Sony staff cuts unlikely to affect games division

That's too bad. They should layoff the marketing/advertisement team if you ask me.

Can you say Sega?

I suppose that, being a gamer and all, this seems kind of like a whole "lesser of two evils" thing.

People at Sony are losing jobs, but it doesn't affect the PS3. Still, I hope everyone can weather this financial storm, no matter what job they have or had.

This may sound crazy, but with Nintendo making money hand over fist and Sony supposedly losing money at abut the same rate Nintendo should buy the Playstation brand from Sony. Big N can sell the PS3 and the Wii since there are not alot of people cross shopping. It could work the same way as most all car companies (granted not the most successful sector right now). BMW for example makes the fun cheap MINI Cooper (Wii) and the over the top gizmos out the gills sports sedan M5 (PS3). I can't imagine there are many people trying to choose between the two (and just for the sake of continuing the analogy the DS or PSP would be the BMW motocycles). So if Nintedo bought PS they could have options to both hardcore and casual gamers. Not to mention sharing the PS Network (hopefully) between the two. If your not convinced just imagine a LBP on the Wii or Zelda and Metroid on the PS3.

Sony should make the cuts in their marketing department.Everybody knows it must be done.

Of course that after that they should hire people that actually know how to manage publicity and cut all of that subrealist crap.

I don't think I have the endurance for another war today, but I fully welcome the insane blabber from Gundam.

I don't think it has anything to do with PR or publicity. Look at all the gaffes MS has had with the 360 and RRoD issues, and yet, they are doing better than their first go round in the console business.

I think the real problem were the decisions Sony made. Those decisions on the PS3 model is what is causing this problem.

1 - tough new architecture which is difficult for developers to code properly in early on. Results in high cost to produce titles and game studios going out of business when they release a turd.

2 - relatively high (initial) cost of the console. Even though it may be the "best" box technically, a lot of people are opting for the 306 or Wii. The cost of entry is high and this puts off some quantity of people. A 400 dollar box is not as much an impulese buy as a 250 or 200 dollar box.

3 - delays. The ps3 came out one year late for various reasons if you compare to the 360. Even though the 360 suffered reliability issues, it managed to cement a user base early. Many games got delayed that were shown at the E3s before it was released. One thing I think is funny about the PS3 is that so much about is "coming next year" type stuff. Having MS release the 360 one full year in advance I believe ends up being better for MS vs Sony in this case, even with the initial hardware issues. Of course, Nintendo showed they had the best business plan even though they were generally considered to be the ones coming out last this gen. How could the entire internet be wrong? I digress.

4 - leveraging BR. This worked for a time to get people to rationalize why getting an expensive game machine made sense; it's not just a game machine, it plays BRUE-RAY!. Well, that aspect is now gone as BR players can be had for much less. Personally, I prefer a dedicated player that looks like my current DVD player. BR caused initial high prices and delays due to shortages of the diode. In the mean time, MS was happily selling whatever it could. I'm sure quite a few people bought 360s because PS3s were very scarce.

5 - hardware merry go round - announcing the ps3 with a certain feature set, and then gradually removing all those things that were being touted. 100% (or close) BC, then software BC, then NO BC. At least MS stayed consistent. In this area, you never felt like you were losing anything, and in-fact, felt like you gained each time new titles were added by MS to the BC list. Also, removing of media ports and going from dual HDMI to single. Obviously, these were all done to reduce cost. This to me proves that the initial strategy was wrong whereby the cost of the system was high due to everything that was packed into it. With the hardware reduced and the price still 400.00 to get started, they are still behind the 8 ball relative to the other consoles, regardless if whether it is the best value. Heck, a 747 may be a great value at 10 million, but that does not mean I would get one.

Anyway, I think those things are Sony's issues and they were magnified because it seems like the initial decisions were made in a vacuum which did not really exist. The competitors were out there and were very competent.

The PS3 is not doing bad per se, but when you compare where it is vs expectations or even the competition it is not looking good. They are in third and will end up that way at the point where this gen of consoles is no longer relevant.

There are a couple of things we should remember. One, the R&D budgets and the losses on the PS3 in its first 18 months are sunk costs - Sony would desperately want to recoup those losses, but if you consider only future cash flows, they are close to break even on console costs now and adding royalties on games and blu-ray sales, the PS3 is probably already profitable. So, they could keep selling 10-20 million a year for several years at say 299$ as the cost is likely to drop to 200$ or even lower over time and make massive cash flows (though probably not enough to offset their initial losses).
Plus, we have seen PS3 sales broadly = 360 sales over the last 2 years with a $200 price gap, lower games library, intense negative propoganda (cell cant do games, not enough RAM, etc etc). Well its going to 299$ soon, within reach of most people, AND the games library of 2009 is awesome (while the wii and 360 have a famine) AND killzone 2 / Uncharted 2 are going to ram all the slander about the PS3's capability down the throats of its doubters. So, we can imagine which direction sales will go.

Secondly, sometime they will launch the PS4(just like MS/N will launch wii 2 or 720). And thats where all the pain would pay off. All Sony needs is to add a bigger hard drive, some extra EDRAM / video RAM and maybe a second cell, and they will be good to go with ZERO R&D costs - even the console design doesn't need changing. Plus, the Playstation brand is probably stronger now - no 30% defect rate like 360.

The ironic thing is that Microsoft are cutting jobs from the (now profitable) Xbox devision, but Sony aren't cutting any jobs from their (bleeding money) PlayStation devision.

Shame the people cut will be the hard working guys, not the clueless, out of touch, idiots who got them into the mess in the first place.

I'd start with Mr "Five hundred and ninety-nine U.S. Dollars" guy.

where's sprinkles at??? oh, right, the cuts aren't affecting the games division, so he doesn't have shit to bitch about.