Can Sony Convince the World?

Gamasutra's regular feature asking a question of the game development community is back. This week's question cuts to the heart of the reporting from the Tokyo Game Show: Can Sony Convince Us it is Still Dominant?. From the article: "All that Sony needs to do is stop acting so arrogant. People can forgive any number of faults if the company generally acts responsible for their mistakes. When the PSP came out and people complained about the square buttons getting stuck and not being as responsive as the other buttons, Sony said 'There may be people that complain about its usability, but that's something which users and game software developers will have to adapt to.' We have to adapt to their broken button... Comedic at best. When everyone said the price of the PS3 was rather high, Sony told everyone that 'people will buy it no matter what.' What do they say about PCs? 'The PlayStation 3 is a computer. We do not need the PC.' - Dave Fried, The Collective"

Re:That would require...

[Thansal]

...it was observed some time ago that both Microsoft and Sony expected everyone to buy a Wii.

Who? When? Where? Why?

I would like to see some sorta reffereance to this.

So very tired of this...

[Fr05t]

Seriously... come on guys. I personally plan to wait until all 3 consoles are out for a while, then see if one (or maybe more) have the games, and features I want. Maybe Sony will give me what I want, and I'll be willing to pay them for it - maybe they won't.

MS has failed to impress me with the 360 and their game line up thus far. To be honest though I am hopeful / excited about the Wii, but you never know it might turn out to be a turd. Point is there is so much smoke and mirrors, and hype around console launches it's stupid to speculate and get all worked up about every half baked press release and "insider speculation".

Re:Enough, Zonk. Enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

Informative? Let's see, we have RIIIIDGGGE RAAACCCER!!11!! and a bunch of games I've never heard of before (despite a bunch of them being sequels). Yay, real-time movies of cutscenes spliced randomly!

Beyond the pretty pictures, what's your point? So the PS3 can make pretty pictures, I think everyone knows that. That does nothing to combat:

1. No release titles anyone cares about.

2. Ridiculously expensive price tag. $600 for a console?! (Keep in mind, with a 20/80 split, most people will have to get the $600 version since it's the only one available.)

3. Requires a new TV to make the most of. I'm not spending $1000 for an HDTV, not that you'd find an 1080p TV that cheap anyway.

So, why exactly should I buy a PS3? I'll be getting a Wii at release, but until the PS3 drops below $250 I'm not going to consider it. (Of course, HDTVs would have to drop below $250 before I'd consider them, so even if the PS3 hits $250 without an HDTV it's still out of the question.)

The reality is that, while pretty moving pictures are neat, they do nothing to offset the insane cost required to take advantage of them. Your pretty pictures do nothing to change that core fact.

Re:So very tired of this...

[_xeno_]

I think you've hit on Sony's real problem: I don't care about any of the games being released now. Can the PS3 survive long enough for the games I actually want to play to make it out on it?

The games I'm excited about aren't going to be coming out until late 2007 at the earliest. There's no way I'm buying a PS3 at launch. I'll be waiting until the price comes down enough that I can afford it. Well, not afford, but until the price comes down to what I'm willing to pay, and what I'm willing to pay depends heavily on what games are available for it.

The Wii... well, I have high hopes for it, but I'm getting Zelda on 'Cube and waiting to see how well this wiimote thing works out.

That's essentially my plan too. The Wii is the only console I've considered buying on launch (unless buying a DS Lite on its launch day counts...), but my plan right now is to wait until January of next year and see what the reaction to it is before making any final decission.

I'll definitely want to try it out at the store once the floor models are released...

On a somewhat related topic, does anyone know if the PS3 supports DVI out? I don't have an HDTV, but I do have a nice DVI-compliant LCD monitor...

We know too much...

[leland242]

Joe Gamer doesn't care about E3 press releases, or some interview at the (insert city) Game Show. He knows his PS2 kicks ass and he heard from a buddy that the PS3 is coming out this year.

"Woah! I gotta get that!" he says...

That is what the average gamer is thinking. Sony is proving themselves to be arrogant and is completely shooting themselves in the foot...but maybe not to thier detriment.

The PS3 will sell out at lauch. There is no question Sony will sell a ton of systems - but I think it is overdelivering the goods. I feel the same way about Xbox, but at least they aren't shoving HD-DVD down everyone's throat.

The Wii is going to be the best choice for right now - the PS3 or Xbox are the right choice in about - oh, $300 worth of price drops...which should take enough time to ensure that most folks have some kind of high-def tv.

But you've missed something...

[ScislaC]

Yeah, some people want PlayStations, others want games only available on the PS2 (Square-Enix games for example), and some others also have an investment that's worthless without replacing their PS2... It seems that the PS2 sales numbers are quite misleading due to the fact that so many current PS2 purchases are people replacing their broken PS2s, not "new" users. If you've invested a few hundred (or thousand) dollars in your PS2 and it doesn't work anymore, as much as you may not want to purchase a same name replacement due to your experience, you've already spent so much on the games and peripherals that it's not worth it to switch. Of the 11 people I know who purchased a PS2 at launch, 8 of them have had to replace their systems over the past 3 years. For the average consumer there is definitely a good amount of brand purchasing though, look at the iPod or RAZR (or an ungodly number of other products). I definitely agree there. But, for every PS2 owner I know, I also know an XBOX owner... and to tell you the truth a good number of those people own both actually. ;)

Re:But you've missed something...

[Manmademan]

Of the 11 people I know who purchased a PS2 at launch, 8 of them have had to replace their systems over the past 3 years...

The plural of anecdote is not "data." Of the 6 or 7 individuals I know who own a PS2, only one has had to replace his and that guy's a slob. Regardless, there's a 60-70 million unit gap (depending on how you interpret shipped vs. sold) between the Ps2 and the GC or Xbox. to put it in perspective, even the NES only managed to sell about 70 million or so during it's entire lifetime. You can't attribute all of that to broken consoles. Sony clearly did something right with the Ps2, and consumers are happy with it, still buying over 30,000 of them a week.