PS3 Japanese Estimates Down, No 360 Price Drop 84
There are unhappy gamers on a couple sides of the console wars today. IGN is reporting that Japan's allotment of 100,000 PS3 units will actually be more like 80,000. From that article: "The lack of digits in that number is even more staggering when you consider that the PS2 sold out of nearly a million units when it launched back in March of 2000. Having lived through a few weeks of attempting to obtain a PS3 pre-order, we're not too surprised by the lowered shipping numbers. Allocations disappeared quickly at online retailers that were brave enough to start pre-order programs. The online arm of media retailer Tsutaya ran out of units in 6 minutes according to Nikkei (it felt more like 1 minute to us)." Meanwhile, the Seattle PI reports that Microsoft has once again denied the possibility of a 360 price drop any time soon.
Let me guess... (Score:1)
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price (Score:2)
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The total number of available PS3 preorders is tiny, because there is so much confusion over how many units will be available.
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Your reading comprehension skills are nonexistent.
I s
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Ergo, the number of preorders should also be tiny.
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According to a GameSpot article [gamespot.com], launch-weekend sales of the Xbox360 in Japan were reported between 41,817 and 62,135 units, out of an estimated supply of 159,000 units.
You misunderstood me... (Score:2)
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Remember, Sony was originally planning to ship around 2 million (down
That Makes no sense (Score:2)
In other news... (Score:2, Funny)
I can see it now... (Score:1)
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Sony just keeps getting kicked.... by themselves. (Score:3, Interesting)
We aren't going to ship to Europe until March.
We are dropping the lower priced system's price by 10000 yen(or so) in japan but we're not scared
We aren't going to be able to make the launch numbers.
Jesus, could they be any stupider? Now they are running advertisements for the PS3 on TV. what? Do they think they are going to get more interest with a doll in the ad rather then showing game play? The simple fact is they want people killing each other to get the system, and it's just not happening. They can't sell more than they are shipping, and that's already low, but they need people to drool so much they aren't picking up a 360 instead. What's worse, those guys who preorder or who will go the distance, probably have a 360 at home so while they gain market share, they aren't getting the 1 system families.
The PS3 has been a huge mistake every step of the way, and just when you think it is over.... it's not.
Hell I wouldn't be surprised if the systems don't boot up or immediately don't work, Sony's track record wasn't great, but the PS3 makes me think there was a mandatory lobotomy of all Sony management.
And this doesn't get into the fact that Sony's advertising diversion is.... well if Management got lobotomies, they got headectomies. Their advertising isn't just weak, it's ineffectual.
Re:Sony just keeps getting kicked.... by themselve (Score:2)
Enough said.
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stupid
adjective ( -pider, -pidest)
lacking intelligence or common sense : I was stupid enough to think she was perfect.
dazed and unable to think clearly : apprehension was numbing her brain and making her stupid.
informal used to express exasperation or boredom : she told him to stop messing with his stupid painting.
Notice the first suffix.
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I would you suggest that you measure the validity of a word not by how many different dictionaries it appears in, but rather by how obvious it makes the concept it attempts to express.
"Stupider" is a perfectly cromulent word. You'd have to be stupider than a tree to be unable to understand its meaning of "more stupid".
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I don't know, that doll was pretty creepy.
I second this. It did nothing to make me want to buy the console itself. If anything, I was turned off to the product. They can't possibly be trying to gain mindshare at this point, but you never know.
Re:Sony just keeps getting kicked.... by themselve (Score:2)
To get the best sense of the graphical prowess of the modern consoles, you need an effectively-uncompressed video feed. The gameplay videos you can download, by and large, don't cut it; they can show gameplay but they can't show the graphics. They are compressed far more than a TV feed and typically shrunk to less than NTSC resolution, let alone HDTV resolution.
TV is the best place to be putting out some game clips that really show the PS3 kicking
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Microsoft got a good lashing last year when a fair number of their consoles had issues. Not a very significant number, but enough that word got around the net fast. You can argue that perhaps we were looking for reasons for the 360 to fail, but you can make that same argument now for the PS3.
If the launch is anything short of perfect, we're going to hear about it. Seeing as how only the hardcore, internet
Re:Sony just keeps getting kicked.... by themselve (Score:2)
Let's start with the PSX? The first YEAR of console production had overheating issues. This isn't one batch, most of the early consoles had issues with this. But at least the console didn't break of get destroyed (though a couple discs got scratched).
Then the PS2, was a lot better, less overheating (though some), but after a couple years we got DREs, Disk read errors to those who don't know. PS1 games no longer were read, some PS2 games did
Re:Sony just keeps getting kicked.... by themselve (Score:2)
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The point I was making was Sony is advertising something they will sell out of. Assume Audi makes 200,000 cars of a new ST type (Stylish touring). They then sell all 200,000 of the initial run. Would it be smart for them to run adds for the ST? Not really. Now if they are going to make more, it might be smart so people might hold off on buying another car and see if they can get an ST
However in Sony's case their ads have been completely i
Re:Sony just keeps self-kicking in 100P (Score:1)
Meanwhile, Nintendo is laughing all the way to the bank and quietly gearing up production as fast as it can.
I'll be pondering that on Nov. 19th when my son and I line up in Seattle to get our pre-ordered Wii and then spend the day driving to Costco and ToysRUs and Fred Meyer to buy another one for a
Re:Sony just keeps getting kicked.... by themselve (Score:1)
Wait for the good stuff. (Score:2, Funny)
Odama (Score:2)
Why buy the Okama imitator when you can have a genuine Odama game sphere [wikipedia.org] for GameCube?
Possibility (Score:1)
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Blu-Ray was the big expensive part, and because of it Sony will be taking a loss on every PS3 sold. Sony can't afford to take a loss on just regular Blu-Ray players, where they get don't get the licensing fees and accessory sales that will allow them to make up for that loss with the PS3.
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Point is, they're supposedly taking a huge loss by including Bluray in the PS3. They're banking it all on the PS3 selling in droves. Then they hope that people will actually buy Bluray movies afterward. If they just made a cheap Blur
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The Walmarts already have cheap DVD players. They cost under $50.
How many people are going to look at a "cheap" Blu-Ray player, costing ten times as much, and conclude that it's a good value and they need to take one home?
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- Most people are happy with DVD or can't take advantage of Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. 600 bucks may be a great deal for a Blu-Ray player, but people just don't care about the technology yet at almost any price.
- People did buy PS2 for its DVD playback, but DVD was already well-established by that point. 600 bucks is alot for something that's not guaranteed to be viable in a few years. The format war really hurts both
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To put it in perspective, 400k (the US allotment) is less than 1/600th of the US population. Even were we to get 1m, that's still only 1/300th. In order for Blu-ray or HD-DVD to be successful, they need to be far more ubiquitous than that.
The real problem is that most people still do not have an HDTV. If HDTVs were truly ubiquitous and at or beyond 50% of the market, Blu-ray and HD-DVD would probably be able to tak
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Capitalism at work (Score:2)
I agree. I'd have to say a large bulk of the pre-orders are from folks that just want to "buy low, sell high ... on eBay". Reading through some of the pre-order line interviews on some of the gaming sites (Kotaku and Joystiq come to mind), it seems like a majority of buyers are just trying to make a quick buck. With all the money that was made with eBay selling of the PS2 and the Xbox 360, it's almost hard to blame
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Let's see, first of all, at best the penetration of HDTV is at 25%.
Second, the PS3 is not launching with an actual remote for Blu-Ray playback. While I assume you'll be able to use the PS3 controller as a remote
What does this mean for developers? (Score:2)
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What you're proposing is a second iteration of the Wii which is actually functionally different. That sounds to me like a surefire way of pissing people off. Not to mention the problems with supporting a split user base across low end and high end versions (an issue that plagues MS and Sony).
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Texture blurring and edge artifacts (Score:1)
You'd need to either put larger textures or run some non-linear sharpening algorithm on them. Otherwise, objects close enough for their textures to be drawn at the highest level of MIP-mapping won't look any sharper. In addition, use of the 3D hardware to draw 2D objects such as status bars and fighting game characters
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Plus, Nintendo may be able to do some careful work to avoid this problem, since they presumably wouldn't be just sticking any ol' updated graphics card in, but a card custom designed for this purpose.
I think it's a distinct possibility, if Nintendo percieves that lack of HD is hurti
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Like the Gameboy Color was a second iteration of the Gameboy which was actually functionally different?
Granted, Nintendo waited about nine years after the introduction of the classic GB before introducing an evolved model...
Of course.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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Granted, Microsoft probably eliminated that spokesperson for the same reasons you mention above, and this was also long before Sony did such an effective job at making the PS3 lanch virtually non-event for 2006.
Can you even make money? (Score:1)
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Good question but I think you are overly simplifying the situation. First of all the 80,000 units shipped (which could be nearly 5 million USD in sales of a single game at $60 a pop. I have no idea what the comparison is in yen) is only the initial launch allotment, and like all entertainment no one expects to profit solely on initial release. Within 6 months t
Region free PS3 (Score:2)
After New Zealand and Australia found Sony and other DVD player makers guilty of competition law violations through the DVD region coding system, and likely for other reasons as well, Sony has decided to make games on the PLAYSTATION 3 console region-free [ign.com]. This gives Japanese publishers greater incentive to sell games that don't involve a lot of text to gaijin
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And at the same time decided to put the #1 exporter of Japaneese games/systems out of buisness (Lik-Sang). So essentially you could play import Japaneese games on your PS3, unfortunately it will be difficult to actually import games.
The initial poster's point still stands; if you're only going to release 100,000 systems then (because most game sales are made within the first 6 weeks of the game being released) the best you can do is sel
Maths (Score:3, Insightful)
American Allotment: 400k
Population of Japan: 127.42 million
Previous Japanese Market Volume: 30.31 million (Dreamcast + Gamecube + PS2 in Japan)
Number of PS3s per person: 1 per 1593
Number of PS3s per gamer: 1 per 379
Potential Market Share at Launch: 0.26% (Allotment / Previous Volume)
Population of America: 300.00 million
Previous American Market Volume: 70.8 million (Xbox + Gamecube + PS2)
Number of PS3s per person: 1 per 750
Number of PS3s per gamer: 1 per 177
Potential Market Share at Launch: 0.56%
Combined Potential Market Share: 0.47% (480k) [5.66% relative Market Share]
Current 360 Market Share: 5.93% (6 million) [70.07% relative Market Share]
Potential Wii Launch Market Share: 1.98% (2 million) [23.59% relative Market Share]
Projected March 07 Market Share: 5.93% (6 million) [27.28% relative Market Share]
360 March 07 Market Share: 9.89% (10 million) [45.46% relative Market Share]
Wii March 07 Market Share: 5.93% (6 million) [27.28% relative Market Share]
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6 million for Nintendo is not bad at all, seeing as how the Xbox 360 has been out for almost a year now and has only recently crossed the 6 million mark. The rate at which they produce new consoles in their projections is quite steady and reasonable.
What concerns me are the PS3 forecasts. If taken in two mo
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Why doesn't Microsoft press the advantage? (Score:2)
Microsoft's pricing strategy leaves room for the Wii to really take off. The Xbox 360 is not just competing with the PS3, it is also competing with Nintendo's console. High definition graphics don't matter to the majority of people who are currently using standard definition televisions. I don't think that demand for Zelda/Mario/Metroid is as high as the Nintendo faithful would have you believe, but the Wii will sell very well if its competitors prices are sky high.
Why doesn't Microsoft kick Sony while
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If Microsoft doesn't drop it's price on the PS3 release date I'd be very surprised.
That said, Microsoft isn't about to shoot itself in the foot by telling people that a price drop will happen. If they say, "Nov 17th we will drop our price $50US", then people will stop buying 360s until Nov 17th. Microsoft wants people to keep on buying normally up until that point and the best way to do that is to keep people believing that no price drop is happening.
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You also have to remember that the PS3 isn't going to be in stock anywhere. It's going to be the PS2 and the 360 all over again. And with such small numbers, it's not going to put a dent in Microsoft or Nintendo's sales.
The longer