PS3 to dominate in the future?

[Yvl]

Recently, more and more articles like this have been popping up everywhere. This is something I speculated long ago, and it seems as if more and more people are beginning to notice this - The 360's graphics are slightly behind the PS3's even with a year for companies to fiddle around with them, and Sony has announced that they are "Refining the price" of the PS3.

Meanwhile, Panasonic's COO recently announced the following about the "format wars" between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray:

[John Layfield]

The so-called format wars is nothing but a petty squabble.

When DVDs are overthrown, that's when it's over, not who wins the battle of the niche formats which only make a difference on state of the art high definition TV sets. Wow, Blu-Ray is going to win the crumbs from DVD's table!

The only way this will work out for Sony is if Blu-Ray not only beats HD-DVD but ordinary DVDs by 2009. It will not.

Remember the war between DVD-A and SACD? Me neither.
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One day, I shall come back. Yes, we shall all come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.

[Rovalis]

It's kind of pointless. Lets look back at the history of audio formats.

Before any form of digital recreation of Audio, it was the vinyl (Not counting the very first inventions). By the "pits" carved into the vinyl, the vibrations were recreated. Moving up to the 2-track, it's a magnetic based system used by re-arranging rust on a magnetic tape. The rust is then symbolized electronically as positives and negatives (magnetic), and those positives and negatives are what determine the swing of the sound wave.

Now, skipping passed the magnetic-based media, we come to CD's. Like the Vinyl, CD's function with "pits". The pits work with a laser in your drive. The laser shoots up. When it hits a "pit", it reflects back down into a "collector". When the collector is hit by a laser, it marks it as a "1". When it doesn't, it's a "0". Thus, binary code. That's how ALL Cd's function, with different formats. The same is true with Blu-ray and HD-DVD. The only difference with these is they are double-layered, all around. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD both function with a BLUE laser instead of Red, because the blue laser is smaller and allows for smaller pits (thus, more).

Now that the basics are cleared, the fact is is that they will be obsolete, soon. With Toshiba coming out with the prismatic reader, it will revolutionize the industry.

The capability of the Disc is nearing its peak. There is simply no more room, unless they find a smaller laser, to read smaller pits. For the time being, it seems PS3 will lead the pack... but just like the cartridge, it's nearing it's end.
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And so it went, the inexorable elimination of the superfluous...

[Tullaryx]

I am with Layfield on this. Blu-Ray or HD-DVD will remain a niche product until HDTV's become as affordable as standard ones. At the moment even the cheapest HDTV will still set a person around 800 dollars and usually it won't even have 1080p resolution.

The early adopters of the current HD-formats have been the techies and gadget people. They'll always want the best gear available even if it means there's a chance the format may not work out. The general consumer will continue to purchase DVDs in numbers larger than Blu-Ray and HD-DVD combine by at least a hundred-fold if not thousand.

I would ask those who have a PS3 how many Blu-Ray films have they purchased and I would most likely hear not many. The same goes for those who have an HD-DVD player. Neither format brings to the table something the regular family wants in a entertainment unit.

By 2009 wil the PS3 overtake the 360 and the Wii? It's a possibility that could happen if a combination of factors converge at the right time. The 360 will need to suddenly lose all the momentum it has gained the last two years and go back to having little or no third-party exclusives for the system. Second would be the price-cut Sony has intimated will happen before the end of the year will actually spur a massive surge in sales which would make it more attractive than the Wii (which at 250 dollars is already quite cheap) and the 360 (which I think will not remain at its current price). Third would be if and when the titles considered system-sellers will actually arrive in time for the 2008 holiday season.

The first one will be difficult to pull off since Microsoft has done a great job in selling the 360's technology and it's Xbox Live on-line system to developers. Even with the Xbox 360 using a different architecture than the Xbox it's still much easier to work and develop games for than the PS3. That's always been Sony's problem when it came to their consoles. The ease of developing for the Playstation family of consoles have never been easy and have been downright horrible for developers, if not erribly expensive. Microsft has also used the one advantage they have over Sony --- an advantage Sony will never be able to take away or even duplicate --- and that's it's massive cash reserves which range from 49 billion to 60 billion dollars.

Already this advantage has seen Microsoft pure, strict exclusive downloadable episodic content for the 360 version of Grand Theft Auto IV. Sony's Ps3 will never get such content, or even a different kind. What did Microsoft do which made Take-Two plant their flag on the Redmond, WA campus? They advanced Take-Two 50 million dollars for exclusive rights to the DLC. 25 million each for two content which goes beyond new outfits and weapons, but much closer in similarities to an expansion pack. The fact that Xbox Live has been such a success in terms of microtransactions and bringing major downloads for games must've also factored into Take-Two's decision, but the 50 million probably didn't hurt.

Microsoft has also been very busy negotiating with other developers and publishers about exclusive rights to new games and franchise series. One such company which is in the midst of such a negotiation is Namco Bandai. They've already announced that Ace Combat 6 and Beaituful Katamari will either be totally exclusive to the 360 or, at the very least, time-exclusive. Capcom has been adamant about question in regards to new franchise titles in their library like Lost Planet and Dead Rising remaining as 360-exclusives. Other former Sony-exclusives in the past have now gone multiplatform with two major titles still up for grabs: Final Fantasy an Metal Gear Solid. These two franchises seem to be the only ones left not published directly by Sony to still remain it's Sony-exclusive titles.

The ability of Microsoft to use their significant amoutn of available cash to pretty much "subsidize" developers and publishers either through part of a game's development process and/or its marketing has made them an attractive partner to past companies who didn't deal much with the Xbox system. Sony doesn't have that luxury since they're still trying to come out of a major restructuring and several year's worth of red ink in their company's financial returns. This just means that they're spending more to produce and sell their products more than they're bringing in. Microsoft doesn't have that problem despite the Xbox family of console never having made a profit for the company. With Vista now rolled out and sure to bring in the usual billions in profits by year's end, Microsoft has more leeway to spend their cash around.

Is this illegal? Not at all, but I know many Sony fans who have cried foul about Microsoft's recent practice of buying out what they want. Sony could try to bid with Microsoft but it's sure to hurt them in the long-run than any success it may gain them in the short-term. It helps to have a lot of money.

Second, Sony's purported price cut by year's end is not an automatic guarantee that it will help the PS3 sell more than the 360 and the Wii this coming holiday 2007. One, they would need to price the PS3 close to the Wii's price point to make it attractive to the casual gamer and general consumer. Sony is not that dumb despite what their PR and Marketing departments have shown during the PS3 roll-out. Two, they will need to make sure that Microsoft doesn't lower the price on either the Pro or Elite 360. If Microsoft even lowers the price on one or both those 360's then Sony's PS3 price-cut will come for naught.

Third, Sony is banking on releasing 400 games by March 2008 to make the PS3 a system worth spending 600 dollars on. But what games exactly would make the fence-sitters buy the PS3 over a 360 or Wii that's set to be released by March 2008? I don't see any system-seller titles for the PS3 being released for the 2007 Holiday season. Grand Theft Auto IV would've been the one game which could've moved massive amounts of PS3's but losing exclusive rights to that title will not make for a repeat performance.

Do I see the PS3 becoming a success in the years to come? Yes, I do see the PS3 becoming a successful console in a couple years, but to say that they will remain the dominant force in the gaming industry ended when the PS3 failed to live up to sales expectations in it's first 6 months. They will surely sell more PS3's than the 360 and may even sell more than the Wii, but their days of 70 percent marketshare of the industry will be a thing of the past. As I've predicted in the past I see Microsoft and Nintendo having close to or equal share of the marketshare pie with Sony instead of being distant seconds and thirds. This would be seen as a blow to Sony and a success for the upstart Microsoft and the resurgent Nintendo.

As for the Blu-Ray, I'm still not sold on that format and not sold on the HD-DVD one. There's a good chance that neither would win with a new, cheaper digital format sliding underneath the radar to become the new standard.
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[Leb]

The short and simple answer is that Sony planned for the PS3 to aid Blu-Ray, not the other way around. I don't think this reversed plan will work, mainly because of some pretty commonplace logic that holds true in most cases:

All gamers are movie-watchers, but not all movie-watchers are gamers.

[Rovalis]

Just to comment on HDTV... HDTV is also going to fade out. They have products out already that are 4 times the resolution of HDTV, and function with all of the same formats. Highly expensive, but out none-the-less. HDTV technology was available in the 90's, but nobody released it because they were still making money on regular Television sets.

Playstation 3 is also a hit because there are TONS of people who just don't like Microsoft. If you look at the feedback for Microsoft's new "Coffee Table Computer", it's almost all negative. Ofcourse, that's not relative to Xbox 360. I love my 360, but Playstation 3 has the technological edge.
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And so it went, the inexorable elimination of the superfluous...

[HarmonianHiccup]

[Leb]

Come on, to take that as a literal statement or a fact is just silly.

[Tullaryx]

[Yvl]

Tullaryx, the reason why so many companies have run away from the PS3 is partially because they felt that the PS3 was doomed, and partially because Microsoft was basically throwing fistfuls of money at the developers shouting "JOIN US!!!" The first one is fading now (I've seen at least 4 of these predictions stating PS3 will come out on top.) The second one is still going on, but honestly it disgusts me as it's obviously intended to harm the PS3 as much as it is to help the 360, and if Sony can ever get back on their feet they're not going to stand for it.
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[Tullaryx]

I think saying developers and publishers ran away from the PS3 because it was doomed is overreaching a tad. No developer or publisher would abandon the current dominant leader of the market. What the developers and publishers did was to hedge their bets. Instead of instantly promising exclusives for the PS3 right away they took a wait and see attitude. So far, it's worked for the developers and publishers in a way that they didn't sink tens of millions of dollars on games that would've sold to a small userbase.

What they did instead was release games that had already been released o the 360 and ported them over. Some of the games that weren't straight ports were either in-house developed games or looked like they were originally PS2 projects that were upgraded using the PS3. As the userbase of PS3 owners grow in the coming years these same developers and publishers will probably begin to start making PS3-only games in addition to 360-only games, but even that is only possible for the bigger publishers who can afford the high price-tag of developing the nextgen games.

As for Microsoft throwing fitsful of money at developers and publishers, that too would be a bit of an oversimplification. If Microsoft truly wanted to just spend willy-nilly in gaining heavy game support from third-parties then they'd just buy the companies making the game. There's already rumors floating around that Microsoft may just invest and buy a large share of Take-Two. Enough shares of the company to make it one of the biggest shareholders. Another one which will probably get more airtime the closer to E3 we get is Microsoft buying the embattled developer Rockstar from Take-Two. If either one of these two rumors are even true then Grand Theft Auto will most likely never make it to the PS3 after IV. But Microsoft has been very smart with their use of cash.

They've approached companies who don't just make games that made games for the Xbox in the past but companies who in the past avoided the Xbox and kept it's top-tier titles on the PS2. Is it fair that they're using their money to literally "bribe" these developers and publishers in supporting the 360? It is indeed quite fair considering that Sony used it's own brand of muscle in keeping exclusives from jumping from the PS2 to the Xbox as multiplatform titles.

Plus, its not like the 360 is a bad machine to develop for. It's userbase is quite large and boudn to have a huge surge in numbers when Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV comes out. The 360 also allows developers and publishers the ability to port 360 games they're making to the PC with relative ease in comparison to the PS3 games being terribly difficult to port outside of the original console.

When Sony does get back on its feet what can they do to Microsoft and the 360 which should scare them? I can't think of one way they can do so other than taking Microsoft to court for unfair competitive practices. This would be laughed out of court since Sony would still be the top company just not as strong as it was during the PS2 days. I think Sony fans just do not want to accept the fact that they now must share the gaming landscape not just with a resurgent Nintendo (who they probably thought was dead and dying after the GameCube debacle) but with the 800-pound gorilla who has dominated the PC side of the industry for two decades.

Both companies are awash in disposable cash and look to be willing to use them to knock Sony down and keep them down. And until Sony can prove to developers and publishers that the problems with the PS3 have been relatively solved they will continue to hedge their bets and look to the Wii and the 360 to make exclusive titles for.
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[Sniper_Zegai]

When I hear "refining the price" I can hear Sony's desperation. Its clear that they planned to charge that ridiculous price and reap all the benefits. Now that they are getting murdered by the Wii, even with its clearly inferior graphics. Its apparent that price means everything and so reducing the price is probably the only thing Sony can to revamp sales. I would buy one if it was cheap but it is'nt and becuase I have a 360 already now, I probably wont buy a PS3 for a very long time. However 2009 is abit of a long shot, given the fact that they should have took the chance to rake in the profit upon the PS3's release like the other consoles did, although Im happy they are making the PS3 cheaper its probably too little, too late.
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[Tullaryx]

Question to ask since price-cutting the PS3 seems to be one solution everyone who is anyone says is something Sony needs to do to remain dominant: How much of a price-cut on the PS3's current price would satisfy gamers who haven't already bought a PS3? Will they wait for Microsoft to show their hand with their own rumored plan of a price change? Or will they just drop it as close to the price the Wii is at right now to try flooding the market?

Sony management, especially CEO Sir Howard Stringer, will really have to justify to Sony's major shareholders that losing hundreds of millions more for another 4 or more quarters would be needed if they're to remain the dominant market leader in hardware sales. Remember, Sony still just coming out of 3 years of little or no porifts coming in due to lackluster sales of non-PS2 products and major flops in the box-office from Sony financed films. Even though Sony's Bravia line of HDTVs have been selling quite well the company still lags behind both Samsung and LG when it comes to HDTV sales.

So, how much do you think Sony should shave off of the PS3's 600 dollars price?
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[Scarlet Assassin]

I'd easily buy a PS3 for 450 so a 25% decrease would be a good range. I'd buy it no matter what if I had the money to splurge, but dropping it an extra 150 would be nice incentive.
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Chief of Beat-em-up Honeys Division, Devoted Protector of Lady Tifa Lockhart

[Yvl]

450 would indeed be a nice price, and would certainly sell a hell of alot of units, but I dont think that Sony is able to go that low. I'd expect them to go to $525 or so minimum.

As for what Sony can do when they get back on their feet, I meant they aren't able to compete with Microsoft if a game comes down to a bidding war or something like that for exclusivity. Microsoft can afford to throw as much money as they need at a producer to get them on their side, Sony needs to be more conservative after their recent losses.
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