Xbox Next - MS keeping cost down their highest priority?

[Johnny Awesome]

Your numbers are wrong Wazoo. The DC hit 2 million in Japan long before March 2K1. The DC userbase was about 10 million after Holiday 2K and about 11.5 million by the end. I think the DC had life left in it, but there were several problems:

- Sega's huge debt. The DC wasn't profitable enough to cover the debt refinancing.

- Poor 3rd party and retail support. Not having EA is too big a deal for a company like Sega. Nintendo and MS could live without EA (MS barely so), but Sega just let its franchises dwindle too much to drive their hardware.

With that being said, I think they could have pushed out 25 million DCs had they kept going on their own.

 

[jvd]

As for the ps2 being more powerfull sure .

But then again 32 voodoo 2s in sli mode would be more powerfull than a geforce 2 . But i'd rather have games built for the geforce 2 than the 32 voodoo 2s .

What the hell is this suppose to mean?

What the hell do u think its supposed to mean vince. Your bright enough to read and comprehend .

No, it was not, closer to 9M worldwide in March 2K1

I'm pretty sure it was like 10.07m But it was along time ago.

 

[Sonic]

It was higher than 10 million in March 2001.

 

[Fafalada]

What the hell is this suppose to mean?

No need to read between the lines - some people would rather have games made for DC then PS2, simple as that.
While we're at it I'd rather have software written for OS/2 then Windows too...
I could get nastier and say something involving Jessica Alba and uhm... Ok I better shut up before certain other poster accuses me of things again.

 

[jvd]

What the hell is this suppose to mean?

No need to read between the lines - some people would rather have games made for DC then PS2, simple as that.
While we're at it I'd rather have software written for OS/2 then Windows too...
I could get nastier and say something involving Jessica Alba and uhm... Ok I better shut up before certain other poster accuses me of things again.

please fal at least give me a hot chick that can actually act. I mean did u see honey ????

 

[Lazy8s]

The sales phases the DC went through is a good point, though the DC's great launch performance was actually so closely matched by both the GC and Xbox that respective sales tallies after durations of four days, four weeks, and four months yeild different leaders. Also, Christmas 2000 wasn't disastrous for DC sales. In fact, retailers greatly increased their orders in the face of the PS2 shortages. It just wasn't enough for a company whose Japanese headquarters had already decided to move on short of only miraculous figures.

But hardware sales did flatten, and it was certainly a struggling point for the system. Even still, promise persisted throughout 2000. In the US, there were hardware sales spikes with Crazy Taxi, SEGA Sports, SegaNet, and a small one with Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Third-party software sales were average to mediocre (not bad enough to make them leave on that account... many left because they caught wind of SEGA's preparation for going third-party), yet sustained demand was exhibited for many first-party titles like Sonic Adventure (which pushed to over a million), Crazy Taxi (pushed to well over 700,000), and Virtua Tennis (pushed to over 300,000 via small, continual shipments). Most compellingly, the DC market showed it was still gaining momentum in late 2000 when its SEGA Sports 2K1 releases sold to near a million each (NFL 2K1 and NBA 2K1), outselling the previous year's versions.

It wasn't like EA dropped support for DC; the system achieved everything it did without them ever supporting it in the first place. And the upside to that was SEGA's sports titles all racked up in the hundreds of thousands in unit sales uncontested, with some - like football and basketball - around million-seller status and capturing as large a market as EA's titles were on PS2 (and SEGA of course not paying a third-party licensing fee.)

 

[cthellis42]

I could get nastier and say something involving Jessica Alba and uhm... Ok I better shut up before certain other poster accuses me of things again.

please fal at least give me a hot chick that can actually act. I mean did u see honey ????

Well, Honey was just stupid, but Dark Angel was pretty cool. ^_^ (At least it was in the first season, before things got too sillified.) She certainly could've been worse... And hey, we can be a bit forgiving of the unreasonably hot.

 

[wazoo]

Your numbers are wrong Wazoo. The DC hit 2 million in Japan long before March 2K1. The DC userbase was about 10 million after Holiday 2K and about 11.5 million by the end. I think the DC had life left in it, but there were several problems:

I made some little google research before posting, so I'll check. Maybe you are right about Japan, because it launched 1 year before, so maybe I miss this little offset. Numbers for US and Euro are true.

One for sure: when the Dc was discounted, there was still 2M DC left to sell.

- Sega's huge debt. The DC wasn't profitable enough to cover the debt refinancing.

- Poor 3rd party and retail support. Not having EA is too big a deal for a company like Sega. Nintendo and MS could live without EA (MS barely so), but Sega just let its franchises dwindle too much to drive their hardware.

I agree

With that being said, I think they could have pushed out 25 million DCs had they kept going on their own.

The problem as I said is that the sales trend were not up even before ps2 launch. It was dead in Japan, virtually on life support in Europe and with no sales increasing in the US. Being the weakest, the least supported and very soon even not the chapest, it will be impossible to increase significanlty.

 

[wazoo]

a bit confused

sales seemed even lower

According Asianweek and ABC, worldwide sales of DC were at 6M worldwide by January 2k1

 

[rabidrabbit]

What the hell is this suppose to mean?

No need to read between the lines - some people would rather have games made for DC then PS2, simple as that.
While we're at it I'd rather have software written for OS/2 then Windows too...
I could get nastier and say something involving Jessica Alba and uhm... Ok I better shut up before certain other poster accuses me of things again.

please fal at least give me a hot chick that can actually act. I mean did u see honey ????

I'm pretty sure the chicks you get can act, or at least they should

 

[wazoo]

From Sega 2k1 annual report :

A total of 3.39 million hardware units and 23.87 million software units were sold worldwide during fiscal 2001, for respective totals of 8.20 million units and 51.63 million units since Dreamcast was first brought to market.

So I was mostly right.

 

[kenneth9265_3]

]

Everybody is seems to be given into the notion that the XBox 2 is not going to be a very high tech console, that will not really pust he boarder of graphics when in comparision to the PS3. Let look at what we know.

1)It will have a CPU produce from IBM but maybe licenced from IBM, AMD or MS.
2)It will have a custom GPU built by ATI
3)XNA will play a factor in the development of games to to make games easier , faster and cheaper to develop.

Who is to say that the following will not happen?:

1)The CPU will be a multi-core 64 bit chip
2)The GPU will be will be faster then the R500 (but lesser then a R600) and have DX10 features
3)Have 512MB or more Ram
4)An OS based off of the Longhorn kernal.

Yes, M$ is not going let itself fall in to another M$/Nvidia deal, and will cut costs for bigger profits, but they don't nessasary have to give up performace to Sony. (and this is coming from a PS2 fan-boy )

 

[darkblu]

you may want to check the reviews of LeMans24h for the DC and the PS2, there's a unanimous position on the matter the DC version is the better of thw two. but silly me, you may want actually to bing up an example to support your stance (i.e. a title available on both platforms, where the PS2 version shines through over the DC, hands down).

and pretty much all games ported from the 3DO to the ps1 in 95 were worse than the original version. So what ?? The 3do is on the same ground as the ps1 ?? the same comments apply for the ps1 vs the N64 to a lesser extent.

nobody claimed the dc and the ps2 were computationally-power-wise equal. and yet you can't bluntly say 'platform A has these advantages over platform B, but as the latter overcomes A with several others, the two are not comparable' -- this is nonsensical*.

* of course it's alright for fanboys arguments - they don't rely on objectivity.

 

[wazoo]

nobody claimed the dc and the ps2 were computationally-power-wise equal. and yet you can't bluntly say 'platform A has these advantages over platform B, but as the latter overcomes A with several others, the two are not comparable' -- this is nonsensical*.

* of course it's alright for fanboys arguments - they don't rely on objectivity.

Ye, I'm a fanboy, that is why I own more games on Dc than GC and Ps2 combined.

Now as for your comment, my point is that you cannot compare consoles on the basis of a ported game. Le Mans on ps2 was suffering from the fact that it was a rushed straight port (even Lemans producer said it later). So, yes, Lemans is better on Dc than on ps2 (mostly on image quality), but it does not tell anything on the consoles themselves.

 

[darkblu]

nobody claimed the dc and the ps2 were computationally-power-wise equal. and yet you can't bluntly say 'platform A has these advantages over platform B, but as the latter overcomes A with several others, the two are not comparable' -- this is nonsensical*.

* of course it's alright for fanboys arguments - they don't rely on objectivity.

Ye, I'm a <bleep>, that is why I own more games on Dc than GC and Ps2 combined.

Now as for your comment, my point is that you cannot compare consoles on the basis of a ported game. Le Mans on ps2 was suffering from the fact that it was a rushed straight port (even Lemans producer said it later). So, yes, Lemans is better on Dc than on ps2 (mostly on image quality), but it does not tell anything on the consoles themselves.

and i was left with the impression le mans on the ps2 was actually considered a decent port, but suffered from the DC-minor-advantages-over-the-PS2 syndrome, e.g. proper mipmap selection and better filtering of the tracks textures (which BTW contributes much to the visuals of a racer), otherwise le mans on the dc had its own numerous visual glitches (i could come up with quite a list if you wish), which could have or could have not been an issue on the ps2.

 

[Devourer]

Since graphically a good game on DC but one of the ugliest racing games on the PS2 (nowhere near the likes og GT3 or Burnout2), I'd say that the comparison serves only to show some of the problems of PS2, but none of its strengths...

 

[wazoo]

Le Mans is one of the ugliest racing games on the PS2...

Mostly due to bad image quality.

quote from Andrew Carter :
LM24 PS2 unfortunately had only a few months development time from receiving initial PS2 dev kits to finish. Obviously it's a port and many parts of it are basically emulating in software, functions of the Dreamcast hardware. We dislike taking this path and usually don't do this...It is a nightmare to try and make a PS2 display Dreamcast graphics - both platforms require very different approaches for great graphics! Alas in that case we had no choice.

 

[Jov]

Not to mention the amount of money ms is already saving over sony in terms of designing and building fabs that ms never has to worry about making up .

Is this a contradiction to how much Sony is currently saving by reducing their chips and utilizing these results in other Sony products, thus further savings?

They will save money buy making their own chips. By reducing chip costs .

They still have to spend billions making the fabs to make their own chips and to keeping the foundrys up and running along with the money needed to upgrade them .

Like any business, if you're growing or want to grow then you have to invest, especially if you plan to continue to dominate. So what is your point about Sony spending Billions? Sony spent a Billion+ in the development and facilities to produce the EE+GS. MS haven't spent Billions on Xbox?

I think there's already a past thread on this and I am not interested in going down the same path.

Also as of now sony is not using the cell chips in other sony products. The only announced future product with cell inside of it is the ps3.

Till then sony is not saving money on other sony products using the chip. And the cell chip is only being used in the ps3. So saying they can further save money on something they might do doesn't make sense . As you can claim ms is going to use the ati chip in other things thus saving more money.

I can say it even if it wont happen.

My comment was made with the PS2 chips (EE+GS) rather than the Cell in mind, but Sony seems to be going down the same path with the PS3 as well so it applies. If the PS3 and Cell flops then you can make any comment about its costing Sony etc, until then its premature.

Sony has spent billions on cell.

The factorys to make cell cost money. The development of cell costs money. Making each cell chip costs money.

Ms is only giving ati a piece of the software sales of the ati chips and is only spending a small amount on making the actual chips .

Let me get this right, MS is spending less in making the ATi GPU by cutting a deal with ATi in terms of software sales and paying ATi a certain %. If your comment is to state MS doesn't require as much capital spending for the initial investment of Xbox Next due to the partnership with ATi, then fair enuff, but MS will also reduce their potential income by a similar % if Xbox Next sells like hot cakes (e.g PS2 like).

Its all relative, thus your comment about Sony not saving due to initial spending on investment or MS is saving on cost are all relative to the income generated from their next console.

I don't see how anyone can say sony is saving money compared to ms .

Did I claim that?

 

[bbot]

Looks like TSMC to make the chips for the next Xbox. I guess MS is commited to reducing costs.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...&e=7&u=/nm/20040406/tc_nm/tech_taiwan_tsmc_dc

 

[rabidrabbit]

Looks like TSMC to make the chips for the next Xbox. I guess MS is commited to reducing costs.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...&e=7&u=/nm/20040406/tc_nm/tech_taiwan_tsmc_dc

Isn't TSMC supplying chips for the current xbox too?
How does it make them 'committed in reducing costs' for xbox next?