| johnlucas said: Do you think that Sony should have gone all out and produced and sold their next console as a PSX rather than they did as a PS3? [snip]I think Sony should not have played this $600 game with the PS3 because it was never going to work. It's simply too high and even the XBox 360 is too high. They sell it at a loss thinking not to scare off more potential customers but they don't realize that they have ALREADY scared off most of the customers. And as a result they scare off the developers eventually. Bad business practice. Selling more systems actually HURTS them if they don't make up the difference in software sales & Blu-Ray disc sales. So shouldn't they have gone all out and created the ultimate version of the PS3 that would be like the PSX? An all-in-one media device that plays games, plays Blu-Ray, edits movies, is a DVR, maybe does Tivo, runs Linux, acts as a stereo/surround player and has Bose-like speakers and all that high-level jazz? NOT selling it at a loss but REALLY staying true to their "I would work another job to buy one" mentality. Putting the price out at $1000 plus and presenting it beyond a gamemachine but more as an all-in-one mega media device. A TRUE PlayStation that plays EVERYTHING. They wouldn't have the volume of sales but they WOULD have the power of profit being that it sells at such a high margin. And no one could complain about price because of all the stuff in the box and that it was never intended to be like the other Playstations. Full-powered Cell to do all these things. What do you think about that? That would make more sense to me. John Lucas |
But the problem with this strategy is this:
Who will make games for a console that will only sell (maybe) a million a year? Because that's how many the PSX would have sold. Why spend $10-$20 million to do all that work if your audience will be just a couple of million people (of which you'll be lucky to get a quarter of). This means that the high graphics games will go only to MS.
Remember, nobody ever made games for PSX, they just made games for PS2 which PSX happens to be able to play. The incentive for the PSX is that you just need one piece of equipment for all your needs. But that logic only applies to people who need all PSX's features.
I wrote a price barrier essay already in one of the other threads, so I don't want to write it again. But the problem is that PS3 solves a problem that doesn't really exist for the mass majority of the PS2 owners looking to upgrade, the all in one entertainment center. They probably should have gone a more peripheral mode so that they can undercut Xbox's price. Cutting out the BR drive alone cuts like, iirc, $200 off of manufacturing costs and if they accepted the same loss / unit as they are now, they could have release PS3 at a $299/$399 price point. With this and their strong install base and power of the cell, they have a really compelling story.
If they did this, they would have had less production issue because they only have one rare component and though they might not have been able to flood the market, but they would have been able to convince people to get the PS3 without a massive library of games simply because of the PS name, like they projected.
However, the problem with BR is that it is something that definitely could have been an add-on (like MS did) or built into a later SKU. Sony, with its larger install bas, can comfortably apply all the successful strategies their lesser competitor come up with a little later because of their established position and have enough volume to undercut (a popular MS strategy, btw). If PS3 came out without BR, BR might have lost the next gen media battle but would have won the console war. Given that the console gaming industry is going up much faster than movie industry and more lucrative, Sony should have picked their battles.
Instead, Sony wanted it all and they are going walk away with nothing (except that BR might win the next gen media battle)
