried soooo hard, thrashing that little Copper in things it wasn't meant to do. If Commodore had known what they were doing, they'd have seen the writing on the wall and added 3D. But the whole system design was around 2D, which is why it kicked so much heinie in it's heyday but which held it back when the world changed.

And look where it got PlayStation. The first mainstream 3D device to capture the market has fuelled a decade of dominance. The right decisions at the right times make or break.

 

[Crossbar]

Nooo, you're just trying to tie this to today and PS3, aren't you

I was just trying to get the discussion back on the PS3 track, but there was no deeper implications.

I think Shifty made some valid conclusions about the differences.

 

[Powderkeg]

Pure genius. Right on the mark.

85+% of the US does not have HDTV.

95+% of Europe does not have an HDTV.

To those people who do not have HDTV, the PS3 is nothing but a $500-$600 game console that doesn't have games that look any better than what you can play on a $300 Xbox 360.

Please explain the genius behind that.