Why Sony will always beat MS at making a console.

[TheRealMafoo]

I am back! This is the OP under a different name. It seems I have lost my password.

Anyway, to answer some of the questions....

The PS1 and PS2 were on par with all optical reading devices for their day. The failure rates seemed high for console, but that's because all previous consoles were solid state. If you looked at the average failure rates for a CD players during the PS1, and DVD players during the PS2, they would fail after around the same level of usage. Moving parts just fail.

As for the cost being a strong suit for Sony. I meant in terms of cost over the lifetime of the console. When they released it they had ridiculously high costs, but that's due to the technology being expensive. They understand when to make manufacturing runs and best the best times to inject new hardware into the system. If you do it too soon, you have spent too much. If you do it too late, you have not optimized the cost reduction. Sony does this well across all electronics divisions (all good consumer electronics companies do).

So for example., those PS3 has probably been revised 10 times from launch (a total guess). Those revisions could be as small as replacing the audio chip with cheaper one, or updating the capacitors with ones from a less expensive vendor. They could be as large as removing PS2 hardware as well. Whatever the reason, the revision reduced cost. MS, while having there fare share of cost cutting revisions, has also had to increase heat reduction, add HDMI ports, and replace DVD drives (some for cost, but mostly for reliability). A lot of their revisions increased the cost of the unit.

People are saying “games sell consoles”, and no one here agrees with that more than me. You can have the best gaming system in the world, but no software, means no games. That does not mean you can neglect the hardware. If MS has made a very quiet console, that had very good reliability, I think its chances of winning this round would have been a lot better.