PS3 Performance Downgraded Again

Heartless Gamer writes "The PS3's performance has been downgraded again, according to the Inquirer." From the article: "We can't tell you why the GPU lost nearly 10% of it's clock, it could be an NVidia screwup, or it could be Sony/Cell. Either way, it just became much less of an overwhelming value, but you get a DRM infected drive for 'free' either way." Interesting, but keep in mind this is The Inquirer. 9 out of 10 doctors recommend salt with their articles. Relatedly, the choice comments from Penny Arcade this past weekend about Sony's console are wandering around the internets today. From that article: "We've already talked about it, there's no chance we're buying a PS3 at launch."

Performance isn't everything...

[dolson]

It's the games that matter. Too bad Sony was banking on being the big performer. Well, the decision is sealed, I think. Wii for me.

not good publicity

[Frag-A-Muffin]

"We've already talked about it, there's no chance we're buying a PS3 at launch."


Ouch. That's not good for Sony. You may or may not know who Gabe and Tycho are, but if you do know them, you know they also run PAX. Which is a very large user-centric games show. (Unlike E3).

These guys are hardcore gamers, that's not the kind of comment you want from guys that have this much clout.

I repeat. Ouch.

Re:again?

[NineNine]

Looks like it is about time to short-sell their stock

You go ahead and do that. I'll be buying.

You clearly have no idea what Sony Corporation consists of. It's a massive multinational corporation, of which their Playstation is only a tiny segment. Besides, they couldn't care less what a few gamer freaks have to say about their box. Given the past performance of the PS2, and the current slow sales of the XBox 360 (assuming, most people like me are waiting for the PS3), I don't think that anybody there is all that worried.

Re:price

[Dr. Eggman]

I doubt it. Hopefully someone can correct me if I'm wrong (I'm no hardware expert) but that change effects only the 'Reality Synthesizer' (RSX) also known as the PS3's GPU. I do recall that the previous specifications were comparable to a G70-based high-end 7800GTX 512 MB Nvidia GPU. The new Clockspeed is in line with a GeForce 6600 GT. However, we have to be careful as clockspeed alone is not what makes a GPU great. (Assuming we can trust the source) previous specifcations were compared to two GeForce 6800 Ultra, while a GeForce 6800 Ultra has a clockspeed of 400. Therefore, the GPU's clockspeed's relativity to price is questionable. Between the cost to cover the Cell processor and Blue Ray drive, I doubt this would have any impact on the price we pay (well, maybe other gamers pay) at all.

Re:again?

[elrous0]

Don't kid yourself, Sony is HEAVILY invested in the success of Blu-Ray, and they're banking on the PS3 to play a vital role in that success. DVD's have become a huge boon for media creators, an essential component for the success of "tentpole" movies. Sony wants VERY much to ensure that their HD format (and potential new source of income) is the successor to DVD, which is approaching its nadir.

-Eric

Re:Hmm...

[jimmoores]

I have to say their article about the speed of the read from GPU memory by each processing element was pretty misleading. I did a bit of research and that indicated that real software will virtually never read from the GPU and even if it does, there is a workaround of going through main memory. While it is obvious that there have been big problems getting the PS3 up and running, I think we should wait for the hardware. These things have a habit of all coming together. We've already heard that the supposedly awful yeilds on the Cell are not as bad as thought. It's the cost issue that'll screw Sony if they don't budge. People are used to $20 DVD players and aren't going to place the extra value on a Blu-ray player that Sony seem to think. There's no way I'm paying 400UKP for a console, especially now they've lost exclusivity on GTA. It just isn't going to happen.

Jim

I tried to read this article, but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I kept getting this strange error

404 Proof Not Found

In other breaking news, lettuce causes brain cancer, and a wolverine's sneeze travels faster than the speed of sound. A leprechaun told me so.

Re:not good publicity

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, right, they're only a tiny fraction of the people who buy consoles. Unfortunately they are that specific tiny fraction known as "the early adopters" and if you don't get that fraction you don't get the other 90% either.

Sony need to clue in to this pretty fucking quickly.

Re:price

[Tridus]

When senior execs in the company are telling us that its a BARGAIN at $600 and that people will buy it because its Sony, then yes I am inclined to believe that they're happy to fleece people.

They deserve a good thrashing in the market this time around.

Re:not good publicity

[Frag-A-Muffin]

These guys are hardcore gamers, meaning that they have little to no clout amidst the general public. Hardcore gamers are just a tiny fraction of people who buy consoles.


Isn't Nintendo the one going after "the general public"? I think Sony already priced themselves out of the "general public" market. I can't imagine a non-gamer plunking down $600 for a gaming system with zero games and 1 controller.

Re:not good publicity

[masklinn]

1. Hardcore gamers are also early adopters, they're the one who get in queue starting at 12AM... the day before... They're the ones driving their friends & acquaintances to a console, or a game.
2. PA has an audience far beyond mere "hardcore gamers"
3. And Sony & MS don't reach far out of gamers (15-25 teenage male) audience.

4. But I'm more interrested in seeing what'll be happening 3 years from now. For now, I just know that I'll take a black Wii, it'll look mighty fine next to my black DS Lite.

Re:Are you retarded?

[timster]

There's reason to say that the PS2 was pretty shitty, despite the fact that developers eventually made great games for it (though I should mention that there weren't even any good games available at launch). Despite the substantially higher production price (and higher retail price) it was a long time before developers made graphics that looked any better than those on the Dreamcast. Many lower-budget PS2 games simply look terrible. In addition, the console had a high failure rate, makes an awful noise at startup, and has poor DVD playing at best.

Basically, if you compare the PS2 to the Dreamcast (released a year earlier), in a hardware sense it can only be seen as a slight improvement with caveats. Considered among the GameCube and XBox, it seems a rather weak entry as even the GameCube was significantly more powerful (and cheaper), and the PS2 was the least reliable of the three, and also the hardest to develop for.

Re:Will they never learn?

[tbannist]

Not much of a surprise, there, remember they haven't put them up for sale yet. They're business executives, they "know more" about "selling" then us "informed fans". So to them, there's nothing for them to learn yet. We haven't started not buying their console yet. You have to give them a chance to be proven wrong before you start lamenting about how they never learn. Besides, if they are right and the silent majority is going to buy the console any way, then it's you who hasn't been proven wrong yet.

I suspect they will be more surprised a month after launch than you will be, though.

Re:again?

[acidrain69]

I wouldn't say they are headed down the toilet, but I expect they are in for a major shakeup and reoganization. Of course, they are a japanese company, and the Japanese are not so quick to replace management as the US, so we will see. If they were a completely american company, they would have gone through several CEOs by now.

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because the design of the chip is completed and working doesn't mean that Sony wouldn't choose to (be forced to) run it at a lower clock speed then initially intended. There are two likely reasons for this, the more likely is that the GPU runs too hot to fit into the PS3's case without causing harm to other components, but they could have also reduced the clock speed because the bus couldn't feed it data quickly enough to use the extra processing power anyways.

People often forget that High end PCs can require 550 Watts (or more) to run their Graphics Cards and CPU; this is enough energy that if you reduced the volume of your case by 10%-25% your system would probably face serious overheating problems.

Price beyond the threshold of acceptability

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, of course they don't want to sell a system for $600. They want to sell it for $1000 or however much a blu-ray player costs. What they're doing is trying to saturate the market with thier new (and expensive) next generation media.

I think you're ascribing far too much marketting insight to Sony. Their incredibly awful public comments suggest that the opposite is true.

Furthermore, they could have achieved the goals you mentioned by launching the PS3 at a far lower price with a pluggable DVD drive alone, and offer the BlueRay drive as an upgrade later on. This would have given them even higher market penetration for world domination by BlueRay, since a cinema devotee is far more likely to buy a BlueRay upgrade drive than a gamer is likely to pay $600 up front for a games console with a drive he doesn't need.

The reality is that Sony live in a different world to everyone else, in thinking that $600 is acceptable. It's beyond the threshold.