Sony cant cut the price

[Millennium]

Kantor said:

Millennium said:

Dgc1808 said:

pika said:

I have a better idea: stop making PS3. When that happens Sony dont have to sell at a loss

That would hurt the Company image, which is very important to SONY.

To some degree, yes. But companies have proven themselves willing to develop games for lesser hardware, and even for the PS2 in particular. While ending the PS3 would certainly be a blow to their image in the short term, it may be the best overall bet for their long-term survival: retreat to the PS2, regroup on a proven console which already has a huge userbase and well-understood hardware -both of which are very important advantages for third parties- and work on either retooling the PS3 for a relaunch next generation or go with something else entirely.

What I am talking about here is retreat, not surrender. The Wii's rapid conquest of the market, the PS2's continued viability as a platform, and the 360's failure to hold onto its lead despite a year-long head start all prove that the hardware advantage of the HD consoles is unnecessary to compete this gen. Retreating to the PS2 would certainly be a blow to Sony, but it need not be a fatal one. The PS3 has already served its true purpose -namely, locking the HD-zealots into Blu-Ray- so there is honestly no reason but pride for Sony to keep this albatross around its neck.

The PS2 is only in decline because Sony is killing it slowly. As things are the Wii will eventually outsell the PS2, but revive it and bring it back to the market in full force and the Wii would probably never catch up: it beat a one-year head start but it will not beat a six-year one. Given Sony's mastery of the PS2 hardware, it might even be able to do a "PS2 Max" model: start with a Slim, add a modest HDD along the lines of the original PS2's optional upgrade, and move the firmware over to something upgradeable (possibly porting XMB and even Home), and you could do a surprising amount with it for relatively little additional cost: debut it at perhaps as little as $150 and the price advantage becomes too big to ignore.

This is, by the way, coming from a standpoint of ruthless pragmatism. Truth be told, I'm a Wii fan. But I honestly think this would be Sony's best chance at surviving as a viable competitor in the console market: admit the mistakes of the PS3, learn what lessons can be learned, and retreat to what is, for them, a stronger position. They've lost this battle, and the PS3 will not allow them to go down in anything remotely resembling a blaze of glory, so I believe the best route for them now involves living to fight another day.

This is a terrible idea. Even the Wii is more powerful than the PS2.

Many developers, including Sony's own first party, are developing for a technological powerhouse (ie the PS3). How do you think they would feel if Sony suddenly said "Sorry, we're canning the PS3. Scale down your projects and work on a game for this last gen 8 year old console". I'd say a lot of the first parties would be pissed, and a lot of third parties would just quit and make the game 360/PC.

I would certainly be very annoyed if they did this, and so would the other 18.5 million people with PS3s. We would all begin to hate Sony for doing this. The PS4 would do even worse than the PS3.

Not to mention the amount of money Sony has spent on first party games. What was it, over $20 million for Killzone 2? You think they'll just cancel that?

Sony's best chance of surviving in this market is to take out everything that is unnecessary, and cut the price as much as possible so that they just about make profit on the PS3. Sony needs to moneyhat exclusivity, Sony needs to moneyhat multiplats. Sony needs to advertise, properly. If they do all of this, the PS3 can easily end up in second place. Any chance of first place is long gone.

So what if it's less powerful, and so what about the third parties? They only want the technological powerhouses so they can put marketing shinies into their games: they've developed far better games under far smaller budgets on far "lesser" hardware. Only Wii fans even bother to argue that their current library beats the PS2's; the HD fanboys recognize the superiority of the PS2's library to their own far more readily, even as they irrationally cling to the misconception that more powerful hardware is somehow making their games better.

And if you're annoyed about having wasted your money on the PS3, then this only means you're late in coming to that realization. You should have been annoyed about it long ago, because this could have been predicted from the very beginning, and many people did. No one can buy a console without drinking at least a little marketing Kool-Aid, but Sony's folks had to work overtime, and the scary part is just how many people they were able to dupe into buying something that everyone else realized never stood a chance. This wasn't just a matter of hardware or library superiority: the PS3 isn't even viable, and truth be told, it never was.

The things you mention are not Sony's best chance of surviving, for one simple reason: Sony cannot afford to do any of it. The most they can cut the price to "just about make profit on the PS3" is less than zero; if they want to make any profit they'll have to raise the price. They don't have the funds to moneyhat exclusivity or multiplats. Proper advertising at this point involves hiring a new marketing agency which will no doubt want more money given what Sony would be hiring them to do. That's just the problem: everything you say could in fact turn the PS3's fortunes around if Sony could do it, but they cannot. Therefore, lesser and riskier strategies are required, because Sony can't afford the safe stuff.

But whatever. I still believe I present the most realistic plan for Sony's survival, because it represents a balance of what can work and what Sony is actually capable of doing, but none of it matters, because Sony won't do it. It's a Japanese company; it comes from a culture where not so long ago people would kill themselves rather than lose that much face, and still do on occasion. Let the PS3 be Sony's seppuku, because at the rate it's going, it will be.