Sony saved by success of Wii

[BStroms]

Seeing multiple people refer to it as a $600 machine still confuses me. More so the fact that consumers actually seemed to believe that, as if my memory doesn't fail me, the 60 GB model was supposed to have sold significantly better than the 20 GB.

I bought my 60 GB after they dropped the price to $500 when they were phasing the 20 GB model out, but if I had bought it at release, I'd have gone with the 20 GB version. It was just a better value. I believe it was estimated to only have about a $35 difference in the cost to make between the two versions.

You could even upgrade the hard drive to be much more than 60 GB and still end up ahead. Unless you really needed they all really needed the wifi, why were people so insistent on buying the more expensive version? I've never had use for the wifi anyway, preferring to plug it in for a more stable connection.

[GizmoDVD]

Originally Posted by Peace Pulpit

351 's

And that has to do with PS3 how? Oh, cause I own a lot of movies on a dead format? A format where I paid $5 or less for 200+ of them. Good try. Enjoy my ignore list

[BladeofTheImmortal]

I always use Wifi. I can't stand wires.

[rm082e]

Originally Posted by Peace Pulpit

Sony rushing in a $600 system in 2006 was not an attempt at dominating the game industry. It was meant to stymie growth of competitors, introduce cell based CPUs, and wield a dominant Blu-ray. Of all places this very website should understand the importance of the last point, since it basically played out in almost hilarious detail in this very subforum.

So plummeting to last place in market share and having such low sales they had to cut the price before the console was out for even 1 year was all part of their master plan?

Originally Posted by Peace Pulpit

A competitively priced, non Blu-ray, spec for spec upgrade over the 360 was not an option for Sony. Unlike Microsoft, Sony's console is not a me-too.

Microsoft launched their console first. How exactly was MS doing a "me too"?

Originally Posted by Peace Pulpit

Although Nintendo has always been successful, even with the "last place" gamecube. The Wii was the biggest short term payoff in gaming history that I can think of. It sure has damaged them in many regards but the total gigantic payoff for hardware is unmatched.

How has the Wii damaged Nintendo?

Originally Posted by Peace Pulpit

Microsoft's attempt at managing mediocrity for profitability is their full hand.

What are you talking about? They have the more popular console with more of their install base playing games online and buying more software. They also have lots of highly rated exclusive games. How are they "managing mediocrity"?

Originally Posted by Peace Pulpit

The problem is that they are being assaulted on a quadruple front. If Natal doesn't explode and challenge the Wii then it's a blown load from Microsoft. Microsoft has almost completely ceded to PS3 in terms of the "core" gamer now. Their one initiative to control all of game development is flustering around (XNA) and was matched brilliantly by Sony (subsidized development cost).

Last I checked there are millions of core gamers playing core games on the 360. Millions more in fact than the PS3.

Originally Posted by Peace Pulpit

The surprising thing about 2010 is that it looks completely ugly for Microsoft. The back-logged development of PS3 titles and money-hats are culminating for 2010 to be truly, actually, the year of the PS3.

Microsoft: Alan Wake, Splinter Cell, Halo: Reach, Project Natal
Sony: God of War 3, Gran Turismo 5, Heavy Rain, Sony Motion Controller

Both have a good selling known series (God of War/Splinter Cell), an entry in each of their largest franchises (GT/Halo), a new IP: (Heavy Rain/Alan Wake), and a motion controller.

How exactly does Sony have some big advantage here?

Originally Posted by Peace Pulpit

Microsoft's silver lining is in their pavlov dog-esque fanbase who will pony up for less creativity and more streamlined graphics.

Yeah, Sony is really innovative with a Ratchet and Clank sequel and an Uncharted sequel this year. Oh and next year? We get more sequels via God of war and GT. Real innovative.

Originally Posted by Peace Pulpit

They can wield a sizable force of foam at the mouth gamers but they can't expand like Nintendo or have the potential of Sony.

Maybe you haven't looked at the numbers, but MS has a larger install base for their current console than their last and a much larger user base for their online service. Sony hasn't even sold one third the number of their previous console. Microsoft has expanded. Sony has shrunk.

Originally Posted by Peace Pulpit

They are being stared down by Apple, have looming pressure from mutual sources (linux, wikipedia) and are generally being outplayed by most non mega corporations.

And they are still the largest software company in the world and have over %80 of the OS market. And how exactly is Wikipedia cutting into Microsoft's business?

Originally Posted by Peace Pulpit

Natal is indeed the last stand for Microsoft. Either they make people a believer or they become increasingly irrelevant.

Dude, I can almost hear you rubbing your nipples as you were writing this post.

You are delusional. They are launching Natal on an established platform because it's a safe place to do so. They can put it out there now without having to worry that the platform won't catch on, and they can get feed back from the consumer as well as the developer on what they could/should do better. They will spend the next two years gathering data and they will streamline the technology such that when they launch the Xbox 3 with built in Natal, it is a fully integrated experience rather than a tacked on feature like the motion is on the Wii.

I'm not a fanboy of either console. In the last 3 months I've come to love both systems equally. But to look at Sony and think they are poised to somehow leap forward in a big way with the PS3 is to act a fool. Equally, to look at Microsoft and think they are somehow going to suffer a tremendous blow from out of nowhere is equally dumb.

The PS3 price cut and some solid software will likely mean the PS3 outsells the 360 for the rest of the year. But the PS3 isn't anywhere close to over taking the 360 in total install base any time soon. Sony has made some good moves and I'm happy for them, but Microsoft has not yet responded. They likely will next year by dropping their main SKU to $199. At that time, we may well see the tables turn back again and we'll be back to the same situation we've been in most of this gen with Nintendo leading the pack, Microsoft in second with the 360 and Sony bringing up the rear with the PS3.

[BladeofTheImmortal]

^to touch on one of your points on why to release natal on 360, I have to disagree. What made the Wii such a success(whether I like motion controls or not) is that it tried something new and the controller was pretty much the only way to interact with most games. I really feel the Sony and MS motion controllers (not counting the Sixaxis) Will be major flops for both companies. I've already got 3 controllers for both 360 and PS3 and unless MS or Sony makes something I just HAVE to have on the motion controls, I highly doubt I'll spend whatever it costs for the game and the controller, and moving forward unless both are packed into the 360 and PS3 respectively then they'll probably not garner as much of a base as each company thinks.


My point that I'm trying to say in as little words as possible is that releasing it midway through this gen will basically make it fail.

[neone]

What is surprising is that wii continued to outsell both the 360 and ps3 past the point when the 360 arcade was cheaper than the wii.

There's hardcore gamers people who spend more time on gaming than socializing (outside of within the game) --- which in reality is not as big a number. Most people are more into the occasional to casual gaming category down to non-gamers who ended up buying the wii.

What both ps3 and 360 lost is the bulk of this range of gamers. The hardcore would never touch the wii, but hardcore alone won't get you the market dominant position --- the non-hardcore numbers are much bigger - that's why wii outsells them.

While technology-wise, wii has nothing new, you have to admire how the marketing, packaging, imaginative game design all fell into place for Nintendo. Someone in that company had a vision and executed flawlessly on it, that's why they're on top.

As much as I admire photorealism more than cute (but technologically cheap and old) hand motion controls, you have to admit nintendo knew what they were doing, while microsoft and sony both thought this generation was going to be won by anisotropic antialiased gigapixels and gigatexes per second, then Nintendo showed up with a rehashed gamecube-mini with nice controls and marketing and showed them up. There's poetic justice in there even though the engineer in me died a little everytime I realized that technology took a backseat to marketing and packaging trickery in this gen of gaming.

I don't believe any sane person would believe wii helped sony. If anything, it embarassed the hell of the entire team of smug advanced-bleeding-edge-technology-at-all cost team assembled by Kutaragi.

Wii did damage to xbox360 too, but in reality, the 360 rrod is what really saved ps3. If microsoft had done better system qa, better thermal analysis, they might have realized that chips melting their balls are not a good thing, they could have delayed their launch 6 months, missed xmas , but they probably didn't think ps3 was going to be that late, so they held their nose, rushed it out the door one year early only to have Karma coming back to bite them. It's not just the billions set aside to fix it, the damage to the perception of the system for the non-hardcore games was severe. If 360 hardware was reasonably stable, they would have likely kept an extra 10 points advantage over the ps3 in sales ratios, even if they were only 6 months ahead of ps3 instead of a whole year. But xmas is a hard season to miss so I can understand the reasoning.

As to whether Wii has legs, that remains to be seen. But it's really moot. They've already won. Now we have to see how the next gen battle plays out. This time around everyone's investing more resources on face recognition and cute controls. Still, both the 360 and ps3 should double or triple their pixels and texels and bigger internal memory, their games are apparently nowhere near HD. Heck they resort to tricks like 1024x600 rendering and upscaling to 1280x720, that means they still aren't anywhere near true HD.

I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I do like photorealism, and deep down, I wished wii had flopped and died, but that's for another universe parallel to ours. They won this time, and they did it spectacularly.

[rm082e]

Originally Posted by BladeofTheImmortal

^to touch on one of your points on why to release natal on 360, I have to disagree. What made the Wii such a success(whether I like motion controls or not) is that it tried something new and the controller was pretty much the only way to interact with most games. I really feel the Sony and MS motion controllers (not counting the Sixaxis) Will be major flops for both companies. I've already got 3 controllers for both 360 and PS3 and unless MS or Sony makes something I just HAVE to have on the motion controls, I highly doubt I'll spend whatever it costs for the game and the controller, and moving forward unless both are packed into the 360 and PS3 respectively then they'll probably not garner as much of a base as each company thinks.


My point that I'm trying to say in as little words as possible is that releasing it midway through this gen will basically make it fail.

We aren't the core audience for Natal. They aren't trying to get the core gamers to put down their sticks and start waving their arms at the screen. This is their attempt to go after a demographic that traditionally has not been a major percentage of their user base.

Also, Microsoft has already said they will be packing in Natal with all future 360 hardware. It doesn't appear Microsoft is going to simply stick this peripheral out there with a couple of games that support it and just hope people buy it. Comments like "we are treating this like a new console launch" suggest they are going to really incentiveize people to buy into it.

And I'm in the same boat as you. I have little to no interest in Natal. Sony's wand looks like it could be really cool if they actually put some muscle behind it, but from everything they've shown so far it looks like it will be the Eye all over again. They'll put out a couple of games that use it, stick it out there, and never talk about it again. A few people will buy it but it won't catch on and be an integrated part of the console experience.

[HuskerGuy]

Originally Posted by rm082e

We aren't the core audience for Natal. They aren't trying to get the core gamers to put down their sticks and start waving their arms at the screen. This is their attempt to go after a demographic that traditionally has not been a major percentage of their user base.

Also, Microsoft has already said they will be packing in Natal with all future 360 hardware. It doesn't appear Microsoft is going to simply stick this peripheral out there with a couple of games that support it and just hope people buy it. Comments like "we are treating this like a new console launch" suggest they are going to really incentiveize people to buy into it.

And I'm in the same boat as you. I have little to no interest in Natal. Sony's wand looks like it could be really cool if they actually put some muscle behind it, but from everything they've shown so far it looks like it will be the Eye all over again. They'll put out a couple of games that use it, stick it out there, and never talk about it again. A few people will buy it but it won't catch on and be an integrated part of the console experience.

I think we've discussed this before and I'm of the opinion Sony and MS are simply testing the water with this tech for this generation and next generation is when we will see full integration of these motion sensing strategies.

[NineseveN]

Originally Posted by rm082e

So plummeting to last place in market share and having such low sales they had to cut the price before the console was out for even 1 year was all part of their master plan?

Obviously not, but I think it was considered a reasonable trade-off if it came down to that. Don’t be so simple, try and look at it in terms of priority without you smackdown blinders on. Do you think Bluray would have won the format war without the PS3? Do you think Bluray would have more or less growth and revenue without the PS3? What do you think has a greater lifespan, a disc-based media format or a 1-generation console? Even if you personally think downloads or some other disc-based media/bluray killer will trump the profits and lifespan of Bluray, what do you think Sony’s take on that was at the time of designing and launching the PS3? I am rather sure that they put a lot of stock into the idea that Bluray would be DVD’s successor and offer a wider and deeper revenue stream than any game console this generation could. Had Bluray not been an equal, if not slightly larger priority than “winning” the console war was for Sony this generation, I am sure the PS3 could have been done with some other, much cheaper media option and using a more common processor with slightly watered-down media capabilities for the same price point as the Xbox 360. Then they might have been winning the console war right now, but at the expense of watching Toshiba rake in piles of money on their hi-def media format while all that money sunk into Bluray was flushed down the Sony failed-format-commode. Maybe Bluray will still fail, but it’s highly unlikely that it would be even have an opportunity to succeed right now without the PS3 as it is.

No one cares about console wars except idiots on the internet. Sony is playing for the long hall, and this generation they’re trying to use one product to help them across multiple domains (BDA, Sony Pictures, PC hardware etc…).


The Xbox 360 did a wonderful job in the game console market…but that’s the only place it competes or has an impact. And really, that’s a smart play by MS, they dominate in their main line of business (PC software). Though if they had designed the Zune to be a modular component of the Xbox 360 for media center capabilities, I think Apple might have been shitting bricks over the portable media player business right about now instead of enjoying a very comfortable lead.


Personally, I might even have rather had Sony be able to make Bluray successful without the PS3. I’d honestly rather have something as simple as the Xbox with a Sony badge on it (for quality’s sake;-)) that costs less money than the launch PS3 with a slightly advanced feature set and hardware than the 360 has. But given things as they are, I got a Bluray player ($150-200 AND a competitor to the top-model Xbox 360 $300)…so the $400 I paid for my PS3 really isn’t all that much of an expense. It actually saved me money. It just took a year for the return on the investment to really matter to me (as more titles came out on Bluray).



As for the original article, some of the points do make sense, but fanboyism allows some people to take those points into illogical and ridiculous conclusion territory.

[maley]

Originally Posted by HDDRuss

Momentum cake...
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/11/05/an...ss-of-the-wii/



PS3 = System of choice...mmm sounds so good doesnt it.

While loyal, I'll say I've had a ton of pissed off consumers that the PS3 will not play PS2 games in the past couple of weeks.

[rm082e]

Originally Posted by HuskerGuy

I think we've discussed this before and I'm of the opinion Sony and MS are simply testing the water with this tech for this generation and next generation is when we will see full integration of these motion sensing strategies.

That's a more elegant way of saying what I think. Well put sir.

[Elee s]

Originally Posted by BStroms

I'm in the Wii doesn't really count camp myself

Me too.

MS just doesnt have the global brand power that Sony has. By all means MS has been doing everything right.. apart from from the whole rrod. Multiplatform games, exclusive games, heck they even have more JRPGs(though that genre isnt as popular anymore) than the PS3. Yet at $200 their worldwide lead they got from the year headstart is shrinking. And the PS3 still costs more.
MS just cant get a break.

[rm082e]

Originally Posted by NineseveN

Obviously not, but I think it was considered a reasonable trade-off if it came down to that. Don’t be so simple, try and look at it in terms of priority without you smackdown blinders on. Do you think Bluray would have won the format war without the PS3? Do you think Bluray would have more or less growth and revenue without the PS3? What do you think has a greater lifespan, a disc-based media format or a 1-generation console? Even if you personally think downloads or some other disc-based media/bluray killer will trump the profits and lifespan of Bluray, what do you think Sony’s take on that was at the time of designing and launching the PS3? I am rather sure that they put a lot of stock into the idea that Bluray would be DVD’s successor and offer a wider and deeper revenue stream than any game console this generation could. Had Bluray not been an equal, if not slightly larger priority than “winning” the console war was for Sony this generation, I am sure the PS3 could have been done with some other, much cheaper media option and using a more common processor with slightly watered-down media capabilities for the same price point as the Xbox 360. Then they might have been winning the console war right now, but at the expense of watching Toshiba rake in piles of money on their hi-def media format while all that money sunk into Bluray was flushed down the Sony failed-format-commode. Maybe Bluray will still fail, but it’s highly unlikely that it would be even have an opportunity to succeed right now without the PS3 as it is.

You make many good points. Certainly winning the format war was a priority, but the result of the format war and the console war has cut them much deeper than they expected. There's a reason they cut the price of the PS3 during the first year, yanked out BC and put in a smaller HDD, etc. Also note that many of the old guard who helped launch the PS3 no longer work for Sony. They expected the PS2 user base to embrace them much faster and stronger that they did. I also think they expected Blu-ray to catch on nearly as fast as DVD once they got past the format war. That simply hasn't happened. Blu-ray is here to stay for sure, but I think they expected more out of it.

And while I'm not anti-Sony, I thought the PS3 was a crap value when it launched. And as a long time PlayStation customer, I was somewhat insulted by their rather brazen remarks. But in the last couple of years they've made huge strides such that the PS3 is now clearly the best choice in the console market.

Originally Posted by NineseveN

No one cares about console wars except idiots on the internet. Sony is playing for the long hall, and this generation they’re trying to use one product to help them across multiple domains (BDA, Sony Pictures, PC hardware etc…).

Microsoft is doing the same. This isn't a new or unique strategy. What Sony is doing with Blu-ray Microsoft is doing with XBL.

Originally Posted by NineseveN

The Xbox 360 did a wonderful job in the game console market…but that’s the only place it competes or has an impact. And really, that’s a smart play by MS, they dominate in their main line of business (PC software). Though if they had designed the Zune to be a modular component of the Xbox 360 for media center capabilities, I think Apple might have been shitting bricks over the portable media player business right about now instead of enjoying a very comfortable lead.

I mostly agree with that.

Originally Posted by NineseveN

Personally, I might even have rather had Sony be able to make Bluray successful without the PS3. I’d honestly rather have something as simple as the Xbox with a Sony badge on it (for quality’s sake;-)) that costs less money than the launch PS3 with a slightly advanced feature set and hardware than the 360 has. But given things as they are, I got a Bluray player ($150-200 AND a competitor to the top-model Xbox 360 $300)…so the $400 I paid for my PS3 really isn’t all that much of an expense. It actually saved me money. It just took a year for the return on the investment to really matter to me (as more titles came out on Bluray).

I like that it's all in one. I just wish they would have launched with a better game selection, rumble in the dual shock, and without belittling their users and trying to guilt trip and insult them into buying their product.

[Nighthawk]

Originally Posted by rm082e

We aren't the core audience for Natal.

Then why are they having Fable 3 support Natal in some fashion?

[CorruptedDragon]

Originally Posted by Nighthawk

Then why are they having Fable 3 support Natal in some fashion?

Core doesn't mean "entire" audience. Natal isnt directed at hardcore gamers, but they will throw some features into games for hardcore gamers who might want to try it, or happen to have bought it.