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Forums - Sales Discussion - Michael Pachter predicts PS3 will win this round of console wars

Good point forgot to mention that download services will make the formats obselete!!!



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tmbh said:

I have to agree with HappySqurrie!!


This is a price war!

Everyone can afford a Wii (even if they can't get hold of one) and it appeals to a bigger customer base.

 PS3 certainly has a huge fanbase from PS2 owners wanting to upgrade but with its current price and lack of games its gonna struggle.  I dont expect to see a price drop for a while,  cheaper manufacturing costs will help Sony loose less money and a price cut could be here by end of the year in time for xmas but I would'nt be suprised if it didnt come for another 6 months after that!!

This is also a format war.

Betamax was far superior to VHS but look what happened.

Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD could go the same way (I would champion Blu-Ray over HD-DVD basically because it has more storage capacity)

But what is the difference between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD?  Both formats will play films in the SAME 1080p resolution with uncompressed 5.1 sound (lets not niggle over compression formats etc) the point is they are the same!! There is no difference!!  Its a silly war!!

Betamax and VHS had big quality / resolution differences, VHS was inferior but the point is that there was a clear difference between the formats so consumers knew what they were getting, there was a clear choice.  Same with consoles Wii works on any TV and is affordablebut to take advantage of PS3/XBOX 360 you need to spend hundreds or thousands upgrading your TV for HD and buying a new surround processor for true HD surround sound etc.

And who wants a 1st generation Blu-Ray / HD-DVD drive NOT ME!! 

 There is also much boasting of Blu-Ray software sales trampling HD-DVD but hardware sales are much closer.

 I predict a draw/stalemate dual players will be the best choice!! 

 Console wars will become a more even playground, I dont know who will win outright, the point is the lead of victorous side will be significantly less than what Sony has had with its last two consoles.

Well HDDVD has an advantage in stand alone players, but I think BluRay has around a 10:1 advantage overall because of the PS3.  Even with that advantage movie sales are only 3:2 in favor of BluRay at the moment.  Although total sales are still so extremely low (a fraction of what big DVD movies sell in a day) that many of those BluRay "sales" could be movies given away with PS3 bundles.  I think the bigger question is will Apple come out of nowhere and sucker punch Sony and MS the way Nintendo did.  Sony and MS had this big huge expensive console war planned until Nintendo stole the market with a cheap market friendly device.  I wonder if Apple TV will have to same effect to Sony and MS' big huge expensive format war.  Perhaps instead of a PS3 or 360 at the center of most peoples entertainment centers there will be two small white boxes .

 



Blue3 said:
HappySqurriel said:
Blue3 said:
Probably right. Wii lacks the hardware power for a good 5/6 year life cycle.

I don't see how hardware power has anything to do with how long a console lasts ...

The difference in quality of graphics and processing power between the N64 and Playstation was huge but the playstation continued to sell (and have Million selling games) years after the N64 was discontinued; following up on that the XBox and Gamecube both had processing power advantages over the PS2 yet had much shorter lifespans.

Certainly, the difference in processing power between the Wii and PS3/XBox 360 is very large but so is the price difference. Eventually (say 2009/2010) the Wii will probably be $99 (with Wii Sports) While Microsoft is still trying to sell the XBox 360 for $200 (or more) and the PS3 is $300 (or more); there are far more people in the world who are willing to spend $99 on a console than are willing to spend $299 on a console.

 

lol you cant be serious.  Even Nintendo fanboys should by now have accepted the fact that the reason for N64 failure was the dumb decision to use cartridges, Nintendos greed = cartridges = no 3rd party support = N64 failure .  While PS2 games stand toe to toe with anything on xbox or GC, no sane person can say the same about wii games and PS3 or 360 games. 

Why even buy a wii if a PS2 is half the price and has same quality games ? wont there be more people willing to spend $49 on a PS2 when $99 on a wii if its all about price ?

 

 

 

 


Cartriges had a lot to do with failure of N64, but there were also a lot more reasons behind 3rd parties abandoning N64. I agree that there would be people willing to buy PS2 in 2011, but PS2 will not have decent support at that time. Even the retailers don't sell it anymore at that time. 3rd party will eventually drop its support and so will Sony. If they want to gain sales for PS3, they have to focus on PS3 and moving existing PS2 owners towards PS3. Anyway, the console business does not work in the way, that they support old consoles. New ones have to be made that console manufacturers keeps selling consoles, because when certain penetration is reached, sales will drop because everyone that want's one, has one. The market can expand only to a certain point, unless something really new and interesting is brought to market, buzz, DDR, singstar and guitar hero are perfect examples. But they can't expand the same old forever without bringing new base to expand to market.

Ei Kiinasti.

Eikä Japanisti.

Vaan pannaan jalalla koreasti.

 

Nintendo games sell only on Nintendo system.

Ok, for the last time, downloadable movies will NOT become the standard for high definition films in the time it would take for one of the existing HD disc formats to become a standard. There will be an increased adoption of HDTVs in the next year or so and eventually HDTVs will be all that are left (to buy). So if your TV dies you will HAVE to get an HDTV to replace it. This increase in HDTV adoption will cause an increase in HD movies. HD Movies ARE HUGE! That is why they are stored on HD-DVD or Blu-ray discs. Their capacities are measured in double digit gigabytes! At the current rate high speed internet adoption. There will still be a substantial part of the worlds population that are limited to cable modem speeds (as many are limited by slow dsl or even dial up at present). This speed (while fast - around 2.5 to 5 mbps) is still too slow to make downloading a movie more convenient than a trip to the video store. Just try starting to download a movie on the 360 right before you want watch it. The sun will come up before its done!



theshoe23 said:
Ok, for the last time, downloadable movies will NOT become the standard for high definition films in the time it would take for one of the existing HD disc formats to become a standard. There will be an increased adoption of HDTVs in the next year or so and eventually HDTVs will be all that are left (to buy). So if your TV dies you will HAVE to get an HDTV to replace it. This increase in HDTV adoption will cause an increase in HD movies. HD Movies ARE HUGE! That is why they are stored on HD-DVD or Blu-ray discs. Their capacities are measured in double digit gigabytes! At the current rate high speed internet adoption. There will still be a substantial part of the worlds population that are limited to cable modem speeds (as many are limited by slow dsl or even dial up at present). This speed (while fast - around 2.5 to 5 mbps) is still too slow to make downloading a movie more convenient than a trip to the video store. Just try starting to download a movie on the 360 right before you want watch it. The sun will come up before its done!

I think by downloadable content they usually mean downloadable and streaming video. But you're right about that connection speeds will not be at the level for years, that HD requires, unless data comes with high compression and is decompressed "on the run". But if streaming video can hit the market even on SD, it will still eat HD-video discs sales. Basically every TV channel have internet broadcasts even today, the problem is that you need a computer to watch them and people are not used to watch TV from computer. But if you can use hub which is connected to TV, it's a lot different thing. Oh, and not to mention HD broadcast through satellite, and someday even terrestial, for example Canal+ have its kiosk, through satellite, a pay per view service, which uses "streaming data" and you can watch any movie you like, whenever you like.

Ei Kiinasti.

Eikä Japanisti.

Vaan pannaan jalalla koreasti.

 

Nintendo games sell only on Nintendo system.

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The cable companies have plenty of bandwidth for HD streaming and are doing it already. They can stream hundreds if not thousands of times faster than the internet since they are using the local network.



theshoe23 said:
Ok, for the last time, downloadable movies will NOT become the standard for high definition films in the time it would take for one of the existing HD disc formats to become a standard. There will be an increased adoption of HDTVs in the next year or so and eventually HDTVs will be all that are left (to buy). So if your TV dies you will HAVE to get an HDTV to replace it. This increase in HDTV adoption will cause an increase in HD movies. HD Movies ARE HUGE! That is why they are stored on HD-DVD or Blu-ray discs. Their capacities are measured in double digit gigabytes! At the current rate high speed internet adoption. There will still be a substantial part of the worlds population that are limited to cable modem speeds (as many are limited by slow dsl or even dial up at present). This speed (while fast - around 2.5 to 5 mbps) is still too slow to make downloading a movie more convenient than a trip to the video store. Just try starting to download a movie on the 360 right before you want watch it. The sun will come up before its done!

Not sure about the rest of the world, but your comments sure ring true in Australia.  We’ve just recently had some adoption of ADSL2+ through a number of smaller players (wholesale resellers).  But few people are lucky enough to have access to those speeds.  Most current plans here are limited to a connection speed of 8Mbps and download quotas in the range of 10-50GB/month (which won’t get you too far for HD streaming).  Higher quotas exist, but the costs are insane – my plan is AU$60/month and has a 20GB limit.

The current government is completely clueless in regards to broadband (amongst other things).  And with talks of a national broadband network only recently hitting the political limelight, the situation doesn’t look like changing for another 4-5 years.  Basically, I don’t see “downloadable services” being successful here in Aus for quite some time.



While DLC won't kill physical media, expect it to start taking a healthy bite out of the marketplace.


Most analysts say that HDTV adoption won't even reach 50% until 2011. That means that Apple, MS, and others have at least four years to start squaring away their codecs and waiting for connection speeds to improve. Besides, downloadable HD will probably be in 720p for quite some time and while that is lower than what you get from Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, it's still good enough for most people out there and they would probably never notice the difference.

Ultimately, there will always be physical media. But its market is going to continue to dwindle as time passes. I don't even buy DVDs anymore. I use HBO On-Demand, my 360, and iTunes to get almost all of the content I want in my home. I used to use Netflix but ran out of movies to watch (after about 5000 rated). This is from someone who used to purchase at least one DVD a month, often times several in a month. I last purchased one about six months ago and have purchased maybe three in the past year and a half.



Or check out my new webcomic: http://selfcentent.com/

I think Digital Distro will overtake the formats, with me I either torrent movies and TV shows or I use Netflix and rip the DVDs to my hard drive, I haven't bought a DVD in almost two years, no reason to at this point



 

Predictions:Sales of Wii Fit will surpass the combined sales of the Grand Theft Auto franchiseLifetime sales of Wii will surpass the combined sales of the entire Playstation family of consoles by 12/31/2015 Wii hardware sales will surpass the total hardware sales of the PS2 by 12/31/2010 Wii will have 50% marketshare or more by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  It was a little over 48% only)Wii will surpass 45 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  Nintendo Financials showed it fell slightly short of 45 million shipped by end of 2008)Wii will surpass 80 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2009 (I was wrong!! Wii didn't even get to 70 Million)

Ray007 said:


Not sure about the rest of the world, but your comments sure ring true in Australia. We’ve just recently had some adoption of ADSL2+ through a number of smaller players (wholesale resellers). But few people are lucky enough to have access to those speeds. Most current plans here are limited to a connection speed of 8Mbps and download quotas in the range of 10-50GB/month (which won’t get you too far for HD streaming). Higher quotas exist, but the costs are insane – my plan is AU$60/month and has a 20GB limit.

The current government is completely clueless in regards to broadband (amongst other things). And with talks of a national broadband network only recently hitting the political limelight, the situation doesn’t look like changing for another 4-5 years. Basically, I don’t see “downloadable services” being successful here in Aus for quite some time.


You have download quotas?  That sucks...



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