Re: Playstation 3, A Casualty of war?

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I dunno why we even bother caring what Japan does. They will NEVER buy a US-manufactured console.

Is there such a thing as a US-manufactured console?

To the question whether PS3 suffered because of Sony's decision to use it as a platform to push BR, the answer is DUUUUUH.

The previous CEO of Sony left over exactly that. SONY said it, there's not much left to interpret. The question was whether the new CEO would abandon trying to push BR in lieu of saving the PS3 (and protecting Sony's #1 product) or use it as carte blanche to push BR, and I think the answer at this point is clear.

the ps3 is this generations gamecube they have had the same sales numbers after one year of release. Game developers dont tend to spend alot of money develping games for a system in last place. The xbox 360 has the best games but nintendos wii is a beast,especailly if you think about the games they have coming out in the next couple of months! Mario Kart! Smash Bros! and a little soccer mom trojan horse i call WII FIT the wii will be at 30 million units in 5-6 months if that, the xbox 360 will be well over 20 million and the ps3 will be around 12 million. and the big ps3 game of the the year MGS4 gets delayed every other week, its now at a june release, no way that game gets released in june, you can look forwared to a sept release at the earlist.

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A few things missing here as well:

1. Total sales since launch.
XBOX 360: 17.7 Million
PS3: Estimated 9 million (Hope to meet 11 million by March) (Many sold in Japan which generally is giving the 360 a hard time because it is from the US)

Henning, I think you forgot to add one other missing thing - the XBox has been out for twice as long as the PS3, and that the PS3 has been out less than a year outside of America and Japan. As far as it's first year adoption curve, the PS3 is doing about the same as the XBox or perhaps a bit better in worldwide sales.

What I can't understand is how the capability to play Blu-ray disks would affect the adoption of the console as a game machine? It seems to me that the people who buy the PS3 as a dedicated Blu-ray player only may be convinced one day to actually try a console game for the first time someday - thereby opening up a market segment not tapped before.

I just don't see the connection between a movie format and game console sales. Your article doesn't explain this and seems to intentionally leave a lot of relevant information out.

Hi Kris,

I also had the famous red ring of death on my xbox. I also was thinking about getting it repaired but opted for the Playstation...for several reasons this year.

1) I needed blueray player ( originally had the hd-dvd add on for the xbox )
2) the game line up for 2008 looks alot better then last year and there are a few games i'm looking forward to play for ps3
3) this year...some time this year.. i hope.. they plan to implement a new firmware for XML that allows you to listen to music and chat online while ingame. At least that what they promised at the CES show.

some games i'm gonna missout like Ninja gaiden 2 on the xbox the but for me there where more games i wanted to play on the ps3 this year that will not be on the xbox. Plus now i can finally make comments on both HD-DVD and Blue-Ray.

I don't have exact Numbers on the xbox 360 vs the ps3 failure rate
but they both are around the 2% range ...about the same.

1) xbox has a bad conduit that dies after awhile due to heat on the first generation consoles of xbox 360

but to be fair

2) ps3 has an equal amount or repairs due to a bad read errors. ( will not read any discs ect.. ).

hope this helps.

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I'm conflicted, I'm a HD DVD supporter but don't like Microsoft

That could be what I would've sounded like if HDDVD launched at the same time as the original XBox. But I've got to give kudos to MS for doing so much with the original Xbox. It ended up being plagued with 1st person shooters, but the hardware did really well and MS wooed in a lot studio support. At this point the Windows/Mac issues are a thing of the past as I like both platforms for different reasons.

Now I'm bitter with Sony. They wanted their own format and are using it as an advantage to push it through the combination of the PS3 and their own movies. I didn't want to purchase a PS3 anytime soon - the 360 has a lot more games to choose from. Sony pushes BR and pulls PS2 compatibility and now I will wait for the PS3 to drop to at least $250 before I buy one.

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I dunno why we even bother caring what Japan does. They will NEVER buy a US-manufactured console.

They are buying it though. It is a slow process, but Japan is starting to embrace the xbox brand. The xbox 360 is not doing nearly as well as the wii or PS3, but it has already surpassed the lifetime sales of the original xbox and weekly sales are close to 10,000 units. Once again that isnt as good as the PS3 or Wii, but I remember seeing weekly sales where the original xbox barely broke 1,000.

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A few things missing here as well:

1. Total sales since launch.
XBOX 360: 17.7 Million
PS3: Estimated 9 million (Hope to meet 11 million by March) (Many sold in Japan which generally is giving the 360 a hard time because it is from the US)

2. Game Sales.
PS3 has no really great games going for it and in the end that is what will matter. In the top 10 (all platforms) of December XBOX 360 had 4 titles (Including the no. 1 spot). The PS3 had 0. In 2007 (whole year) top 10 XBOX 360 had 3 titles in top 10 (Including the no. 1 spot.) The PS3 had 0.

Also Henning don't forget overall quantity of games sold. Presently the 360 has at least 10 titles that have sold 1 million games or more. Many of those sales occurred during the last holiday but some happened before that time. Just to name a few:
1. Lost Planet
2. Gears of War (And there is no way M$ is going to allow Gears 2 on the ps3. Sorry Sony fans)
3. Halo (8 million copies sold worldwide and counting)
4. Dead Rising (yes it did sell 1 million copies believe it or not)
5. Mass Effect
6. Guitar Hero 2
7. Guitar Hero 3
8. Call of Duty 4
9. Bioshock
10. Madden 08

You can check the numbers yourself online with npd. I realize some of these games are also on the ps3 but the 360 versions have sold far more copies than the ps3 ones. Guess how many ps3 games have reached the million sold club? One game so far. Resistance Fall of Man and it took a full year just to reach that number. All of their other high profile games like Lair, Heavenly Sword, Ratchet and Clank, and Uncharted have barely reached more than 200,000 to 300,000 sold individually. There may be a few titles that have reached 500,000 by now due to the holiday spike in ps3 sales but you can see the trend. Ps3 games are not selling so how will Sony regain money lost on each console? Normally hardware is sold at a loss to regain profit in software sales. But if no one is buying the games what do you do? Even more worrisome for Sony is the fact that 3rd party companies are less likely going to want to release their products on the ps3 since development time and costs are higher than the competition and the return will not cover the costs of labor and marketing. Uncharted reportedly costs more than 20 million to make but so far its sales are barely over 150,000. I've said this before and I'll say it again. Sony probably did win the next-gen format war with the ps3 but it may just have cost them the next-gen gaming war. And yes it is looking more like this generation's gamecube every day. I can hear the dreamcast laughing from the grave somewhere....

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Sony probably did win the next-gen format war with the ps3 but it may just have cost them the next-gen gaming war.

I'm not a gamer"z" kind of person, but I have to ask again. How would PS3's inclusion of a Blu-ray player cost them the "next-gen gaming war"? What is the connection?

They gave XBOX a one year lead because they had to wait for the Blu-ray drive. Plus, their gaming console was the most expensive ever launched because of the drive. That is why.