No PlayStation 3 Price Cuts - Official

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Topic started: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 10:52
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Joji
Joined 12 Mar 2004
3960 comments
Mon, 4 Jun 2007 13:36
MS ditching of the original Xbox, was a necessary but desperate sacrifice, to get to the next gen market first, and it worked too. While they are loosing money a bit, 360 has built up a great community, inherited and improved Live, XNA etc. More thought has gone into 360 this time and eventually MS will be in a better position than Sony because of it. Never mind the lack of HD-DVD, the option is there if you want it, but its not needed unless you really want it.

PS3 has a problem and that problem is Blu Ray. Its come at a time when everyone is moving from playable dvd to recordable/hard drive dvd players. When such players are cheaper, and to a degree multiregion, where does this leave PS3? Sure, it has a better more crisp visuals with HDMI, but requiring a hd tv to see them, many won't bother with that.

Had Sony left out Blu Ray, (which would have eventually come out as normal players anyway) I bet PS3 would be rocketing off shelves. Games would be cheaper to make like PS2 and there would be more of them. The rush of Blu Ray and movies has set them back worse in games, and its debatable if they'll recover from it, while 360 and Wii do tag team on them. Right now, with the lack of price drop and sales apathy must be worrying Sony. The true danger is the longer they wait, the more ground they'll loose and eventually be past the point of no return.

That point of no return we've seen before, PSP was there and in this same position against DS. DS got to the market first and after a while, had stronger games, which PSP struggled to compete with. PSP got to the market late (in u.k/eu anyway, just like PS3 strangely) but with not enough decent games to justify it. One year pasted with DS still in the lead, and I said in these forums then, that Sony and PSP wouldn't recover properly, many doubted me. Almost two years on and PSP is still in trouble, with DS selling faster than Nintendo can make them and a PSP price cut that came too late. So, if this same kind of pattern is repeated with PS3, I can see it bombing or just not doing as well as expected. Once 360 Elite, Halo 3 etc hit home it may be too late, come this xmas or new year. Sure, Sony can plan for PS3 to be out for ten years, but without that price cut, its still overpriced and out of many potential customer hands. Good games or not.



ICANSEEU
Anonymous
Mon, 4 Jun 2007 13:53
can you explain how the psp is in trouble? The last I heard the psp outsells the ds in europe and is on par for sales in the us.Japan is the only place where ds sales outstrip psp sales by and huge margin. The ds only has aprox a 60% share of the hand held market conmpared to the 40% for the psp. Not bad considering the psp is sony first attempt at a handheld console and nintenedos expertise in the market.
Ditto
Joined 10 Jun 2004
1169 comments
Mon, 4 Jun 2007 14:06
Joji wrote:
MS ditching of the original Xbox, was a necessary but desperate sacrifice, to get to the next gen market first, and it worked too. While they are loosing money a bit, 360 has built up a great community, inherited and improved Live, XNA etc. More thought has gone into 360 this time and eventually MS will be in a better position than Sony because of it.


I agree here.

PS3 has a problem and that problem is Blu Ray. Its come at a time when everyone is moving from playable dvd to recordable/hard drive dvd players. When such players are cheaper, and to a degree multiregion, where does this leave PS3? Sure, it has a better more crisp visuals with HDMI, but requiring a hd tv to see them, many won't bother with that


In my opinion Blu-ray is an advantage to Sony and PS3. Blu-ray discs allow bigger games which may be needed towards the end of the generation. Putting Blu-ray in PS3 means Sony already have a huge installed userbase of Blu-ray players, the users of many of which will probably purchase Blu-ray discs since the player is there. Sony have a really got chance of winning the format war now, and signs are Blu-ray is having an increasingly lead over HD-DVD.

Had Sony left out Blu Ray, (which would have eventually come out as normal players anyway) I bet PS3 would be rocketing off shelves.


I disagree, as IMO the main problems are price and lack of games. Without more games I don't think the PS3 would sell that many more units anyway.

Games would be cheaper to make like PS2 and there would be more of them.


Games would be cheaper to produce not make in terms of the development process. The cost of a disc is negligable compared to the cost of developing a game. This is a no-issue.

The rush of Blu Ray and movies has set them back worse in games, and its debatable if they'll recover from it, while 360 and Wii do tag team on them.


I don't think this is true, consideirng the movie parts of Sony are separate from the game parts.

Right now, with the lack of price drop and sales apathy must be worrying Sony. The true danger is the longer they wait, the more ground they'll loose and eventually be past the point of no return.


If Sony wanted to reduce the price, they would reduce the price. Granted if I were Sony I would be concerned, but would look to getting higher-quality games out in the future to cause customers to purchase.

That point of no return we've seen before, PSP was there and in this same position against DS. DS got to the market first and after a while, had stronger games, which PSP struggled to compete with. PSP got to the market late (in u.k/eu anyway, just like PS3 strangely) but with not enough decent games to justify it. One year pasted with DS still in the lead, and I said in these forums then, that Sony and PSP wouldn't recover properly, many doubted me.


PSP seems to be doing fine. Even with a 3:1 ratio in Japan which is by far the worst this is 25% of the market. Not bad for a first attempt. I would imagine it's selling more in Europe/US.
Joji
Joined 12 Mar 2004
3960 comments
Mon, 4 Jun 2007 14:27
Maybe I worded it wrong AdamM. I meant PS3 games are more expensive to develop because of Blu Ray. What happens if you don't make that money back? This is why many may see 360 or Wii as better options.

Yes, I know PSP has the lesser market share, but to my many PSP was supposed to lead the handheld market and is taking second place, humble pie indeed. Sure, nothing wrong with that, but against the mighty games of DS, its sure to stay that way. Nothing is ever written in stone mind. Don't get me wrong, I have a PSP and DS and enjoy both. The PSP v DS thing was just an example of what can happen if things are left too late, like Sony have done before. It's up to them if they want to repeat history with PS3.

Ditto
Joined 10 Jun 2004
1169 comments
Mon, 4 Jun 2007 14:51
Joji wrote:
I meant PS3 games are more expensive to develop because of Blu Ray.


How does that work?! Sorry, I just can't work it out.

:)
Anonymous
Anonymous
Mon, 4 Jun 2007 15:03
Honestly, who cares about DVD. Sony has miscalculated their customer base. Most people don't want their DVD player to also be their video game console. Most people have more than one TV these days. Personally, I like to keep my video game playing separate at a different tv. I don't don't like to have video games and equipment hanging around for all visitors to see.
ICANSEEU
Anonymous
Mon, 4 Jun 2007 17:26
The ps3 can play Blu Ray discs too..... Very handy when you consider a standard bul ray player can cost upto and around £800!
Cuzzz3000
Anonymous
Mon, 4 Jun 2007 17:34
J wrote:
Cuzzz3000 wrote:
Blab, Blab, Blab..... Stop crying over the price already. The system is well worth the money besides 600 dollars is nothing when you think about what you're getting. I mean most of the people complaining about the price will go right out and spend 250 or even 400 hundred on a cell phone.... and we all know that they won't last a year before they become outdated. Just think about the price and what you are getting.... As for the 360 if they can't correct the problem with system failures they are going to loose the die hard gamer who happens to be their largest customer base.



Ok, $600 for just the base console with one controller, add on another $50 for an extra controller, add on another $50-$70 per game, and the price quickly begins to climb to almost $1,000. I don't know if you're rich or what but to us working class folk, that's an ass load of money.


OK really.... how much did you pay for your cell phone? My point is that you are not talking about 600 dollars you are talking about 150 to 200 dollars when you compare pricing. If you get a 360 by the time you add all the extras you will pay more and not to mention the straight rape job you get for online play.. that's about 160 dollars a year. So if you are so much of a part of the working class folk you might want to think about working on some MATH. You can comment of more and better games at this time for the 360 but you must also add in the fact that they have failure issue..... however as for the pricing you.....wait not you but let somebody else do the MATH
Zeberdee
Anonymous
Mon, 4 Jun 2007 21:20
At the current price of a PS3 i can build a quality PC!
config
Joined 3 Sep 1999
2088 comments
Tue, 5 Jun 2007 08:27
A quality gaming PC with a DX10-ready GPU? And a legit copy of Vista? For less than a PS3?

MeThinkNot

Joji
Joined 12 Mar 2004
3960 comments
Tue, 5 Jun 2007 10:09
Honestly, who would want Vista on a PC anyway. From what I hear Vista is crud. If you go to the likes of Dell, you could easily bag a PC for under that awful PS3 price.

And to ICANSEEU, my point about Blu Ray is people are happy with the current dvd format, especially so now its cheaper and recordable. I bet you a vast majority of people in the street would buy a cheaper recordable dvd player with multiregion access, than a Blu Ray/HD DVD player.

When Blu Ray and HD-DVD can record, then they'll be embraced more and that's years away.
ICANSEEU
Anonymous
Tue, 5 Jun 2007 10:49
thats funny.... the sony viao laptop im using to write this message can burn blu ray disc.
It must off come back in time, check your facts before posting them on forums!!!!
Pierre_Pressure
Joined 25 Feb 2004
29 comments
Tue, 5 Jun 2007 11:10
Joji wrote:


When Blu Ray and HD-DVD can record, then they'll be embraced more and that's years away.


Give a monkey a typewriter for a reasonable amount of time and it might come up with something insightful. Obv. Joji's not been at the keyboard for long. Doylum.
config
Joined 3 Sep 1999
2088 comments
Tue, 5 Jun 2007 11:37
Joji wrote:
Honestly, who would want Vista on a PC anyway. From what I hear Vista is crud.


I cannot comment, as I've not had first hand experience. However, most feedback suggests is another in a long line of bloatware.

If you go to the likes of Dell, you could easily bag a PC for under that awful PS3 price.


Ha. Sure. With a s**tty graphics card barely capable of running Far Cry "all on", let alone Crysis.

Dell's cheapest home entertainment PC is £429. Granted it comes with a 19" TFT monitor (which I couldn't remove from the configuration), but you're also lumbered with an entry-level nVidia GeForce 7300 - hardly a comparison to the G70-based RSX in a PS3. You could upgrade to an ATI X1300 for 11 quid, but why bother? Same s**t, different vendor. You'd need to upgrade to at least a GeForce 8600, which is going to nudge up the price another 90 quid or so. Then you'd want to add another 1GB of RAM because, well, this is a PC running Windows after all. - that's another 20 quid.

All that done, you're left with an adequate gaming PC.

Oh, and if you want a closer comparison, you're going to need to add a Blu-ray drive, which is another 350 quid :)
tyrion
Joined 14 Oct 1999
1786 comments
Tue, 5 Jun 2007 13:28
Joji wrote:
When Blu Ray and HD-DVD can record, then they'll be embraced more and that's years away.

It certainly is, if you count backwards! There are already Blu-ray writers available now for PCs, the next versions of the Mac are rumoured to come with Blu-ray writers and you can easily get HD-DVD writers too. In fact, as far as I remember, writers were available before read-only drives.

Or did you mean when Blu-ray and HD-DVD players can record? Because everybody knows that DVD was a dead format until recorders were available for under the TV applications!

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