Japanese devs react tepidly to post-E3 PS3 [update 1]

Maybe the whole N64/PS3 comparison is actually good for the PS3's legacy. We can all name 10 great games for N64, easily, but I don't know that the same can be said for PS1. Ditto Gamecube/PS2. Perhaps we'll see a turnaround and the Wii will get all of the crappy ports and FPS garbage, while the PS3 will get less games, but a higher percentage of them memorable.

Yeah, I doubt it too.

I think you guys should wait till the ps3 is released!
i think the ps3 took a risk in the high price point but i admire a company that innovates and defines a market. The Xbox 360, is so unappealing to me it makes me sick, i hate EA/American Games!

I dont see any games that are interesting on the 360, im not into fps(Halo) or tps(GOW) games! , Wii really feels like a gimmick! im sorry, i tried waving my tv controller around for a while, but honestly it gets pretty tiresome and lame

Xbox 360 sales are mediocre at best! 3.2 million in June, far less than their 10 million goal, their only selling an average of
300 000 units a month worldwide so they'll reach 7 million at best, 3million short with reducing demand!

I dont care about online play on the 360, especially if i have to pay for it!

The Ps3 has games like (eventually) Shadow of Colossus(first party),Gradius 3, Heavenly Sword, WarHawk, FF13 and Versus, Metal Gear Solid etc.....
Wii, has games like Mario,Warioware, Rayman, Zelda, and probably mario kart or something, those games are lame and tired!
Japanese Devs won't flock to the 360 cause Microsoft does shy away from titles too foreign!

Cheaper is not always better!

People forget the ps3 is the most newsworthy console with the most to lose, every1 wants to beat the champion!

For the record:

N64 was a colossal failure, not only because of cartridge format (which we all see as per DS, can reach a capacity to hold PS1 quality FMVS), but because the Yamauchi was a crotchety old bastard who demanded 3rd partied play the game his way, or not at all. Thats why every 3rd party under the sun left Nintendo during N64 days.

Since there is a new guard at nintendo who understands the need for 3rd party support, hopefully nintendo can recover from such a horribly stupid mistake

Y do all u sony fan are trying all the time to clean up sony bull **** . the ps2 was bull **** i had got one when they first came out and it broke 3 time in the years to come it was a cheap ass system ,and now ps3 is coming and it has a cell processor and a blueray drive its not going to have any games for a fucking year after it comes out ,im going to tell u asshole sony fans whats going to happen MS is going to buy ur fucking company or sony going to do software only like sega,its over the system is not going to out proform the xbox and dver are not going to make game for a falling company . how can u guy belive sony can make a better system then MS,are u crazy MS got the money to make a system from outspace if u can pay for it,sony is making a piece of shit product with a high price movie player no ones going to buy really the avrege comsumer not going to fuck with BR or hddvd, then theirs the cell which lost out on the chance to be in the apple computers,steve job shot the fucking chip down ,one move that fuck sony ,so what happen to the cell will be in tvs and every thing ,it not going to happen ever,look at the fact sony fan the company is going from sugat to shit fast and cant stop

damn, I couldn't spell at all in that last post.

At #30,
The news here is not Anti-Sony, its just the truth. Done.

I think you guys should wait till the ps3 is released!
i think the ps3 took a risk in the high price point but i admire a company that innovates and defines a market. The Xbox 360, is so unappealing to me it makes me sick, i hate EA/American Games!

I dont see any games that are interesting on the 360, im not into fps(Halo) or tps(GOW) games! , Wii really feels like a gimmick! im sorry, i tried waving my tv controller around for a while, but honestly it gets pretty tiresome and lame

Xbox 360 sales are mediocre at best! 3.2 million in June, far less than their 10 million goal, their only selling an average of
300 000 units a month worldwide so they'll reach 7 million at best, 3million short with reducing demand!

I dont care about online play on the 360, especially if i have to pay for it!

The Ps3 has games like (eventually) Shadow of Colossus(first party),Gradius 3, Heavenly Sword, WarHawk, FF13 and Versus, Metal Gear Solid etc.....
Wii, has games like Mario,Warioware, Rayman, Zelda, and probably mario kart or something, those games are lame and tired!
Japanese Devs won't flock to the 360 cause Microsoft does shy away from titles too foreign!

Cheaper is not always better!

People forget the ps3 is the most newsworthy console with the most to lose, every1 wants to beat the champion!

My Bad, I meant #31.

"Wii really feels like a gimmick! im sorry, i tried waving my tv controller around for a while, but honestly it gets pretty tiresome and lame"

And Sony wanted to copy that controller because...?

A credit card should be required to post. There are too many children posting here with nothing to say...

The reason for all the bad PS3 news? People are actually gtting smarter! Gamers opinions actually matter- dont we spens the money?

Many gamers have become very tech inclined, and they know a raw deal when they see one....and a deal from sony is ALWAYS a raw deal. As far as i can tell no developer ever made anything with toy story graphics. Emotion Engine what? UMD who?

the funny thing about these developers is that what you can do in a game at this point just comes down to their imagination and game design. this whole thing about what one system can and cant(except for the Wii- thats old tech) do is utter garbage. How about telling these developers to make a game on the level of final fantasy or halo or oblivion? they will like shut it up because 85 percent of them just cant. So lets blame the hardware!

The only reason this whole debate goes on is because hardcore gamers and the smart-enough media is trying to justify sony's shenanigans and its effects on the games industry. It is obvious that sony is only acting in thier best interests, and can really give a POS about gamers anymore- if PS# fails, the companys gonna crumble and I'll be able to buy a piece down on the corner.

If only presented a better "value", the reaction would not be so apathetic. Its a nice product but wrapped up with uneccesary, albeit expensive addons(blu-ray) and wrapped around Sony's idiotic weekly pandering to the press. We dont love you sony. We love games. Remember that!

One smart, yet dumb ass company

Anti-1up

Ok, for your sake (and because I myself have been the victim of this today) I am going to mention your grammar and spelling only this one time.

You say "i admire a company that innovates and defines a market". Fine by me, no arguments there. But then you go on to say "Wii really feels like a gimmick! im sorry, i tried waving my tv controller around for a while, but honestly it gets pretty tiresome and lame". I think you need a definition.

in•no•vate
v. tr.
To begin or introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time.

v. intr.
To begin or introduce something new.


Also:

in•no•va•tion
n.
1. The act of introducing something new.
2. Something newly introduced.

The Wiimote that you hate is that verbatim. Admittedly, the technology itself is not, but the application in the home market is.

Also, your list of games for the PS3 includes games like FF, MGS, and Warhawk, clear franchises that reuse the same characteristics from previous games, the exact same thing as Nintendo does with their franchises. I don't think this is a bad thing, hell, I love the FF games. It is just a major hole in your argument. Heck, Heavenly Sword is just building on God of War (another excellent game) and Shadow of the Colossus was on the PS2.

Also, remember that your personal preferences do not determine who will capture the most market share. Just because you do not like FPSs and American games does not mean that J. Q. consumer doesn't either.

And as to the most newsworthy counsel comment, I would like to point out that the majority of that news has been overwhelmingly bad for Sony. Remember, bad news is what sells.

A PS3/Wii combo in Japan? I don't think so. Any console released over there either sells freaky crazy or relatively "meh". In other words, I'd expect either the Wii or the PS3 to come out the undeniable champ over there (360 might do better over there eventually, but becoming the best selling console in Japan? I don't think so) with the other console coming in at a relatively distant second. As of right now, it seems like the Wii would fit snugly into the "champ" position.

@53

Too Human, Mass Effect, Gears of War, Halo 3, Alan Wake, Forza 360, BioShock, Fable 2, Splinter Cell, Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Crackdown...etc

Look them up most are exclusive to the xbox360

and i'm not a ms fanboy just a fan of games in general!!!

@ Anti-1up

Uhm, wow. I really don't know what to say. However, I will argue that we will just have to wait till it's released to see what will happen.

However, the fact that you dis the 'Wiimote' and say Sony is genious for 'innovating'...I hate to break it to you, Sony would have never added the motion sensor had Nintendo not added to their controller. Don't go on saying that Nintendo actually copied MS with that controller thing because we all know that's BS. =

It's plain and simple, Sony saw Nintendo getting a lot of attention and praise for the Motion Sensor in their controller, so they wanted in. And also keep in mind that Sony has had a past with coping Nintendo.

As for your waving the Remote in the air comment, it's a bit unfair to judge the console itself by just waving a TV remote in the air with no activity with a game itself. If you had been at E3 and claimed you got bored with waving the controller around, fine. I would respect that opinion more then just you saying you waved your TV remote around.

Now, don't get me wrong, the PS3 will probably be a kick ass system however, many gamers (including myself) feel that the price will bring down the system. You have to admit, a half a grand is a bit rediculous for a gaming machine. Hell, you could get a semi decent PC at that price (not the best computer but, at least one with a 64 bit processor and a graphics card that could play MOST current(not the hardcore games though) games at either a very low setting or a medium setting).

As for Xbox 360, I have yet to try one. However, I have used a original Xbox out and I can't say I like it due to the fact that all the games on it are pretty much PC ports.

This is just my opinion but, as I stated before, I will be getting a Wii and (maybe) a 360 for this current console gen...war. (I haven't used a 360 yet, so I can't judge it based on the original Xbox. :P)

Ahg, Small typo. Argue should be agree. =X

Uhm, wow. I really don't know what to say. However, I will agree that we will just have to wait till it's released to see what will happen.

@50

"The Ps3 has games like (eventually) Shadow of Colossus(first party),Gradius 3, Heavenly Sword, WarHawk, FF13 and Versus, Metal Gear Solid etc....."

Wow. You just named every game I don't want to play.

I'll pass on the PS3 if this is the best they have to offer.

The games that were playable at E3 on Nintendo's Wii console were not the finished product as far as play control and graphics are concerned. And thats evident concerning Ubisoft's Red Steel team has announced the play control is still being tweeked to perfection.

dreddgab -

You're not helping the 360 too much by laundry listing games that aren't released yet.

To General Public -

Basically, it is rather irritating to list off titles that aren't out yet, especially those that are sequels to titles that were lackluster or even bad. Anyone listing Fable 2 or Killzone 2 are setting themselves up for a large fall. Fable was a classic example of a half-baked Moleneux title that turned out just ho-hum because half of what it should have done was left out while Killzone was simply a crappy game. Even big name titles aren't guaranteed to be smash hits. The core Final Fantasy titles have been commanding a smaller and smaller percentage of the install base (the idea is to keep your sales consistent within the install base or grow the percentage) and in total numbers. The series has been shrinking in sales since VII, with exception of a spike with X. True, they still sell really well, but they aren't system sellers. If they were, they'd be played on more than 5% of the units. Halo was a system seller as a full 30% of the Xbox owners bought it. They have also done poorly on many of their spin-off titles. FFXIII and FFXIII-2 don't have instant success written on them just because it has Final Fantasy stamped on the cover.

All we can judge are what the companies offer now. 360 has an offering, PS3 doesn't. Banking on unknown titles, even big name ones, is a foolish way to go. We've been burned on buzz-inducing games before, afterall.

Oni, Daikatana, Fable, Black and White, so on, so on.

Good grief!

@49

That's too much of a generalization. Personally, I can't name 10 good games for the N64, but I could easily do so for the PS1. And even moreso for Gamecube/PS2, I can easily name five times the memorable titles for the latter than the former. It's personal opinion more than anything else.

@ LaughingTarget

Best post all day.

It might be personal opinion, but it's a fairly universal one

Mario 64
Zelda:OoT
Zelda:MM
Smash Bros.
Golden Eye
Perfect Dark


The next batch are more debatable.
Paper Mario
Donkey Kong 64
Mario Kart 64
Star Fox 64
Conker's Bad Fur Day
Jet Force Gemini
Banjo Kazooie/Tooie

@ the fill
Goldeneye
turok
Turok 2
Perfect Dark
Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Zelda Mjora's Mask
Super Smash Brothers
1080 snowboarding
Wave Race
World Driver Championship
Banjo and Kazooie
Killer Instinct
Diddy Kong Racing
Beetle Adventure Racing
Banjo and Tootie
Sin and Punishment
Resident Evil 2
Star Fox
F-Zero
Wipeout

that's just off the top of my head. Well over 10 great games for the N64


@ Laughing Target

You bring up a great point with KillZone. Could have been a great game but that should have clearly been delayed and reworked for the PS3. PS2 just simply isn't powerful enough to pull it off. a huge disappointment for a game that was hail as a "halo killer"


I understand the business angle of sequels, but is it too much to ask to evole the story and introduce new characters and themes within the flow of the sequels? FF has no continuity from one to the other. I loved the FF series on NES and SNES but got tired of it by the time FFVII came out because the only thing that was consistent from one FF to another was Cid. Give me a continuing storyline that allows me to give a damn about the characters and fondly remember the characters or even villians that passed away through the course of the story. This gives me more of an incentive to play the sequels to see how the lands have changed and the story has developed. This isn't a slam against just Square, many companies do this. I'm tired of fighting Ganon, even though he wasn't in Majora's Mask but he's in every console version of Zelda I've played.

I'm tired of saving the blasted Princess in Mario. When is this #$%^ gonna learn how to fight? I'm sick of Metal Gear, A castle? is it that kid Dracula again? Didn't I just beat him down in the last century for crying out loud? Talking about sequels to support the argument to buy a PS3 or any console is not always the wisest of decisions. Companies are so afraid of losing money that they will milk a franchise to death. Eventually, we, the gamers WILL get bored and fed up and not care. How times did we play a version of Street Fighter 2 before Capcom could count to 3? When they finally relessed Street Fighter 3 they milked that for two sequels, one which was totally unecessary. In the next gen, I hope that companies get the picture. Because if the best argument a person can give me for spending 600 on a PS3 is FFXIII, Warhawk and another Tekken, then that's a piss poor argument and a sign of things to come.

@#68

you have a list of memorable N64 titles and you leave out the one that everyone knows...how could you forget Super Mario 64?

On the other topic of the PS3/N64 comparison there is some simmilarity although probably not as much as the Xbox360/Dreamcast one. Although from what I've observed about the market high pricing and dev cost usually doesn't help bring or keep marketshare. The N64 had the high dev costs and we all know how that truned out...although Nintendo didn't have the same marketshare that Sony does now...it could go either way.

That said I'm more of a Wii60 person in my order of getting the systems.

"Wii really feels like a gimmick! im sorry, i tried waving my tv controller around for a while, but honestly it gets pretty tiresome and lame" ~ Anti-1up

You're partly right: NO, the Wii is NOT a gimmick. YES, I imagine waving a TV Remote around WOULD be tiresome and lame, mainly for the fact that it doesn't do anything, you idiot.

When the Original Playstation came out, they pretty much won the market by default. Sega came out with a product that costed $100 more, was far more complex to program for and was inferior to the Playstation. Nintendo when with a cartridge based system. CDs were a cheaper medium in every aspect. Nintendo lost most 3rd party support.

When the Playstation 2 arrived, DVD had yet to hit a mass market. At $299, it was a no brainer, expecially considering that a DVD player alone costed $299. Plus, it was out 1 year before the GameCube and Xbox.

However, this time Playstation 3 has nothing going for it. DVD was a huge Leap from VHS. BlueRay??? I don't need it and neither do you. Xbox 360 beat Sony to the market by a year with Hardware that is easier to program for and software that looks better (yes, I attended E3 and played both. PS3 had nothing worth playing $600 for). The Wii has the cheapest hardware and is vastly easier and cheaper to program for.

So if you support Xbox 360 or Wii... Guess what? All you're favorite game companys will make games for that system including Konami and Square Enix. All things point to one thing... Sony skrewed up.

#12 Nalgae, just because you and those you associate with are criminal lowlifes, that has no bearing on the general audience for the PS2. Your logic is completely lacking. If rampant piracy were the measure of a console's success, the company producing that console and any third party publisher focusing on it will soon be out of business. Software revenues make up nearly all of the profits for this industry.

(N64 piracy did exist. You could get a device that had a bunch of RAM and a ZIP drive that plugged into the N64's slot and simulated a cartridge. Not cheap but it paid for itself pretty quickly if the buyer had a lot of N64 games he wanted to play.)

Fortunately for Sony and the world in general, the great majority of PS2 owners are not like you or your sleazy friends.

It is also a misnomer to call the N64 a failure. Did it fail to capture the #1 spot? Yes. But did it still make huge amounts of net revenue for Nintendo? Yes. Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64 are in the Top 20 bestselling games on a single platform of console history. Over 50 other N64 titles sold over a million units.

There is a wide gulf between failure and conquering the world. By your rationale the guy who gets the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, a $5 million paycheck for the movie, and sleeps with an endless procession of starlets is a failure because another guy got Best Actor, a $20 million paycheck, and has supermodels making appointments with his manager to work in a quickie.

>epobirs
I would bust out the natural law vs civil law argument that the Transcendentalists were fond of, but really, they're just video games. Realize that what Congress puts through as laws isn't always the right thing, nor are intellectual property laws set in stone. Piracy of virtual goods (games being on DVDs does not make the game data itself physical) is unarguably illegal in today's society, but the with the advent of the internet and virtual property we'll see how that holds up.

The term for failure is relative. South Korea's effort in the world cup this year can easilly be labeled as a failure, or you could call it an accomplishment for making it as far as they did. In your analogy, it is also easy to call the guy who only made $5 million dollars a failure when he could've made $20 million.

As for the piracy argument:
Any game available gets downloaded and I try it out. If I don't like it, I throw it out. If I like it a bit, I keep it. If it rocks my socks off, I go out and buy it. I have purchased Halo 1 and 2, the Xenosaga series, the FF series, GGXX, etc. because they are good games. Piracy may be wrong to you, but I see it as being way more convenient than renting from blockbuster. If you actually KNEW anyone with a modded system, you would be able to see that they have a large collection of retail boxes next to their spindle of burned DVDs.

Enjoy your high life. I'm sure these games developers are enjoying their 40-80k a year salaries, while the management in the publishing companies get 110k+ a year. Support gaming. Woohoo.

#65 LT, 5% of the installed base is the goal for any game to achieve 'hit' status. Beyond that is major hit and so on. System sellers are great and all but long term the bread and butter of a console with strong third party support are those little hits only reach about 5%.

Right now on the Xbox or GameCube, if you can reach nearly 5% of the installed base, you've got a million+ seller. This is why installed base is so important in driving third party publisher's decisions. A game that only reaches 1% of the PS2's global base is still moving over a million units.

I think you're being a bit unfair to the Final Fantasy series by focusing too much on VII. It wasn't just a big seller, it moved nearly three times the units the previous best seller in the series managed. The PS1 allowed Square to introduce a lot of new elements and raise the bar on presentation. The public responded in a positive way. The response wasn't as good for the two following games despite technical improvement but they still did excellent business, beating FFVI sales by over twice or by a couple million units respectively. But relative to the number of machines in the world that have been available to run PS1 software, those three FF games reached a far smaller percentage of the installed base than those SF/SNES entries did. Considering that a lot of the ample FFVII sales since late 1999 were for use on a PS2, it seems fair to lump those two machines together as a rough installed base for the reach of PS1 software. (Considering it's release date it may be possible that a majority of the US FFIX units sold were played on PS2s and a similar thing could happen for the US FFXII on the PS3 if the BC works.) From that perspective, FFVII has only reached, wait for it, around 5% of the total potential market for a PS1 game.

It just happens to be 5% of an incredibly numerous platform. Some games like Super Smash Bros. Melee and Halo 2 reach an incredibly portion of the installed based for their paltforms but that measurement only has limited value. GT3 on the PS2 has nearly twice Halo 2's sales but has reached only 15% of PS2 compared to Halo 2 reaching nearly 25% of Xbox units.

Chartbusters like GTA are great if you can manage it but they can only do so much for a system. Those little games really matter in the long run. Because it's so easy to produce a million+ seller on the PS2's huge installed base, just those PS2 gmes that have sold between 1 million to 2 million units collectively represent several times all of the Xbox software revenues, including the Halos, by several times. There are over 100 PS2 titles with sales greater than 2 million units but you get the idea. You could eliminate the top 100 selling PS2 games and the platform would still have much greater software revenues than the Xbox and GameCube combined because you need reach such a tiny portion of the PS2 market to be a success. Those rank and file games really bring home the bacon, especially if you're the one collecting the royalty fees.

The 8/16-bit FF games have since done a lot of business on the PS1/PS2 and various portables long after disappearing from retail in their original form. Taken across all platforms the numbers for those games are a lot higher but the 7-9 entries will get their chance for additional SKUs eventually on the PSP and other platforms.

I don't think FFX should be called a spike as if there was an unexplained occurrence. It was the FFVII history repeating itself. A new, more powerful platform allowed Square to raise the bar on presentation and the public responded to the novelty by buying a massive number of units. If you look at the shorter time on the market and the lesser reach of its platform, FFX is matching or beating FFVII relative to its potential market. IF at some point in the future the PS3 has an installed base and backward compatibility to provide as much market reach for PS2 as PS1 game have now, FFX may pull ahead in sales. Of course, by then all of the PS1 FFs should found new life as remakes or under emulation on non-PS1 compatible machines.

Although some sell better than others, every FF to date has been a huge hit relative to its original platform. To say FFX wasn't a system seller is simply wrong. Just as many people waited for FFVII to buy a PS1, it was FFX that made a good number of PS2 purchases happen. That other PS2 hits like MGS2 provided so much competition in that role is hardly the fault of the game. For those of us who don't especially care for the Metal Gear series, it had to be something else. For a bunch it was GTA, for some it was Madden, for others FFX, for others still it was Barbie's Horse Adventure. Well, maybe one other.

Epobirs is right in that, in the past, the consoles took forever and ever to hit the break even point in manufacturing, or at the VERY best were the razor, while the games were the razorblades. (If you don't know what I'm talking about - too bad, take an economics class.) :)

That's one reason why Microsoft was so hot on modded consoles for the Xbox - since they were using off the shelf components not specifically designed for the console, the loss per console was huge, and remained that way throughout the life of the console.

That's also the reason why, on the 360, Microsoft made everything USB compatible. The 360 was designed for gaming first and foremost - and is on track to break even on manufacturing costs by the end of this year. What that means is that the console itself will be profitable - quickly. Profit is NOT a diry word, either - that's how they can pay developers decent bucks for titles like N3, which is coming out next month, IIRC. Games and accessories are gravy - and could lead to price cuts in the console itself as costs reduce even further.

Something else to think about is this - retailers are already starting to think holiday - and they're having to do their thinking based on what the prices are now.

You are the electronics retailer, and you've got a standalone Blu-Ray player for $999, a standalone HD-DVD player for $499, a 360 for $399, a PS3 for $599, and a Wii for $249 (guessed on that one). How are you going to train your sales staff, based on quantities available, so that you can maximize your sales? You already know that your previous years worth of 360 sales show a minimum attach rate of 3 accessories per console, and you'd expect the same out of the others.

Now - you have a customer come in who wants the next generation in movie experience and wants games. Wii is out - sorry. You go to the families with little kids that play little kids games (no offense to half of the gamers that I just offended on this board, but to me, you ARE young kids - I'm THAT old.)

PS3 is out of stock - oops. (Doesn't that sound familiar? Remember all the screaming on Joystiq LAST year about that? Amazing how quiet it got from the fanboys - oh, yeah, we WERE bitching about the 360 last year, weren't we?)

So that's going to leave your sales staff either selling a stand alone player for $999 or $499 - OR a 360 for $399 plus the HD-DVD player at whatever price it's going to be (probably around $149/$199, but I'm NOT sure about that one yet).

Oh, and since your people like games, they're going to want the cool accessories - so you've got a first party wireless racing wheel available for $129 (as opposed to the MadCatz breaks after 6 months wheel), the camera, wired and wireless controllers galore, battery packs, choices of memory cards, 120 games to choose from...

I already know that all of the gaming / retail stores are planning for this in my district, because they've already come up with this scenario on their own. They know that neither Sony or Nintendo can have enough product out this year.

Holiday 2007 is going to be an interesting one. Holiday 2006 is going to belong to Microsoft.

End of line....
(2 points for naming the movie AND character that statement comes from.)

#44 brought up an excellent point. It seems that the situation has reversed for Sony since the last great battle in the console wars.

Let us all think back to the launch of the X-box, which, while successful, Microsoft admits wasn't as successful as they would have liked, and even likened the original XB to a 'learning experience', and 'getting their foot in the door'.
microsoft nipping at thier heels
Let's think about why the XB didn't topple the competition (PS2), which, even then, was technologically inferior. MS put up a good show, mind you, and currently is in the running for the number 2 slot in the console wars , but they didn't atomize their rivals, either.

1. Higher price point.
The XB debuted for $300. I think, at the time, the PS2 was going for $200? But in any case, the PS2 was the cheaper system. For a console to 'win' the wars, it has to sell more units, and frankly, the console with the lower price usually moves faster. You won't sell the most units by pitching only to the elite, hardcore gamers, who will forsake other bills and work extra hours to buy one. No matter how awesome your games are. There JUST arn't that many of us.

2. Only a few decent titles at launch.
Halo was a great game. And it sold ME an x-box. But I didn't exactly sell of my PS2, either. PS2, on the other hand, had years of titles, not to mention backwards compatibility on it's side.

3. Lack of love from Japanese developers.
Japan's been making some of the best games for as long back as I can remember. Most of the best has come from that tiny little island, and to denounce it because it's not america is foolish. Japanese games move consoles. There are far more successful 'must have' franchises from japan than america. We've got Madden, GTA, and Halo. Maybe 1 or 2 I'm forgetting. They've got every Square title, MGS, Mario, Zelda...hell, do i need to argue this point? XBs lack of japanese games hurt like hell, and you ended up with a wall full of racing games and generic FPS clones, not many of which were particularly interesting.


So, basically, last time, Sony had a position of strength. An established base, being the first next gen system on the market, a selection of great games to rely on, the support of japanese developers, and a new, unfamiliar opponent. And it was a cheap DVD player, back when the technology was new and interesting.

NOW, X-box has the established base, and is the first console on the scene. (a year ago, I didn't think it was that important. Now, I'm not so sure...) There console is cheaper, and will have it's first run of AAA titles releasing alongside the PS3. XBox isn't an unknown anymore, it's one half of the two big consoles, and everyone knows it.

On the flip side, the new sony console is attempting to recreate the PS2's DVD success, seemingly over the gaming side. While I doubt the console will flop, they're fighting a war on two fronts. In the games war, they have to assault microsoft's entrenched position. And on the Bluray side, they have to deal with the HD-DVD format. If they win the new format war, and blockbuster starts carrying the new format of movies, and so does walmart, and the consumers want them, if if if....the PS3 will likely do well. IF the HD-DVD succeeds...Sony is going to get it's butt kicked.


(Sorry for the long post. I just had some new insight I felt like sharing. I should probably get some friends. Or a dog. Or something.)

@ 77. Easy as cake. Tron, the MCP. Greatest movie EVAR, btw. I pray nightly for a sequel...or even another FPS.

Phil Harrison to Ken Kutaragi:

"Oh, no! What do we do now? This common sense shit's getting contagious!"

#78

Feeling that insomnia here, too. The fans just aren't beating the heat tonight. So it's time for semi-conscious nitpicking.

The PS2 debuted in the US at $299. By the time of the Xbox launch a year later it was still at or close to that price. Successful console don't often see much price reduction for at least a year, until the early adopter market has been thoroughly tapped and the manufacturing process has been debugged. I cannot recall precisely but at most the PS2 had been dropped to $279. Not a huge spread. Microsoft maintained price parity with the PS2 for most of the time they co-existed.

Besides, the GameCube launched at only $199 but that only helped a little.

Price wasn't much of a factor for the Y2K+ generation of consoles. Nobody was alarmingly expnsive from the consumer perspective, although it made a huge difference from the manufacturing side of things. Microsoft had a poorly considered supply deal for their chipset that would have required every Xbox purchase to be followed by an absurdly high amount of game pruchases before further game purchases produced a profit.

On #2, the PS2 had year, not years of titles, plus it had the PS1 library. I got a lot of use out of that but if it hadn't been in there it just meant I would have kept my PS1 connected to the switchbox alongside the PS2 instead of retiring it to the closet, then selling it to my brother's kids. (As I recall, I never actually got paid and they ended up killing it with a botched modchip installation.) It was still pretty slim picking for native PS2 games at that point but the momentum was building and demos like MGS got a lot of people to buy in well in advance of the game's release.

On you #3 point: What made this worse is that Microsoft failed to exploit the talent pools where they had the favorable position. They were phobic about the Xbox being perceived as just a standardized PC rather than a game console. Part of their reaction was to not offer standard keyboards and mice (which would have been trivially easy since the controller ports were modified USB) and discourage many PC ports. Instead, they should have sought to gain the market of people who would buy more PC games if it weren't for the hassles involved. Rather than downplay the PC underpinnings of the Xbox they should have been embraced. Companies like Blizzard should have been encouraged to port all their hits. The PS1 had a version of Diablo but Diablo II never made a console appearance. It should have been an Xbox game, along with Starraft, WarCraft III, etc. Bungie's rich RTS library should have been tapped for the Xbox. The Xbox could have been the exclusive console home for so many more games. For people who prefer the ease of use and reliability of console it wouldn't have mattered whether the game also had a PC version.

But that is all just ancient history now.

epobirs -

The point I was trying to make about FF not being a system seller is it was not the factor in building the PS2 to the 100 million unit mark. If it was, a lot more of those 100 million users would have purchased it. It is hard to guess just how many of those 7 million FFX units sold the PS2 as well as opposed to how many picked it up because they already had the unit. If it stands that only 3 million were purchasing the system for FF, and not the other way around, then the FF factor in selling the system would be used up in the launch window. Maybe that number stands around 4-5 million, closer to the sales of subsequent titles in the series after the first iteration. After that point, it becomes a non-factor, with the remainder of the FF units selling because of the high install base.

I was using it as an example for those trying to laundry list their way into explaining why the PS3 is a guaranteed success. Dumping out Final Fantasy guarantees around 3-4 million units being sold. Maybe another million for MGS4 (factoring in cross-over effect). The question is, where are the other 95-97 million going to come from?

Using Halo as the contrasting example was solid. Halo sold systems. If 30% of your base had it, that means people bought your system FOR that game. It also goes to show just how limited any single title or series is to sell units. Halo was popular, just as popular as FF, but it didn't exactly push the Xbox to the top. Same can be said for Final Fantasy on the PS3. It could forever be a PS3 exclusive, but that doesn't mean the system won't come in second or even dead last.

For the millions of people who bitch and complain about not liking first person shooters, there are just as many who bitch and complain about not liking console roleplaying games. No game or series will ever determine a console's success. It was Sony's ability to get a head start that won the generation, not Metal Gear Solid. All the rest of those titles followed because of the install base, and the momentum just kept on going.

"It was Sony's ability to get a head start that won the generation, not Metal Gear Solid. All the rest of those titles followed because of the install base, and the momentum just kept on going."

I second that!

Actually, it was a lot of things that won it for Sony, but I think the early lead was the greatest contributing factor. The PS2 was well-priced (not the cheapest, but not too far from the cheapest), had strong Japense development support, strong overall 3rd party support, doubled up as a DVD player, and had a strong variety of different types of games. Compare that to the XBox, which cost more, had the possibilty of playing DVDs after buying the $30 add-on, didn't have a name yet for video game consoles, had one HUGE hit with Halo but a slow launch overall, and a fatass ugly controller. And, compare to the GameCube, which cost a bit less than the PS2, but only really had Nintendo games going for it and it is clear why PS2 became the victor. I still believe the early launch of the PS2 was the most beneficial factor to the PS2's success, but it was really all those other combined elements that gave them the victory.

And now with PS3 Sony is losing developer support (assuming the poll will reflect their future support, or at least affect their future support), has a price twice that of the PS2, and doubles up as a BluRay player (which almost seems irrelevent given the price). The large price will lose mainstream appeal, the added BluRay will only appeal to techjunkies that already have a good HDTV, and the lower developer support will not please gamers.

I can't wait to see who will be the victor this generation, but I can pretty much gaurentee it will not be PS3.

#82

Not dis agreeing so much as wrangling over details.

LT, the point I was trying to make was that'system sellers' don't matter all that much. The GameCube and Xbox had the two strongest first party titles of the generation in SSMB and the Halos. All those did was prevent the massive gap between them and the PS2 from being even larger.

PS3, despite the Omigod price tag, has the same huge advantage going in as the PS2 did. Even with a dismal selection og game months after launch, there were a huge base of people who believed the PS2 would match the PS1 in delivering something for everyone.

THat power comes not from any one system seller but from a legion of them, including many games that wouldn't get that label in most circumstances. When you have such a huge variety you can cater to a lot of niche audiences without really trying.

With both the PS1 and PS2 I noticed that a store with a big gaming department would often have an entire aisle, both sides for the PS1 and later PS2 stuff, but only one side of an aisle for Xbox or GameCube. Worse, sometimes the GameBoy got most of an aisle and the Nintendo console of the era got the leftover portion.

That was because the Playstations had the volume and variety of games to fill all of that space, and the sales to justify holding it. That diffence in display area had to have some effect on shoppers who hadn't committed to a console choice yet. By the time the PS2 was on the horizon plenty of them were willing to bet sight unseen that the pattern would continue.

OTOH, the PS2's earlier release would have been worthless if there wasn't high confidence in the eventual release of highly desirable games. Remember, the launch lineup was mediocre at best and hadn't improved all that much when the Xbox and Halo made the scene. But there had been some awesome demos and those counted for a lot of trust from the consumers who bought many millions of the machines before there was much decent native games. So just imagine if there had been a major launch title in addition to that, especially if it were an FPS and reduced much of Halo's impact.

Sony is banking that they can do it again, price and all. They may even regard the loss of some marketshare an acceptable loss if the HD disc format goes their way on the strength of a large PS3 installed base. The willingness to make such a sacrifice can be distressing to those who want the machine to be about games with playing movies a distant second.

"Sony is banking that they can do it again, price and all."

Yeah, but the real question is whether they CAN do it, price and all. Your comments about PS2 having a huge catlog of games that caters to a wide variety of gamers is perfectly valid, but will PS3 really be able to match that? I'm sure many of those niche' gamers that enjoyed PS2 won't be so pleased with the PS3's price, and if less people buy it, less developers will support it, and if less developers support it then less people will buy it, etc. (it's a vicious cycle). I still think Sony would have been better off ditching the BluRay and keeping the price more affordable. Well, from a gaming perspective that is. From a business perspective it makes sense, even though it is a large risk there could be a HUGE payoff if BluRay succeeds. I think that is why I've always been preferential to Nintendo, because their entire business is video games, they don't have anything like BluRay or whathaveyou to distract them from making a great gaming machine.

Anyway, I seem to have rambled a bit off topic there. I still think Nintendo is going to make a comeback with Wii, while MS and Sony will fight for second place.

Another reason that developers are wary about the PS3 is because according to G4 game could reach to $100 us. With a $600 system and $100 games people will be less inclined to buy overpriced games when a $40 cheaper game with similar quaility is sitting across from it. People now are aking why a 360 game cost $60 when an xbox or a PS2 game cost around $50. Wait to when the PS3 comes out with $100 games on it.
The PS3 is also difficult and expensive to develop games for, so developers will push the cost of game development on the cunsumer. Who then will feel cheated because the 360 version of the game looks and feels like a carbon copy of the PS3 version of the game. Without the GIANT ENEMY CRABS.

You are all wrong, I would agree with you If the 360 was selling but it's actually doing worse than the xbox and it's competing by itself. I remember one console that had the earlier release it was called the dreamcast and also a lower pricepoint yet it failed bigtime. This generation it's all about nintendo and playstation, xbox is out.

Playstation has a masive userbase that's only going to get bigger, nintendo always has it fans and xbox has the smallest following which is going to get smaller and smaller. Xbox is a lot like sega, they even have Peter Moore, the only difference is they can sustain a loss for longer. Xbox is for the few, playstation is for the masses.

Sony is not losing any developer support, people will always bitch and complain it's human nature in the end they'll go where the money is. And the money is in the playstation with over 1.89 billion games sold it's very hard for developers to ignore that.

And games are not going to be 100.00 only idiots that listen trough their ass think this is true. When the PS3 takes off and the cycle starts again even more people will flock to the playstation. Halo and Gears of War can't do anything about it, neither can MS. This is just what it is bad press nothing more, words never killed anyone actions do. No matter what you say, make up or lie about the PS3 is going to be number 1.

My opinion is that main point is not if Sony will or will not win in raw numbers of sold consoles but if they sell consoles+games enough to make this huge PS3 bizz profitable (pay all expenses for pS3, pay development cost of PS4, make some profit etc. etc.). If they are setting cost of the console sooooo high and they know competition is much lower (and can got to the 300$ range without problem) then they are, that means all this PS3 fun was very expensive and someone has to pay the chek. They have huge base of PS2 owners but maybe this time they will loose some weight.

backwards support will not help the PS3 if the system cost more than the PS2 and the 360 combined.

#77 Nalgae, it is currently illegal and culturally frowned upon for a game publisher to send thugs to a pirate’s home to make an example of him. Cultures change and laws are just words on paper composed by lawyers and politicians, so hey, who’s to say it’s wrong if you find yourself lying on the floor with two broken legs and the latest PS2 Jam Pack autographed by Ken Kutaragi left as a hint.

It is unarguably illegal today but with growing disrespect for intellectual property we’ll see how that holds up.

Your rationalizations just don’t work. I didn’t say the Best Supporting Actor guy could have made $20 million. Just because somebody else can do better does not mean it is within the reach of all. In the real world people are not inherently equal in talents. Equality under the law is just another one of those funny human mental artifacts. The analogy to the N64, as I believe you understand perfectly well, is that the guy enjoying the life most could only dream of cannot be termed a failure merely because someone else is doing better still. Not all factors are relative. There are hard lines that define success in a business venture with profitability being the most prominent. The N64 was a business venture that produced substantial profits for Nintendo. It is by the most critical measure a success. That the company hoped for better does not change the fact of that success, only the scale of it. The failures would be attempts like 3DO and the Jaguar. Guys with bit parts who worked for SAG scale and cannot keep up with their alimony payments.

You may term the machine a failure for your own purposes because you regard ease of piracy as an attractive feature. That is a highly selective criterion not shared by anyone with a legitimate interest in the machine’s success.

Your line of patter doesn’t fly with me because I heard it from my own mouth more than twenty years ago. It was a petty self-serving rationalization then and is still today.

Back in the early 80s the hot gaming machine was the Atari 800 computer. But there was surprisingly little money to be made producing a critically acclaimed game for it. Because like so many since, we told ourselves we were just test driving these games and that we’d buy the really good ones. Yet somehow, once we had access to every game, the bar kept getting raised so that the purchases of anything except blank floppies became terribly rare. You could see the pattern repeated whenever you saw a person’s home setup for the first time. There would be a small pile of store bought games that ends at a certain date that coincides with the period not long after the person started getting access to pirated games. There would maybe one more purchase of a major title, than nothing but storage bins for hundreds of floppies. Somehow, no matter how good the games were, the money was never there for making good on the promise to buy.

Interestingly, the one guy I knew who had the largest collection of legitimate software had it only because the collecting was a hobby beyond playing the games. He ran a BBS that offered plenty of illicit downloads (I can remember getting Donkey Kong, Jr. from his BBS at 300 Baud.) that he used as trade goods for hard to find originals. He had the only original disk of Synapse’s Protector I ever saw. The company was sued on the basis of the game being too much of a Defender clone when only a few units had made it to stores. Non-pirates only knew the much altered Protector II version. So that floppy was quite a prize among those who knew the full story. (Strange unrelated item: That guy, Rob Rosencrantz, spent most of his life since those days in prison for murder. It had nothing to do with the piracy stuff. He was gay but wasn’t prepared to come out to his parents yet, when Rob’s younger brother and a friend spotted him in the act with another man. The brother’s friend immediately decided he had to tell the world and in a panic Rob tracked him down and killed him. It’s a really weird moment when you get together with some friends to exchange the latest software and one of them mentions that a mutual acquaintance is a fugitive following a murder. It was completely unbelievable until a few months later; the LA Times ran a whole page on him after he finally turned himself in.)

Piracy was really rampant on the Atari and it went a long ways toward killing the platform. Our excuses rang truer back then. Demo disks were extremely rare. Downloadable demos were little more than a concept for the far future. There was no web and magazine lead times meant it could be two months or more before a decent cross-section of reviews for a new game could be assessed. Unless you knew a store that would allow you to try out a game or a friend had already taken the plunge, it was a big risk buying any new software until months after its release. One exception was if the game had already appeared on the Apple II and could be reliably expected to be identical on the Atari.

Nobody has that excuse anymore. For the last decade downloadable demos of PC games have become the rule rather than the exception. Free demo discs for many titles are available, often covering several games and showing up in the mail unrequested if you’ve registered your hardware with its maker. Thanks to the web and well coordinated advance delivery of beta versions to the larger sites, an array of reviews for a new game is typically available on the day it officially goes on sale. And for those who can only accept the judgment of their own direct experience, nearly all of the big chain rental outlets offer all you can eat subscriptions that are competitive with the cost of blank media consumed by someone who would otherwise sample a wide array of titles via piracy. It isn’t $5 blown on a bad rental. It’s $10-20 a month on access to so many games that few could ever hope to find time for all of them. You still need reviews just to winnow the choices down to those worth trying out for one night.

The excuses were never valid but they are all the less valid today.

My perspective really changed when I just a job at a developer and publisher of games. Piracy really stops being so easy to excuse when you know the direct economic consequences. Human nature means that the promise to buy rarely becomes a real purchase. This is really driven home when you know exactly what the sales levels are for a game that is being widely praised by users in numbers hugely out of proportion of the game’s earnings.

All these folks say they’ll buy for real if the game is really good, so where are the sales for this title?

One incident has really stuck with me. A bunch of Amiga owners were hanging around this store that was one of the biggest Amiga hardware and software dealers in LA County. The subject of a particular new-ish game came up. It represented a major technological leap and was a hell of a lot of fun as well. The conversation made it apparent that every one of these half-dozen people had more than a passing familiarity with this game. We all had a copy in our possession. Just then the manager interjected that it was strange that the store had only sold one copy so far. Things got very quiet until the conversation was steered elsewhere. Every one of us was guilty of the same offense and we knew it. Nor could we deny it was wrong on more than just a legal level.

The difference between pirating that game and crimes we would never dream of committing was the lack of direct consequences for us. The mere knowledge that it was genuinely wrong and that our rationalizations were just lengthy lies wasn’t enough to deter us when it was so easy. At least, until a certain level of maturity set in.

Yes, I know people with modded system. I’ve BEEN people with modded systems, going all the way back to the ‘upgrade’ Atari 810 disk drive I had way back when. I know firsthand how rarely people can back up their claims if you were to visit their home on short notice and ask them to produce their most recent legit game purchase.

Some people have modded systems solely for access to imports and those imports are legit units. You can tell at a glance when that is the person’s motive. The Japanese games are present in quantity. It’s also pretty obvious what a person is really about when you can spot a hell of a lot of optical media labeled with a Sharpie scrawl and little or no legit software in sight. If those pirate copies are just for trying out the games, why do they seem to linger long after they’ve been found unworthy of a purchase?

You admit that some games are good enough to steal but not to buy. This immediately demolishes your ‘test drive’ rationale. So, is it OK to steal food from a fast food joint but not from a four star restaurant? That something wasn’t as pleasing as a superior product doesn’t change the fact you’re committing theft if you choose to keep it without paying for it. Is it really about rewarding the makers of superlative games or is it about how having those games on display in your home makes you feel about yourself and the perception you believe it inspires in others?

The worst part is when you try to claim some justification with you strange last paragraph. This is reminiscent of the excuse that musicians were treated badly by record labels and thus it was OK to steal the music. None of these developers were coerced to enter the field and their earnings are quite good for the relatively low level of education required compared to elsewhere in professional programming. It’s one of the few pro coding gigs you can get started on the basis of a homemade portfolio of demos. One successful shareware game can easily trump a university degree. Some may complain but most of the professional game programmers I’ve known, which is quite a few, wouldn’t trade it for nearly any other job they feel qualified to do. They made some changes in how they did the job as things like buying a house and raising kids became important but that was more a matter of going where the dependable work was to be found rather than pursuing dreams as they did in the days when they were bachelors with a passion for the Amiga. So you end up putting in time on less than glamorous projects because the company is stable and has never missed payroll.

Likewise, an executive supervising a dozen or more people earning at the $80K level should be making at least $120K if he’s truly any good at his job. The only reason why he wouldn’t is if other forms of compensation were involved, such as an ownership position in the company.

You also make an odd comment about the ‘high life’ as if only the wealthy can afford to pay for all of the games they keep in their home. This again is just nonsensical rationalization to excuse the greed that drives you to do something you fully know is wrong. This is the mindset that tries to saddle the wealthy as being the sole financial support of a business whose products you consume and that somehow you’re owed this because somehow that wealth was obtained by causing you to not be wealthy.

I’ve never earned more than enough to lead a lower middle class existence with no dependents, yet I’ve over two thousand legitimately obtained games. True, they’d be quite expensive if I was in the habit of buying newly released titles but I do not. I like to examine a wide variety of games and so my purchases wait until the prices have dropped considerably.

Consider these two recent clearance sales from major retail chains and the variety of games listed, including many of excellent repute.

http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96306

http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98253

When very good games are being blown out for as little as $5 each, I find it extremely difficult to take any excuse for piracy as anything other than simply making excuses for criminal behavior where consequences aren’t threatened. If you are truly so impoverished you cannot manage to keep your game habit fed at these price, how is it you have the free time for games? Isn’t there some study or work that has higher priority in pursuit of an honest income that allows for a few luxuries like heavily discounted games?