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Forums - Sales Discussion - Honestly what was Sony thinking

Killzowned said:
I don't care what their plan was, all I care about is that they put the best console out so I hope they do the exact same thing next generation.

They may not be profitable but you can always count on Sony to put the best piece of hardware and games out there.

The "best" is purely subjective and can not by proven; for instance I value my opinion much more than yours and I don't think Sony has either the best hardware OR the best games this gen.

I think Sony's agenda was establishing Blu-Ray as the successor to DVD, and they used the strong brand equity they had established in the Playstation brand name to accomplish that goal.  I believe, they honestly thought that the strength of that brand name would carry them to similar levels of success they had seen in previous generations.  Instead however they have experienced a backlash which has diluted the power of the Playstation name while simultaneously giving both of their competitors higher market share AND brand awareness.

I don't think that means Sony is going to die; I do think they will not pursue that business model again next gen.

 



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T People don't realize it, but the Wii is Sony's biggist competition, not xbox. The Wii stole all of the PS 2 casuals from Sony. In that regard,sony is way way in trouble. Xbox 360 is just doing slightly better than Xbox 1.



Killzowned said:
I don't care what their plan was, all I care about is that they put the best console out so I hope they do the exact same thing next generation.

They may not be profitable but you can always count on Sony to put the best piece of hardware and games out there.

 

 Joke post?

 

Best hardware, in what way? What games you like can't be argued, but the systems themselves have a bad history.

The PS1 was a pile of garbage. It was plagued by drive failures Sony would not cover under warranty like Microsoft has with the RROD. From a technical view, it was terrible, with many of the classic games being almost unplayable now and are hard to look at with thier swimming texture maps, rough edges and serious tearing in most games. I can play N64 games, they aren't as pretty as they used to be but they are still playable and for the most part hold up well.

The PS2 was the least powerful system of it's gen, was hard to devellop for, and again was plagued with DRE, drive failures and build quality issues that once again were ignored by Sony. The XBOX was vastly superior but lacked alot of the 3rd party support Sony had amassed, and it had a higher price tag. The Gamecube was also superior in every way but lacked the capability to play DVDs which contributed alot to it's lackluster sales.

This gen the system finally has the quality down, but it was hard to make games for, cost too much money, and they tend to seriously overhype games for months and month before thier release. It's like songs on the radio, the more you hear them the less you like them. By the time LBP (a game I originally was thinking of buying a PS3 for) came out I had lost interest to a degree and instead waited to play it before making that descision. Not worth buying a system for. It's lost almost all it's exclusives. To call it worse than the X360 wouldn't be right as it does have it's exclusives, but it's certainly no better. Sony is in trouble because they are selling a system for a high price and it costs them more than that to build it. They are in trouble because at that price the system doesn't run multi-console games any better than thier lower priced competition. Sony is in trouble because they are selling a $450 bluray player when I can get one for under $150 at Wal-Mart. Basically they are in trouble because they made the system so "good" that it will never make them any money.

Look at Nintendo. The Gamecube cost little to make and sold at a profit even at a low price. By not including a bunch of features 90% of the audience even cared about, they made a huge profit every year even though the PS2 was destroying it in terms of sales. hopefully they get thier shit together next round, maybe they'll have GT5 finished by that time and I will want to buy another one of thier systems.



thx1139 said:

Really what was Sony's plan with the PS3.

Game consoles don't grow on trees, they are the result of a long running development, where many road blocks can occur. The original concept for the PS-3 and the reason for the Cell looked quite different, but you can't simply change the concept after you spend billions of US-$, instead you try to get around the road blocks as good as possible but some of these decissions can be quite painfull. Neither the PS-3, nor the Xbox360 or even the Wii, really work exactly as they were originally planned. There are always problems that you didn't expect. This is quite normal but you only know how the system really works after you are finished.

 



TacoBoy49 said:
T People don't realize it, but the Wii is Sony's biggist competition, not xbox. The Wii stole all of the PS 2 casuals from Sony. In that regard,sony is way way in trouble. Xbox 360 is just doing slightly better than Xbox 1.

 

 

Slightly? Are u high?

 

Xbox 1 was never profitable, it was in the third place and for 5 years onlys sold less then 30 million.

Xbox 360 makes money, sells most games, is in second place, soon over 30 million in less then four years and will lilky makes at a minimum 15-20 million more.

Slightly is the wrong word.

 

And you canb compare PS2 when looking at the competition. PS3s main comptetitor is NOT Wii, it is 360. The console taget exactly the same way. Wii plays in it's one division.



Predictions for 2009:

360: 39-42 PS3: 31-34 Wii: 67-70

Future projection

Wii will hit 100 million before christmas 2010 (made december 2008)

NDS Family will have sold and shipped more then PS2 at the end of 2009 (made january 2009)

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Unless you work for Sony, why would you care if the PS3 is profitable or not? For the typical gaming fan, all we should care about is if there are good games on that system or not. You could build a cheap system and sell it for $50, but if all it has are crappy games, then I'm not going to buy it just because it's cheap. Similarly, if a console costs $400 but it's got a strong library of games that I want to play, then I rather invest in the more expensive system. Yes, cost is important, but the quality of the product is equally important to me. Why are some ppl willing to dish out $60K to buy a BMW when they could spend 1/3 of that and get a Hyundai? Because some people prefer quality over affordability.



You know the PS1 and PS2 was both not profitable for the first year or two, the PS3 is the exact same and it should be breaking even this year. Also I don't think they expect the Wii to sell like it is and also the recession is really screwing them over, I don't think anyone predicted that coming. But this time next year the PS3 will be selling cheaper and at a profit for Sony so everything will be good :)



I'm with Dgc. The financial crisis is killing them, and Nintendo and Microsoft really brought their A game this time around



Gilgamesh said:

You know the PS1 and PS2 was both not profitable for the first year or two, the PS3 is the exact same and it should be breaking even this year. Also I don't think they expect the Wii to sell like it is and also the recession is really screwing them over, I don't think anyone predicted that coming. But this time next year the PS3 will be selling cheaper and at a profit for Sony so everything will be good :)

It's not even nrealy the same. Yes they both lost money in the start, but it's not only that they lost money - you have to lokk on HOW MUCH. PS3 is by far the monst expensive console ever built and if the early projections was right, which it would buy looking on the FR from sony, they sold the console for half the price that it was produced.

I expect that before the end onf 2009 there will be 50$-100$ cut on PS3 and maybe +/- 0 in terms of profit. That will make 3 years without profit and by looking on how much loss PS3 has generated it's hard to imagine that at the end of the line PS3 has made up for that. Cause we have to face that it will only be sligthly profitable in the start and grow slowly but most likly never se profite near double of the price of production in contrats to that they sold it half of the price of production.

At the end of it, they have a great console but comparing to the competition and to PS1 and PS2 - the PS3 is an economic failure. Point of being in the business is that the next product should be better in terms of economics then the last one, hard but thats the point. In Sony case they're way wrong. In Microsofts case they're way right (but Xbox 1 was the biggest failure in terms of economics). Same goes for Nintendo.

So, no it won't be al good after 2009. And the crisis won't turn this year. This christmas will be much harder then the last one since the cutting of jobbs has started this year after last year's meltdown.

 



Predictions for 2009:

360: 39-42 PS3: 31-34 Wii: 67-70

Future projection

Wii will hit 100 million before christmas 2010 (made december 2008)

NDS Family will have sold and shipped more then PS2 at the end of 2009 (made january 2009)

they expected to sell the ps3 at $600, and they didn't give themselves hardly any room for error. If they could have stayed at $600 they would have been fine, if the yen didn't get so strong they could have had smaller losses although much of the losses were taken before the financial crisis even started. Nintendo had a plan that made sure they still were very profitable even when the yen suddenly becomes really strong and the world goes into a financial crisis.



currently playing: Skyward Sword, Mario Sunshine, Xenoblade Chronicles X