Sony's press is getting worse and worse after analysts took note of the PS3 launch. As predicted, Sony missed the 400,000 goal for US launch; many analysts predicted they only reached half that amount. To add insult to injury, some analysts expect Sony to only make roughly 10% of the original 4 million promised by year's end. Ouch!
In a report compiled by Bloomberg, Sony failed to ship even enough units to cover promised pre-orders to half of 150 stores surveyed. SooAnn Roberts, analyst with Kaufman Bros. (the company that surveyed the stores), is convinced that Sony may fail to ship more than 200,000 by year's end. Other analysts think Sony made 200,000 for launch and will struggle to match that number over the next month. Either way, Sony is in some serious trouble.
Even with all the problems they've had over the past year, the PS3 production problems will hit home with the consumer who rarely checks up on the news lines. While a myriad of issues plague the PS3's production, the biggest killer is the decision to use Blu-ray. Will the 50GB disc capacity be enough to make up for the nearly one year delay and significantly diminished production capacity, not to mention the price?
_thumbnail.jpg "i am 8-bit: 2008")
(Page 1) Reader Comments
Reply
well... maybe not trust.
Reply
If they wanted this machine to do all of things that it does, why didn't they plan accordingly to get the product to market?
Of course it's cutting-edge tech and all of that but at some point you have to stop trying to do *everything* half-way and just do *something* well.
Reply
:D
Reply
Reply
Reply
How long will you Sony Fanboy hold out until you need next gen in your home?
Gears of War and Twilight Princess are mighty appealing are they not?
Reply
They need to get their act together, or else ps3 will go the way of the dreamcast. I want sony to succeed, but come on guys.
Sony is starting to look like Delta airlines, can't do anything right.
Reply
1. I could sell it, and buy another later.
2. I don't want to have a buggy system.
3. There wont be any good games for awhile.
When MGS4 comes out, then i'll be sold.
Reply
sony makes good products and itd be a shame if they turned out like sega
http://www.petitiononline.com/ps3/petition.html
Reply
Reply
Reply
the mgs games are in my opinion the playstations best exclusives, gran turismo and final fantasy are good but i could go without them. mgs has a story to it and i guess many people just wanna see how it ends. final fantasys a good role playing but im sure we will see many just as good rpgs on the 360. and gran turismo is a good racing game but ive been seriously impressed by the likes of burnout and pgr on the ps3. mgs is a bit unique and so atm for me is the ps3's 'killer app'
if mgs4 comes out on the 360 the ps3 in finished as far as im concerned (as in il never buy one)
im not a fanboy for any console, i just get the best ;)
http://www.petitiononline.com/ps3/petition.html
Reply
Reply
Reply
It comes down to the console specific games. An extremely small base for which to market games means that the developers putting out the PS3 specific games may be more easily loured away. Extreme shortages of PS3s, and no relief in sight means that many potential buyers will go else where. By the time PS3s reach market in bulk many of their target audience may already be gone.
Thats just one of many reasons why this is BAD, caps required to properly reflect the badness.
Reply
Reply
Tom, whatever you're smoking, I totally got to get me some of that.
"...the ps3 has too many positive things going for it."
And what, pray tell, would those positive things be? Blu-Ray??? 1080p???? The games????
Reply
im not! i love sega and my dreamcast! but i wish sega had done things differently and where still making consoles lol coz they rock!
i love sony but i dont want them to end up having to stop making consoles and scale down their business for trying to deliver more than they can
:)
Reply
Reply
Reply
The other day at the Coolidge Corner EBGames, (a place I know some of the Joystiq editors frequent) I was picking up FFV Advance and HL2 (strangely never played it), and a mother who had left her kids in the store during some Trader Joe's shopping came in, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the PS3 kiosk, (playing Motorstorm, or something dumb like that) and stopped to gaze at it for like a minute....then she turned to the employees and said "WOW! That's incredibly life-like" etc. etc.
You combine that "WOW" factor with the incredible hype that was on display at the launch, and you have a potent combination. The fact that celebrities are buying this console in droves can't be underplayed - ...you WILL see PS3s in Pimp My Ride and not the Nintendo Wii (and not just because of the accident-prone-ness of the latter). I really don't see Sony ever getting to a point where they have a hard time moving these machines, even when production gets ramped up big time.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Oh the horror! :P
Reply
That DVD like image quality is what you should typically expect from a bluRay disc unless it uses VC1 compression. And since Microsoft owns the VC1 rights, you shouldn't expect any movie from Sony to use VC1. Other studios that support both HD-DVD and bluRay will more likely be using VC1 for their bluRays.
The thing that gets me about bluRay is the lack of image quality consistancey.. In that I mean that you have 3 different codec compressions the studios can use. With the HD-DVD the defacto standard by the studios that support HD-DVD is VC1. I know both formats can output the same quality, but when buying a movie you will start to wonder if the movie has been encoded with MPEG2 or H.264 or VC1. HD-DVD is simple in that, if its a movie it will be in VC1. And thats why I said the bluRay is missing in image quality consistancy.
Reply
I got the Wii and no launch complications. It is nice to really want a system and to be able to get it with no snags or concerns if this product make it a year.
Reply
Reply
Speaking of which, hasn't anyone else noticed Sony's campaign of false advertising? In the PS3 print ad in the latest issue of WIRED, they tout the Cell as having eight SPEs, even though it's been over a year since the count was reduced to seven to overcome severely low yields of full spec Cells.
Reply
What you fail to realize is that sony has had 9 months to work out MFG kinks in blu-ray player and cell processor, and they haven't/can't. Do you think one day they magically will? It'll go from suck to success overnight? I work in MFG, it doesn't happen that way. If they are still having the huge problems now, it'll be 3 to 6 months before the kinks now are worked out and then another 3 to 6 months before all the NEW kinks are worked out.
What the BIG picture means, is that sony will only be producing 200,000 to 400,000 units a month for the next 6 months to a year. Thats a range of 1.2 million to 3.6 million produced between now and next christmas. Do you really think that a year from now, when there are only 4 million PS3 in homes that 3rd party support won't jump to x360 which will have at least 15 million (maybe 20) or Wii which will have 10 to 15 million?
DO you think publishers will honestly think thats a good idea? This is VERY BAD NEWS for sony. Fanboyism has NOTHING to do with it. If sony can't ramp up production to where they need it within the next 6 months, they are done. PS3 will be as great a failure as the N64: No third party support means alot less games, means alot less interested parties (consumers), means lackluster sales once production does ramp up.
Once again. VERY BAD NEWS.
Reply
Cell does have 8 SPEs.. the Cell Broadband Processor in the PS3 has 7... its like Nintendo saying that 480p = HD.
Reply
The PS3 will likely come back a bit once more units are available, and better games are out... but right now, holiday season '06, is a crucial time for the three companies to get their consoles into homes. Publishers / developers are going to notice when there are millions of 360's and Wii's going around, and only a few hundred thousand PS3's. The number of these consoles in people's homes directly affects the success of their software, and any reasonable publisher is going to put pressure on it's devs to get software out for the more prevalent platforms. Retailers will also notice the lack of software / hardware sales, and will adjust the amount of space they devote in their store to the PS3 accordingly. What do you think happened to the PSP?
And >, I gotta say... once again you have blown me away with your own strange brand of fanboyism / stupidity. I haven't read or heard anything about Slate giving bad marks to Wii, and I do not own one or plan on getting one anytime soon, but do you really expect Slate, part of the MSN network, to give a fair review to the other consoles?
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
"I haven't read or heard anything about Slate giving bad marks to Wii, and I do not own one or plan on getting one anytime soon, but do you really expect Slate, part of the MSN network, to give a fair review to the other consoles?"
Not that I'm defending ">", but for the sake of accuracy the Slate/Wii story was just a few posts down on Joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com/2006/11/21/slate-on-wii-ennui/)
And, Microsoft no longer has any interest in Slate:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5499575.html
Reply
Reply
18: Your ideas sound more like their more involved in video game journalism ideas and opinions rather than thinking of the long-term business outcomes.
Of course I understand that a shortage of systems means a shortage of customers to purchase games. My point is regarding the extreme amount of people around the world. To me, this speaks volumes about how badly people want a ps3 (or, as a counterpoint to myself, how badly they want to sell a ps3). Regardless, the willingness of people to spend thousands of dollars on a system at least surpasses the demand for the 360 a little bit. I think people may be discounting Sony a bit prematurely, and accuse them of going the way of the Dreamcast, but I think it is important to remember than Sony is a much larger company than Sega was at tha t time, with many more resources at their disposal, and they will be able to vamp up their production, eventually, to meet the demand. Even if percentages of people become fed up with waiting for a ps3, my instict tells me that it really won't be enough to make the ps3 less successful than the 360.
Reply
Haha I used to work there. All the cool people who worked there left a long time ago.
Reply
No, it's like saying that blu ray discs are 50 gig, when there isn't a retail 50 gig disc yet, asshat. Harddrives can hold 100 terabytes, so we'll say that our playstation 3 has a harddrive, and in the same paragraph talk about how hard drives can hold 100 terabytes, so you'll think that the ps3 has 100 terabytes! Awesome!
pay the marketing people all of sony's money, because they sure as hell didn't use it on product testing and manufacturing costs.
Way to go asshat.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
It still pains me that such an idiot uses the name of the greatest video game ever made.
And what the hell is with the insinuation that I'm that > character? That guy is pretty much a childish moron. So are the vast majority of the choir of hype-drunk Wii-lovers. But I don't go around and obsfucate them with people who I might disagree with on some points yet make coherent arguments (32footsteps, etc). For you to lump two very clearly different people in together like that is indeed a disgusting case of rampant fanboyism.
As for what you said - this is the silliest claim I have ever read on this site. You think that manufacturing rates won't increase for a year, and that Sony will only have 1.5 mil available by Winter '07??? I don't even know how you could possibly think that is true. They've been working on getting the PS3 itself ready this past year - now they can turn their attention to solving the blue diode production issues. Oh, and they tend to figure out how to produce things more quickly and cheaply over time. Now excuse me, I need to go teach some children that 2 + 2 = 4.
Reply
And I did exaggerate a bit. There's a bit of math I didn't throw in there because I didn't know what sony "target" number for manufacturing would be "per month".
Lets assume the target number is 2 million per month. Worst case is 2.4 million for the first 6 months (thats 200,000 per month) and an additional 2 million per month after that. So sony could produce 14.4 million by next christmas, vs MS 20 million sold and nintendo's 10-20 million sold.
So if PS3 sells out every month until next year christmas (which never happens) we're talking about 15 million installed. It all depends on how well the other 2 do before we can call it doom and gloom, but I think the 360 will do very well because of no PS3's to buy, and Wii is already doing very well because of its uniqueness.
Reply
"but I think the 360 will do very well because of no PS3's to buy"
You're exactly right. In fact, the 360 & Wii (assuming Nintendo keeps on pumping out units) are the only new consoles that retailers are able to really push this season.
The bestbuy & futureshop in my area, as well as costco, are already pushing the 360 really hard. Right now, you can buy a 360 with GRAW, Live Aracde, 20GB detatchable HD, wireless controller and a headset for 499.99.
That's a decent deal.
Reply
I'd guesstimate the number of PS3s sold by Winter '07 at 9 million. I think that's fair. And I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii does 10-12 mil by that time.
Reply
One other thing about the number of cels in use on the PS3. All the chips are tested before they are installed. The max number of cels being functional is 7, the minimum allowable is 5 and there are very, very, very few 7's. The problem with the CPU is that a MAJORITY of those chips are working at 4 cels or less so they have to be tossed. How long before Sony starts using those CPU's to try and get a hold of their production shortfall? Do you know how many cels are working in your PS3 (assuming you actually could get one)?
Reply
Reply