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Megadude on 29 May 2009
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WereKitten said:
thx1139 said:

@WereKitten,

Correction hopefully R&D will pay for itself overtime.  It has been said many times in this thread, but it is the market that controls how long the PS3 stays on the market (unless Sony discontinues production).  Sony would still be manufacturing the PS1 if the profit margin (not simply pure profit) was there.  The PS3 is in a bad position to last 10 years.  Sony has indicated that best case scenario the PS3 operations will profitable in FY2011 (April 2010-March 2011).  It is virtually certain that MS will announce the NextBox will be announced at E3 2011.  Certainly the NextBox will show that the PS3 is indeed not "futureproof" because nothing is.  As it has been said this puts the PS3 in the position of still being at a costly price (compared to the 360 and consoles 5-6 years into its life) not nearly the most powerful and not the budget console.  

The key then is what do the retailers start to do.  Already we have seen retailers trim the size of PS3 section in stores.  The CostCo by me still sells PS3 hardware, but they dont have a dedicated PS3 software section any longer. What will it be like 2-3 years from now?  Tell you what it wont be better.

I agree with much of your post, actually, about the profits and the retailers. A few notes:

1) I should have formulated it "R&D might pay for itself..." indeed, but my point was to answer Squilliam's previous post about what caused the losses at SCE. Thus I was talking about R&D in general, as in: each time you invest in research and development, it is supposed to pay for itself in the future, but it is accounted as a spike in expenses.

2) "Sony has indicated that best case scenario the PS3 operations will profitable in FY2011 (April 2010-March 2011)". Can you give me a link for this?

3) "futureproof" is indeed a stupid PR term, and as most of them it can't be taken at face value.

4) PS3 at a costly price in 2011/2012 compared with the 360? Once you hit the right price bracket, inner differences are marginal. If in 2012-2013 the NextBox has been out for a year at about $400, a $200 PS3 will look much more appetible than a $130-$150 360. The 360 will look more outdated because it won't read all optical formats, wifi will have made inroads in most homes (unless they release a new SKU with wifi), and because it will most likely be perceived as the "cheap" machine next to the new MS console. The PS3 will actually be affordable enough by then that the "more bang for the buck" actually matters and it might have the place the PS2 has had for years even after the 360 was introduced: serviceable if not up-to-date hardware, doubles up as a good optical reader / media box, good cheap library when compared with latest console.

I am ready to bet that the introduction of the NextBox is going to cut the 360's legs much more than the PS3's.

Also remember in the N64 era when Sony managed to make the PS1 often seem more powerful then the N64 through use of FMV? A similar occurance could simply happen again where the PS3 ad's etc. Feature lot's of FMV and people will actually do research in order to see that 720 is in fact that much more powerful. Bluray and it's capacity will aid in this endevor.