Oh, I know about Arwins enthusiasm,
, and don't mind me, this is your hazing ritual! 
Will Sony Be The "Next SEGA"?
- Thread starter bigsilly
- Start date
- Status
Oh, I know about Arwins enthusiasm,
, and don't mind me, this is your hazing ritual! 
Yeah, well, just as long as you remember I have no 'allegiance', just love racing games. I have a 360, Forza 2, the MS Wheel, etc. I had the original Xbox as well.
Anyway, this thread definitely needs some fuel for a fire that wasn't burning very well in the first place. I came across this little bit of charcoal:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6181357.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;1
Though I thought 1up's take on the Halo 3 sales was also significant - with 3.3 million Halo 3 copies sold, the inrease in 360 sales was relatively very small, hardly 10%. Of course it's too early to draw any conclusions about this (impact of Halo over the full extent of the Holidays), but that's not something that is stopping many people.
I have a 360, Forza 2, the MS Wheel, etc. I had the original Xbox as well. Anyway, this thread definitely needs some fuel for a fire that wasn't burning very well in the first place. I came across this little bit of charcoal:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6181357.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;1
Though I thought 1up's take on the Halo 3 sales was also significant - with 3.3 million Halo 3 copies sold, the inrease in 360 sales was relatively very small, hardly 10%. Of course it's too early to draw any conclusions about this (impact of Halo over the full extent of the Holidays), but that's not something that is stopping many people.
Yeah, well, just as long as you remember I have no 'allegiance', just love racing games.
Anyway, this thread definitely needs some fuel for a fire that wasn't burning very well in the first place. I came across this little bit of charcoal:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6181357.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;1
Though I thought 1up's take on the Halo 3 sales was also significant - with 3.3 million Halo 3 copies sold, the inrease in 360 sales was relatively very small, hardly 10%. Of course it's too early to draw any conclusions about this (impact of Halo over the full extent of the Holidays), but that's not something that is stopping many people.
I think the last couple paragraphs should be in the NPD thread...also, I think your percentage is off and by more than a little.
EDIT: So do we lock this one up and put it to bed? I vote yay
I want to give bigsilly a chance to contribute. He wanted to hold the conversation enough to try again, so let him, either responding that he's happy with the answers or that he has more questions.
I dont think it's greed. They did what every company would have considered doing.
You have to remember that Sony makes investments on other products as well. BR was one. And they need a way to promote it. PS3 was it. They took a risk and risks usually bring higher returns if succeeded. PS3 was supposed to reduce the risk for investing on BR.
BR of course is a very positive addition from a gaming perspective too. But the problem was it increased costs too much and delayed the console's release. It reduced the risk of BR investments but it increased hugely the risk of the console.
What ended things up like this today wasnt greed. It was that they downplayed the real amount of risk in their mind. They overestimated the reduction of risk by using a successful product (Playstation). They did a huge mistake by not following the rules of conservatism. They should have done all things possible to ensure PS3 was going to sell instead of waiting for things to work for themselves. They thought the name itself was going to sell it.
Things went worse when Sony delayed the European release. If the console was released simultaneously everywhere in November, Sony would have had much more sales, and Europe would have had a much bigger launch too.
There is also other things that worsen the console's position. Europe is probably the land of football games.
People could even buy a 360 or a PS3 at launch to play the next Pro Evolution or Fifa. Europe has continuously Pro Evo contests. PS3 did not have a football game released on it and it was expensive. Add the often illogical negative media press even before the console was launched and imagine how things were going until march 2007.
Come on ... Sony has this:
Huh, how does that give Sony an advantage or make the PS3 imunne to failure?
Nice it may be but nothing more than what a techdemo would be, with only a car and silk drape rendered and even then I remember seeing something similar some time before (GT4?). If not 'true' advanced physics based collision detection then nothing to brag about!
That was a futile, uphill struggle. 
For the record, what was needed for this to be a real conversation on the topic was...
OP - Are Sony giving up on the console market?
Initial responses - No way! They've got [reason 1] and [reason 2] and [reason 3]...
Response (either from OP or others who disagree) - Ahhhh, but if you look at this, [reason 1] doesn't work, [reason 2] is falling away because Hardware X is doing such and such, [reason 3] hasn't been valid for the past 5 years...
...and not...
OP - Are Sony giving up on the console market?
Initial responses - No but I'm not telling you why.
Response - Microsoft haven't any game developers.
Counter Response - Look at this shiny silk.
Counter Response - Nintendo are selling well.
Counter Response - looking at NYPD Blue, Microsoft aren't selling as many hot buns as usual.
If any of those remarks were to be relevant, they needed explaining in the context of why they prove or disprove Sony are going to quit. The OP sets a 'challenge' and the responses should be such as to answer that challenge. The problem here is the topic was instantly fragmented into a piecemeal analysis. Some people went to talk about market share, others about reputation, others about sales figures, others about how the rival systems were doing, other's about Sony's choices. All are relevant to the overall question, but such a piecemeal debate is impossible to have. It's an easy thing to happen. I too went off on a tangent, swept along but what was being said instead of what the subject matter was, responding to an immediate post instead of contributing to the thread at the thread level. Posting habits were too low level!
The problem with this behaviour is it makes some topics just plain untenable. That's why discussion boards have threads - so we don't just post a mishmash of conversations in one big reel of talk, but maintain structure. That's also why real-life debates have chairpersons to fulfil the role of moderators, ensuring the side-track discussions that crop up don't take over and the purpose of the discussion is lost. A minutiae discussion on which platform has the highest scoring titles is not going to answer the question on if Sony are going to pull out of the hardware race, any more than a minutiae discussion on which alloy to make grommets out of is going to answer the question on 'how do we build a car that'll win the race'. That's a groovy analogy and I'll run with it...
OP - How do we build the fastest car possible?
Response 1 - put in the biggest engine you can
Response 2 - (to 1) Not necessarily. You need to make the car lighter, which needs a light engine
Response 3 - Drag cars are very fast
Response 4 - (to 2) TVR have light engines and are fast, but they keep breaking
Response 5 - (to 3) But they're no good at turning corners, dummy!
Response 6 - (to 2) The Bugatti Veron is the fastest car in the world and it's engine weighs 6 metric tonnes
Response 7 - (to 4) The problem is they use aluminium which isn't strong enough. They need a modern ceramic engine-block, something like Fusemite. It has a melting point of 2,500 degrees C and a density of only 2.3 grams per CM
Response 8 - (to 6) You don't know what you're talking about. The Veron's engine doesn't weigh that much, and besides the SSC Ultimate Aero is faster now
Response 9 - (to 5) Who said it had to turn corners?
Response 10 - (to 7) Fusemite costs a million bucks a gram! Boingite is a more economical choice, made by Megatech
Response 11 - (to 10) Megatech went bust two years ago, and their IP was bought up by Supertech. But Boingites no good because you can't weld it
Response 12 - (to 11) There are two glues that serve the job, Glibmax and Polystux. Polystux is used more frequently.
Response 13 - (to 12) Is Polystux suitable for an engine? Doesn't it detonate at high temperatures?
Response 14 - (to 8) The SSC may have the faster top speed, but the Veron would beat it in a race hands down. There's nothing to touch the Veron's aerodynamics.
Response 15 - (to 13) Polystux has always been a handful. If they decreased the nitrogen content at manufacturing it wouldn't be a problem. I've heard they've introduced a new process but I don't know if its available yet.
Well, 15 posts later and has the OP even begun to be answered? Everything mentioned is relevant. Drag cars are fast. Fast cars benefit from being light. If you're going to use a ceramic block, you want to know about Boingite and Polystux, and whatever problems it might pose. Yet nothing in the big-picture topic of how to build a fast car has been answered. The proper starting place is, after getting proper requirements, the big-picture view of cars and the weight<>power<>performance relationships. This could be discussed at a high level before worrying about implementations whcih would benefit from their own threads. There needs to be that separation between low and high level topics. As it is, such a thread would probably get closed straight away in any engineering forum. Like those 'I have the best ever MMO game idea. How do I write it?' that frequent developer forums.
So, if you are posting a remark that Halo 3 sales aren't hot, you need to provide context such as 'Halo 3 sales show MS isn't getting strong hardware sales even on their key franchise, which shows the market is still wide open' or 'Halo 3 sales show XB360 gamers are buying their hardware in advance of key titles in anticipation, which is a luxury Sony aren't experiencing.' Something that ties the data point of H3 sales to the question of 'are Sony leaving?' If you're posting 'Nintendo and MS are capitalizing on the space Sony have left' you need to add reference to the original question such as 'and as these rivals fill that void, they are pushing Sony out of the mass-market mindshare which will invariably lead to ever-decreasing sales, at which point the costs of running SCE will probably be more than it's worth' or 'Even though N and MS are taking up Sony's slack, the majority of the market remains entrenched in last gen where Sony dominated, and as long as they have that potential they still have a foot in the door.' Whatever, you need to provide relevance of your point to the question that the thread is trying to answer.
If you can't provide such an explanation in relation to the Thread's purpose, you're probably posting noise, not discussion. We're not a telepathic species and the only way people can get your point is if you type it out! Arwin's picture is a good example. I got his meaning (or at least my interpretation), a picture paints a thousand words, but others didn't. And if people can't understand your point, there's no point making it. Of course we don't want to enforce college-thesis only posts from everyone! If everyone posted Joshua Luna length posts, we'd never manage to read it all! Thus though the ideal is established, there's considerable leeway allowed using advanced AI algorithms that attempt to accommodate human diversity. They're not infallible, and indeed are often subjective sorting criteria. Though I can't divulge the details of the AI algorithms used, I can state that all the conspiracy-theorists know the truth and if you post anything pro-Sony, you get free-reign Seriously though, the (time-consuming and unpaid) job of the moderators, apart from keeping out troublemakers, is to maintain a higher level of debate than perpetual open-floor -debate can allow. It's a peculiar balancing act between keeping a topic rigidly on track and letting it evolve along a natural course, which sometimes provides very useful contributions to the board even if not fulfilling the remit of the thread they are in. Whether you like the choices made or not, its disingenuous to complain. That is the nature of this board and what makes it different from the norm. If it's not a style of discussion management you are happy with, there are plenty of other places with a much more open policy that may be more to your liking. If you like the discussion management but only have a problem with one particular mod who's always picking on you and spells his name funny and probably works for one of the console companies and might even be the CEO for all I know, take it to the Site Feedback forum where the other mods will hear about it and gang up on the trouble-maker mod and duff him up good and then that'll learn him.
For the record, what was needed for this to be a real conversation on the topic was...OP - Are Sony giving up on the console market?
Initial responses - No way! They've got [reason 1] and [reason 2] and [reason 3]...
Response (either from OP or others who disagree) - Ahhhh, but if you look at this, [reason 1] doesn't work, [reason 2] is falling away because Hardware X is doing such and such, [reason 3] hasn't been valid for the past 5 years...
...and not...
OP - Are Sony giving up on the console market?
Initial responses - No but I'm not telling you why.
Response - Microsoft haven't any game developers.
Counter Response - Look at this shiny silk.
Counter Response - Nintendo are selling well.
Counter Response - looking at NYPD Blue, Microsoft aren't selling as many hot buns as usual.
If any of those remarks were to be relevant, they needed explaining in the context of why they prove or disprove Sony are going to quit. The OP sets a 'challenge' and the responses should be such as to answer that challenge. The problem here is the topic was instantly fragmented into a piecemeal analysis. Some people went to talk about market share, others about reputation, others about sales figures, others about how the rival systems were doing, other's about Sony's choices. All are relevant to the overall question, but such a piecemeal debate is impossible to have. It's an easy thing to happen. I too went off on a tangent, swept along but what was being said instead of what the subject matter was, responding to an immediate post instead of contributing to the thread at the thread level. Posting habits were too low level!
The problem with this behaviour is it makes some topics just plain untenable. That's why discussion boards have threads - so we don't just post a mishmash of conversations in one big reel of talk, but maintain structure. That's also why real-life debates have chairpersons to fulfil the role of moderators, ensuring the side-track discussions that crop up don't take over and the purpose of the discussion is lost. A minutiae discussion on which platform has the highest scoring titles is not going to answer the question on if Sony are going to pull out of the hardware race, any more than a minutiae discussion on which alloy to make grommets out of is going to answer the question on 'how do we build a car that'll win the race'. That's a groovy analogy and I'll run with it...
OP - How do we build the fastest car possible?
Response 1 - put in the biggest engine you can
Response 2 - (to 1) Not necessarily. You need to make the car lighter, which needs a light engine
Response 3 - Drag cars are very fast
Response 4 - (to 2) TVR have light engines and are fast, but they keep breaking
Response 5 - (to 3) But they're no good at turning corners, dummy!
Response 6 - (to 2) The Bugatti Veron is the fastest car in the world and it's engine weighs 6 metric tonnes
Response 7 - (to 4) The problem is they use aluminium which isn't strong enough. They need a modern ceramic engine-block, something like Fusemite. It has a melting point of 2,500 degrees C and a density of only 2.3 grams per CM
Response 8 - (to 6) You don't know what you're talking about. The Veron's engine doesn't weigh that much, and besides the SSC Ultimate Aero is faster now
Response 9 - (to 5) Who said it had to turn corners?
Response 10 - (to 7) Fusemite costs a million bucks a gram! Boingite is a more economical choice, made by Megatech
Response 11 - (to 10) Megatech went bust two years ago, and their IP was bought up by Supertech. But Boingites no good because you can't weld it
Response 12 - (to 11) There are two glues that serve the job, Glibmax and Polystux. Polystux is used more frequently.
Response 13 - (to 12) Is Polystux suitable for an engine? Doesn't it detonate at high temperatures?
Response 14 - (to 8) The SSC may have the faster top speed, but the Veron would beat it in a race hands down. There's nothing to touch the Veron's aerodynamics.
Response 15 - (to 13) Polystux has always been a handful. If they decreased the nitrogen content at manufacturing it wouldn't be a problem. I've heard they've introduced a new process but I don't know if its available yet.
Well, 15 posts later and has the OP even begun to be answered? Everything mentioned is relevant. Drag cars are fast. Fast cars benefit from being light. If you're going to use a ceramic block, you want to know about Boingite and Polystux, and whatever problems it might pose. Yet nothing in the big-picture topic of how to build a fast car has been answered. The proper starting place is, after getting proper requirements, the big-picture view of cars and the weight<>power<>performance relationships. This could be discussed at a high level before worrying about implementations whcih would benefit from their own threads. There needs to be that separation between low and high level topics. As it is, such a thread would probably get closed straight away in any engineering forum. Like those 'I have the best ever MMO game idea. How do I write it?' that frequent developer forums.
So, if you are posting a remark that Halo 3 sales aren't hot, you need to provide context such as 'Halo 3 sales show MS isn't getting strong hardware sales even on their key franchise, which shows the market is still wide open' or 'Halo 3 sales show XB360 gamers are buying their hardware in advance of key titles in anticipation, which is a luxury Sony aren't experiencing.' Something that ties the data point of H3 sales to the question of 'are Sony leaving?' If you're posting 'Nintendo and MS are capitalizing on the space Sony have left' you need to add reference to the original question such as 'and as these rivals fill that void, they are pushing Sony out of the mass-market mindshare which will invariably lead to ever-decreasing sales, at which point the costs of running SCE will probably be more than it's worth' or 'Even though N and MS are taking up Sony's slack, the majority of the market remains entrenched in last gen where Sony dominated, and as long as they have that potential they still have a foot in the door.' Whatever, you need to provide relevance of your point to the question that the thread is trying to answer.
If you can't provide such an explanation in relation to the Thread's purpose, you're probably posting noise, not discussion. We're not a telepathic species and the only way people can get your point is if you type it out! Arwin's picture is a good example. I got his meaning (or at least my interpretation), a picture paints a thousand words, but others didn't. And if people can't understand your point, there's no point making it. Of course we don't want to enforce college-thesis only posts from everyone! If everyone posted Joshua Luna length posts, we'd never manage to read it all! Thus though the ideal is established, there's considerable leeway allowed using advanced AI algorithms that attempt to accommodate human diversity. They're not infallible, and indeed are often subjective sorting criteria. Though I can't divulge the details of the AI algorithms used, I can state that all the conspiracy-theorists know the truth and if you post anything pro-Sony, you get free-reign
Seriously though, the (time-consuming and unpaid) job of the moderators, apart from keeping out troublemakers, is to maintain a higher level of debate than perpetual open-floor -debate can allow. It's a peculiar balancing act between keeping a topic rigidly on track and letting it evolve along a natural course, which sometimes provides very useful contributions to the board even if not fulfilling the remit of the thread they are in. Whether you like the choices made or not, its disingenuous to complain. That is the nature of this board and what makes it different from the norm. If it's not a style of discussion management you are happy with, there are plenty of other places with a much more open policy that may be more to your liking. If you like the discussion management but only have a problem with one particular mod who's always picking on you and spells his name funny and probably works for one of the console companies and might even be the CEO for all I know, take it to the Site Feedback forum where the other mods will hear about it and gang up on the trouble-maker mod and duff him up good and then that'll learn him.- Status
