PS3 in a Death Spiral

Retro said:
I say give the PS3 a year, then lets start comparing the 2...
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I think the point you miss is that the 360 has had a year of very favourable buy-in from the game developer community. A usable developement environment & well balanced hardware architecture (not too distant from the PC) means developers dont have to stress about the platform and can concentrate more on the creative & innovatative aspects of game design.

No matter how much money Sony throws at it in the next year, they wont be able to buy this. You'll probably land up with a whole bunch of mediocre exclusives (with pretty lipstick) and un-optimised ports from the 360/PC. Personally I think Sony have dug themselves a whole they wont be able to get out of ... to much focus on geewiz hardware (e.g. Cell & Blue-Ray) and not enough understand of what would make their content providers excel.

And with no great content (unique, innovative games), their game will eventually be over.
 
Roman4604 said:
I think the point you miss is that the 360 has had a year of very favourable buy-in from the game developer community. A usable developement environment & well balanced hardware architecture (not too distant from the PC) means developers dont have to stress about the platform and can concentrate more on the creative & innovatative aspects of game design.
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So why do you think Sony won't get the same in the following year?
 
Because the developers have already said so!

John Carmack comes to mind for a quote, but the gist is the same - the 360 tools are so far ahead and the teams have so much more experience with them. core gameplay developers do not want to deal with multiple environments, so they pick one and port to the others. That's why it was so important for MS to launch before Sony.

The PS3 finds itself in the unenviable position of low numbers and a difficult platform - the risks to publisher are extremely high, so exclusives are either Sony funded low risk titles - like F1 racing and Gundam, or "can't miss" type titles like MGS and FF. All the risky new exciting titles are heading for multiplatform or 360.
 
doobiwan said:
Because the developers have already said so!
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Where?

the 360 tools are so far ahead and the teams have so much more experience with them
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Really? Might that be because it was launched a year earlier than the PS3?

core gameplay developers do not want to deal with multiple environments
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Yet it wasn't a problem for the developers to leave the xbox and deal with the 360, or leave the PS1 and make games for the PS2? All developers are just going to stick with the 360 come what may? *sigh*
 
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Retro said:
So why do you think Sony won't get the same in the following year?
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Two things mainly,

1. Their complex, un-orthodox hardware architecture will take significant time/resources to learn properly and utilise fully. The question arises, is it worth it.

2. Microsoft is a sw development company at heart, and I believe there is no way someone like Sony will reach their depth of experience & understanding of sw development environments and the culture of the 3rd party development community itself.

The one dictates while the other tries to understand & assist.
 
Roman4604 said:
Two things mainly,

1. Their complex, un-orthodox hardware architecture will take significant time/resources to learn properly and utilise fully. The question arises, is it worth it.
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Well, the PS3 has more launch titles than the 360 had and a lot more that's being developed. So someone must think it's worth it.

2. Microsoft is a sw development company at heart, and I believe there is no way someone like Sony will reach their depth of experience & understanding of sw development environments and the culture of the 3rd party development community itself.
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That's just being ignorant...
 
Cr@p now you want me to go find **** links, Well let see there was Suda 51 last week, but here's the JC interview:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12351

2. Microsoft is a sw development company at heart, and I believe there is no way someone like Sony will reach their depth of experience & understanding of sw development environments and the culture of the 3rd party development community itself.
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Actually Retro that's true. There are no better dev tools than microsoft dev tools, I can tell you from experience that's a fact. The fact that you can use Visual Studio to dev for PC/360 is a huge advantage. By Sony's own admission, they've had to pay for seminars for IBM to teach their developers how to use the platform properly.

Retro said:
Really? Might that be because it was launched a year earlier than the PS3?
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That's little defence, and that's where "giving PS3 a year" won't help. That's why it was so important for 360 to be first. The PS3 will be playing eternal catch up.

As a developer I can tell you you'd have to be an idiot not to use the 360 and port to PS3 from a develop cost perspective alone.
 
Retro said:
Well, the PS3 has more launch titles than the 360 had and a lot more that's being developed. So someone must think it's worth it
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And how may of them will be memorable enough to be remembered in a a few months, let alone garner any industry awards. All so run-of-the-mill in my opinion.

Retro said:
That's just being ignorant...
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On the point of being ignorant ... don't believe me, just search for interviews (& bloggs etc.) with the brightest minds in the game development industry (i.e. CEOs, developement leads, creative directors etc.). Their views are pretty blatant when comparing the platforms and companies behind them.
 
GavinMannion said:
:rolleyes: Why argue a point if you don't care???? Why won't you buy a PS3?
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Like I said, it pisses me off that every 360 fanboy WANTS the PS3 to fail.

Neither the PS3 or 360 has any games that I'm interested in. My money will go to the Wii.

The 360 has been out a while now and still nothing looks good enough for me to buy it. Except maybe GOW, but I don't really want to play a FPS games on a console. I might change my mind when something good comes along though...
 
Retro said:
Really? Might that be because it was launched a year earlier than the PS3?
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Are you trying to say we should cut Sony some slack because they were a year LATE ? This is a cut-throat market, Sony handed MS the opportunity to entrench themselves with the 360.....whether Sony will be looking better in a year's time is debatable, but you simply can't now go say "MS had a year to get here, so give Sony their year too" ....diff is MS went UNAPPOSED, Sony is now up against TWO competitors ...it's different it's not gonna be easy and in general business this is a
thing waiting to crash and burn. Sony is now riding ENTIRELY on their brand name, nothing else....and unfortunately their brand isn't looking as good either...
 
Retro said:
I feel EXACTLY the same about the 360 fanboys.

I will never even buy a PS3 or 360. It just pisses me off that almost every 360 fanboy wants the PS3 to fail.
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It's not that we want to see it fail, I wouldn't want the console industry in Microsoft's exclusive hands either, but it's about the consoles getting what they deserve and, well for me personally preventing otherwise ill informed consumers from being ripped off. Sony have been disgusting when it comes to the customer (just look at the PAL PS3 BC issue)

Never say never . . . Nintendo's offices are right next door to Microsoft ;)
 
diabolus said:
Are you trying to say we should cut Sony some slack because they were a year LATE ?
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*sigh* Ok, let me try to explain it this way. If you would compare an HD / Blueray player against a DVD player, would you say that the DVD player is better, cause it has tons of good movies where the HD / Blueray player only has a few? Or even that the DVD player is better because it's cheaper? Should we cut the makers of HD/Blueray players some slack cause they're LATE by only releasing it now???

Sony is now up against TWO competitors ...it's different it's not gonna be easy and in general business this is a thing waiting to crash and burn. Sony is now riding ENTIRELY on their brand name, nothing else....and unfortunately their brand isn't looking as good either...
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I still don't get why you are saying that Sony is in trouble? Please explain, really. They sold more units than the 360 did at launch, so was Microsoft also in trouble when they launched the 360? They are selling hundreds of thousands of units every month. Not just with the PS3, but also with the PSP and PS2. Am I missing something that I can't see that they're in trouble?
 
One more thing people need to realize. Alot of guys are talking about how much of a lead the 360 has over PS3 due to being launched earlier. But we shouldn't be comparing the European PS3 launch with 360s global launch. The PS3 been around now for more than 4 months in Japan and a little shorter in the US.
 
Retro said:
I still don't get why you are saying that Sony is in trouble? Please explain, really. They sold more units than the 360 did at launch, so was Microsoft also in trouble when they launched the 360? They are selling hundreds of thousands of units every month.
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Read the original article again and you'll know why. MS are selling units at a PROFIT, Sony are making a huge loss. The only way they make up for this is by selling GAMES. If they don't have any or don't make any that are better than their competitors then every console they sell they are loosing all the way. Essentially the more consoles Sony sells without the games to back them up the more trouble they are getting themselves into....

If developers decide to either make cross platform titles or lean towards Xbox360 because it's cheaper/easier to develop on...then Sony can sell consoles all they like.....consoles count <> profit amount.

As for Sony being in trouble, i'm speaking of their 'brand' in the sense that their name dropped status significantly the last few years. When people actually look at Microsoft and then at Sony and have a better feeling about Microsoft [who has been the epitome of corporate greed] then you know there is trouble. Ignore the PS3 vs. Xbox360 thing in this, i'm talking Sony vs. Microsoft on a corporate level....it's Blueray vs. HD-DVD , it's iPod vs. whatever DRM nonsense they keep pushing , it's the music industry , it's the whole SOE [Star Wars Galaxies to name one] mess, it's the silly mini-disc PSP movies and it's proprietary formats (with numurous articles of how it's failing)...it goes on.


Based on all THAT, the PS3 can look like a golden castle, there are people who are sick of Sony and they will undermine anything with Sony's name on it, whether it's technologically superior or not. Trust me people with a grudge and lots of free time come up with....Linux? [and look where that's going]
 
Retro said:
*sigh* Ok, let me try to explain it this way. If you would compare an HD / Blueray player against a DVD player, would you say that the DVD player is better, cause it has tons of good movies where the HD / Blueray player only has a few? Or even that the DVD player is better because it's cheaper? Should we cut the makers of HD/Blueray players some slack cause they're LATE by only releasing it now???
trouble?
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Because we're not. You're talking about an evolutionary change in a similar format. We're talking about two competing "parity" gaming consoles.

Retro said:
I still don't get why you are saying that Sony is in trouble? Please explain, really. They sold more units than the 360 did at launch, so was Microsoft also in trouble when they launched the 360? They are selling hundreds of thousands of units every month. Not just with the PS3, but also with the PSP and PS2. Am I missing something that I can't see that they're in trouble?
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How about the fact that they made a US$1.5billion loss on their home entertainment division last year? How about the millions to replace faulty batteries, never mind the pending class action suits about that.
 
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