I think that what is going to decide respective success this round is games and price. Looking at some (supposed) screen shots of GoW and PGR3 I would say that if within one year MS could lower the price of the Xbox360 to $200 and provide visuals like that it will be tough to beat. IMHO the two consoles will be within a hairs breadth of one another WRT the quality of images they can produce and visuals are what sell games.
Your 3rd 3D Generation Predictions (Mine? Ugly price war led
- Thread starter Acert93
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I predict that technology will start to matter far less than art budgets and talent. I think whoever has the best middleware/API for developers will have a huge advantage.
Also, it is hard to ignore the similarities between the DC and the Xbox360. Granted, Sega had nowhere near the money behind it as the Xbox brand. Which begs the question, what would have happened to the DC had it similar financial backing? Would it have tapered off anyway?
Also, it is hard to ignore the similarities between the DC and the Xbox360. Granted, Sega had nowhere near the money behind it as the Xbox brand. Which begs the question, what would have happened to the DC had it similar financial backing? Would it have tapered off anyway?
gurgi said:
Totally agree. Only the biggest teams with long development time and massive budgets will begin to knock on the limits of the new consoles (this is even true this gen to a degree). Whoever allows developers to get the most out of the console the quickest/easiest/cheapest has an advantage.
If Sega had more money, if they had not destroyed customer trust with the horrible 32X and short cut SS, and had support from more developers (like EA) it might have done better. MS seems to not have any of those problems. The early launch is the biggest similarity imo. From a hardware perspective, I get the feeling the Xbox 360 is more like the GCN than DC. There will only be about 4 month difference in launch schedules. The PS3 is set to have 2-2.5x as much FLOPs just like the PS2 did this gen, but the Xbox has the eDRAM and a pretty balance system.
A lot of factors... but I agree with your first comment. Good tools and developer support leads to more/better games. Good games alone wont win the battle, but it a necessary ingrediant.
I really think that the price of the games should be in the price wars, if they cost 1/2 we would buy 2X more(each console would make the same proffit), and more people who cant afford know gaming habbit would be able to do that, and the company would get a lot of people from the others consoles.At least I think so.
But it would be a very big risk...
But it would be a very big risk...
Halving price of software doesn't halve costs too, so the decrease on profit margins would be substantial. I guess halving prices might reduce profits to as little as 25%. I can't see the type of games I want ever being cheap.
People here seem to forget that like every other public company, microsoft is controlled at the whim of it's shareholders. Shareholders these days tend not to be long term thinkers. They want short term gains so they can cash out with "free" money. The only reason they tolerate Microsoft spending this kind of money is that MS is successful enough in their other fields that it has offset the losses from their home entertainment division. Despite this, if Microsoft goes through the next round and manages to lose another 2-3 billion dollars, the shareholders are going to start getting ansy. Sure the money is coming out of MS' giant war chest, but if their stock starts dropping or even stays stagnant, you can bet the shareholders are going to start getting pissed that MS is wasting (what they preceive as) their investment.
Nite_Hawk
Nite_Hawk
This is nothing like the dc and ps2 . The ps2 came out two years after the dreamcast came out and while the dc sold at a small loss at 200$ two years earlier the ps2 sold at almost a 150$ loss at 300$ .
It looks like the time diffrence between these consoles is going to be 6 months which is the diffrence between the gamecube and the xbox .
As for the 512 meg comment . Remember ms is putting in 700mhz gdr ram. Which will already be in mass production before the xbox 360 comes out and most likely a few months before it . The xdr is going to be made only for the ps3 and rambus already said they are charging a price preimum for it over gddr 3 ram .
So sony may not be able to go with 512megs. But then again the xdr ram should offer them 2x the bandwidth . Which may make up for the smaller memory footprint
Shifty Geezer said:
If you sell at 1/2 but sell 2X more, you dont lose any profit,and if you get more consumers then you make more profit.
What I am trying to say is that:
Supose that I want to a XB360 and buy one, and I buy 1 game, but I garante you that I only buy one game because I do not have money to buy more ( and I am sure that 99,9% of gamers will say the same ), if they are 1/2 of the priceI would buy 2, maybe 3 if I had a bit more money. So each company would sell 2X (+/-) , add those who buy 3 , and those who would be able to now buy games and you ending with more profit (even at 1/2of the price).And I thinkthat those who already buy 2 games would buy 2 more ( or at the half of the time that they now buy).
This because we dont want only PD0, we want PD0+GR3+GoW.
We would get more games, and companys more profit.
But it is a huge risk for the one who try this.
well pc999 . Its a double edge sword .
If you make GOW and I make PDZ and we both price it at 30$ each so that a customer can buy two games at only a 10$ mark up from the old 50$ price for one . There is no guarentee that the person's second game is going to be another game i'm producing . He may buy your game . So while ms doesn't care as it will get royaltys for 2 games. We make less money as while the customer buys 2 games , they might not be two games from us
If you make GOW and I make PDZ and we both price it at 30$ each so that a customer can buy two games at only a 10$ mark up from the old 50$ price for one . There is no guarentee that the person's second game is going to be another game i'm producing . He may buy your game . So while ms doesn't care as it will get royaltys for 2 games. We make less money as while the customer buys 2 games , they might not be two games from us
Let's say costs for a game sold at $50, $30 is profit. Halving the price of the game to $25 would only mean $5 profit - you'd have to sell 6x as many to make the same profit as with the higher price.pc999 said:
There's a balance between profit and units sold that maximises profit. I've no idea where that balance is.
Oh please. Like I never make a spelling error.Acert93 said:My parents could not afford "Hooked On Phonics" so I was given a free version of "huk'd ahn eebahnicks" free from goodwill as a childThe result is the monster you see today.
Seriously, my spelling sucks and I apologize. I should have proofed it and/or used spell checker, but it is a forum post sooo... :?
It is a great post. Quite exhaustive.
gurgi said:
Yes, I think DC sales and support dropped off significantly after the new consoles released, and since Sega isn't Nintendo, they had no hope of supporting the system alone. Plus, people would have seen the DC as clearly inferior to the new systems, and it wasn't exactly dominating the market(or anything close to that), so why would anyone buy it?
BOOMEXPLODE
Regular
I was actually kind of surprised at the transistor count/size of Cell, I expeted it to be much bigger. Considering Nvidias G70 is going to be about 300 million transistors at 110nm, and ATIs next-gen is going to be 300-350 million transistors at 90nm, and both will be released before PS3, I assumed Cell would be atleast as big. But if PS2 is any indication, the GPU in PS3 will be much bigger than the CPU, so we'll see.