PS3 and Revolution bull considered cut (well, maybe)
So GameDaily's got a
feature up about how they're cutting through the bull concerning the Revolution and PS3... but just how close are they
hitting to their bovine targets?Let's consider the first two statements to be "cut through" (which have, perhaps, the strongest arguments made against them): #1. "Sony Will Ship 4-7 Million PlayStation 3 Consoles This Year" (BS Meter: High), and #2. "PlayStation 3 Online Service to Mimic Xbox Live" (BS Meter: Medium).
#1. A Pioneer senior vice president expects 4-7 million PS3s to ship this year, but GD considers this a bullshot figure. Considering the history of consoles shortages at launch, especially from Sony, one can see how this statement's got the highest BS Meter level from GD of all. Good points are made about the conflict-of-interest with a competing Blu-ray manufacturer, but anyone-not-named Toshiba (or Microsoft) has gotta be behind the format they've invested a lot of money in already. For Pioneer, increasing the user base increases the demand for your product -- particularly when regular standalone Blu-ray drive speeds inevitably surpass those of the PS3, justifying your pricier (and, eventually in a different tier, cheaper) product. That's why people go out and buy standalone DVD players now and not usually PS2s to play DVD movies these days: to preserve their console investment for game-playing and to get a better movie player... that's not called a PlayStation.
#2. That SCEA e-mail survey regarding a Live-like online service for the PS3 gets shot down by GD, but only to a certain extent. Sony will try but find it's too far behind to match Live's feature set in the few months remaining before launch (whenever that is). Something approaching Live's functionality will supposedly be arranged, which will at least provide the most demanded features, such as a friends list and downloadable content, for Sony fans to latch onto. There may be something to this development theory, but the recent Sony purchase of the makers of SOCOM probably happened for a reason, so who knows what's possible?
Meanwhile, the strongest Rev statement--meaning, the one least likely to be BS--was accompanied by a GameDaily belief that Zelda: Twilight Princess would be "running on Revolution with the new features discussed a couple weeks ago." Not such a great prediction to make when Nintendo called the rumored TP use of the Revolution controller's unique features to be "pure speculation."
Without critiques of 360 hype, this might sound like an article better suited for a certain Fanboy blog, but you gotta remember that many mysteries surrounding the system were dealt with when Microsoft's latest gaming console launched in November. The veil remains unbroken on many aspects of the other two systems... for now.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Cyberclaws @ Jan 25th 2006 2:50PM
Everyone should know by now that ANYTHING that comes out of Sony's 'mouth' is BS.
And we all know that Nintendo always excercises its right to remain silent for plausible deniability reasons...
Nmaster @ Jan 25th 2006 2:55PM
Reading it over, I think they're the ones full of BS. There is a lot of rumors and things going around right now that they could have tackled, but instead they decided to choose the most unpredictable things they could. They're basically saying, "everybody's predictions are wrong. We are right, we can accurately predict what will happen almost a year from now." That's just don't right arrogant.
If your going to call out BS, try tackling some more serious and predictable issues, like how the PS3 is NOT getting a FF7 remake, or how the Revolution will NOT be able to transmit video directly into your brain.
"GameDaily Cuts out Bull"
BS Meter: Very High
SuicideNinja @ Jan 25th 2006 3:08PM
4-7 Million PS2s? Yeah, that is a ridiculous figure for this year.
Say it only takes 1 to 5 minutes to make a console. Times that by 4 Million to get total minutes to produce that many. Divide it by 60 to get the hours, then by 24 for the days. Say there are 3 manufacturing locations, so divide that by 3. Um...that's a long time still, especially considering the difficulty in providing brand new hardware like the Bluray drive and the Cell processor. I'm sure this quick and dirty calculation isn't accurate, but it does give a perspective idea.
dsub @ Jan 25th 2006 3:10PM
a nintendo or sony fanboy will have good things to say about this post.
BS Meter: Very High
anything that doesn't glorify the gods all mighty of sony and nintendo on high will be seen as nothing but blasphemy and lies from the fanboy sects.
Next up on joystiq...a post that makes the 360 look bad, to which the fanboys will regard as the utmost of truth, unless of course it makes the 360 look good, then the fanboys will be chanting blasphemy again.
hahaha.
stupid fanboys. go play games.
dsub @ Jan 25th 2006 3:16PM
"
Say it only takes 1 to 5 minutes to make a console. Times that by 4 Million to get total minutes to produce that many. Divide it by 60 to get the hours, then by 24 for the days. Say there are 3 manufacturing locations, so divide that by 3. Um...that's a long time still, especially considering the difficulty in providing brand new hardware like the Bluray drive and the Cell processor. I'm sure this quick and dirty calculation isn't accurate, but it does give a perspective idea."
good point, another thing to take into prospective is production yield. not every cell chip, blu-ray drive, and/or game will work. Production yields, especially for the blu-ray stuff will be rather low at first I assume (most likely 60-70%) meaning two things. Higher costs, less working product, slows down manufacturing.
mr_ewe @ Jan 25th 2006 3:43PM
i agree with dsub, the fanboy coments saying "this article is crap because it degrades my consol" or "this article is crap because it raises the competition above my consol" are crap.
i admit to being a sony fanboy, but i am getting really tired of all the xbox 360 articles saying how its full of bugs and the power supply get really really hot. GUESS WHAT EVERYONE!!! POWER SUPPLIES GET HOT! THATS WHAT THEY DO! that and supply power.
i am also getting tired of the crap coverage of the revolution and ps3. how about the "fine" reporters at joystiq go camp out at sony headquarters, or continually check sonys website instead of reporting on someone elses news article? i am about one article rehash and degrade away from quiting reading joystiq.
michael @ Jan 25th 2006 3:43PM
I'm going with the BS3.
anonymous coward @ Jan 25th 2006 4:30PM
"Say it only takes 1 to 5 minutes to make a console... ...locations, so divide that by 3. Um...that's a long time stil."
Dude, the math's not that hard.
1 per minute = 10,800 per week.
At that rate, it would've taken them 190 years to make all the PS2s in existence, or about 63 years with 3 plants going. I think 50-100,000 per week at first, (total) and several times that after things get going.
At 100k/week, starting in April, they could make 3.5 million by the end of the year. It's not that batty a claim, and the demand is certainly there. MS shipped on 600k in the US because they started manufacturing like 15 minutes before launch and then spread them out to places like Mongolia.
4 million is possible if the hardware isn't too far from being complete. It's only January afterall.
P.S. Is anyone else having so much trouble getting the forms to submit? They're taking forever. On Engadget too.
Spartacus @ Jan 25th 2006 4:33PM
"POWER SUPPLIES GET HOT! THATS WHAT THEY DO! that and supply power." -mr_ewe
I don't know why, but that got a good laugh out of me...
However, I would agree, there is no way that Sony will be shipping 4-7 million PS3 consoles this year. In fact, it's arguable whether or not they'll be shipping ANY PS3 consoles this year. The only way this would be possible is if Sony actually launched the console this spring with significant quantity (not historically plausible) and continued to pump out systems with fairly high yields. While this is a possible scenario, it isn't probable due to the fact that in order for the PS3 to ship this spring, the design, hardware and OS would have to be finalized and ALREADY be in production. We have absolutely no evidence of any of these claims. At CES we still saw a "concept" box and controller, no OS and we've heard nothing from developers claiming to have final (or even near final) dev kits. Production takes time, and if Sony wants to launch this spring (whether in Japan only or worldwide) they have their work cut out for them, and then some.
BS-Meter-Off-the-Charts @ Jan 25th 2006 4:54PM
Wow, the anti-fanboys are posting flames to posts that haven't even been made...
...I think honestly think the anti-fanboys have gotten worse than the actual fanboys.
Personally, I'm just anti-dumbass...
kizza @ Jan 25th 2006 6:11PM
Can somebody explain the definition of a fanboy to me please? It gets thrown around a helluva lot.
I mean everybody favours one console or another.....even if they have all three, they would still be able to pick one as their favourite if they were only given the option to have one.
I mean I love all consoles, but I do have one I play more than the others due to it having more my type of games on it....... Does that mean I'm a fanboy?
Noooooooo..... I can't be a fanboy, what will my mother say when she finds out?
Dreizehnernuss @ Jan 25th 2006 6:17PM
"Say it only takes 1 to 5 minutes to make a console"
Automotive plants are pumping out cars every 30-40 seconds.
I dont think it will take longer to make a ps3.
On the other hand the mentioned figure of 4-7 million is really bs.
penn @ Jan 25th 2006 6:17PM
everytime i look on google news for new info on the console wars, i get articles that are a few hours old rehashing articles, quoting on interviews that are at least a few weeks old.
the 4-5 million consoles prediction by sony is not old news.so this article is just rehashing a rehash of a rehash of an article(it seems)...
but the dumb thing is, fanboys take it personal every bloody time. And I love/hate reading the dumbass, repetitive, nananananana my cocksole is bigger, better than your cocksole Booollshite over and over and over...
portnoy @ Jan 26th 2006 12:32AM
BS-Meter-Off-the-Charts you are right on.
Its funny when people bitch about fanboys and then end up sounding exactly like them.
Take dsub for instance, he says he hates fanboys, but just try to criticize the xbox360 and watch him go ballistic just like the guy with the power supply above. I mean, no one even mentioned the power supply thing and he lost it. Its hilarious. I think they have no idea they really are the problems themselves.
Dan Choi @ Jan 26th 2006 5:07AM
"i agree with dsub, the fanboy coments saying 'this article is crap because it degrades my consol' or 'this article is crap because it raises the competition above my consol' are crap."
I'm not sure exactly what dsub intended in some parts of his post, mr_ewe, but I intended the DVD-playing statement to concern the Blu-ray capabilities of a PS3 versus those of other Blu-ray manufacturers, such as Pioneer. No comparison to console competitors such as the Xbox 360 or Revolution was intended. Sorry if it came across that way to you.
"i am also getting tired of the crap coverage of the revolution and ps3. how about the 'fine' reporters at joystiq go camp out at sony headquarters, or continually check sonys website instead of reporting on someone elses news article? i am about one article rehash and degrade away from quiting reading joystiq."
Excuse me? If we're willing to critique another media outlet's portrayal of ongoing gaming stories, what does that have to do with a supposedly biased Sony bent with the staff? Keep your comments on-topic please.
gamer1 @ Jan 28th 2006 4:29PM
Consider this. If Sony produces 600,000 PS3 units by May for launch, which is the sold out initial launch number for the PS2 in Japan, continues to produce 300,000 each consecutive month till the end of the year, and launches with 900,000 units around Thanksgiving in the US to cover demand until Christmas, and 500,000 units simultaneously in Europe, that would be over 4 million units altogether.
Also, considering that Sony had produced 100 million units of PS2 over 70 months, an average of 1.4 million a month, it seems that Sony could have the capability to produce and sell 4 million by the end of the year, that is if the Xbox 360 and the Revolution does not take a larger portion of Sonys market share this generation.