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potato_hamster on 26 July 2017
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Turkish said:
potato_hamster said:

lol. Okay man.

Let's break it down. I don't know what the framemeister does to do what it does, but they might utiliize some extremely specialized components to achieve what they're achieveing and it's not so simple for any company to make those components for fractions 1/10 or 1/30th of what it costs someone else just because they're ordering 2 million as opposed to 10,000. Even if they can, and can produce it cheaply, there could be IP that Sony needs to license that might not be cheap, which means Sony may need to pay a royalty more expensive than the components themselves in order to produce them. It is not that simple. You're grossly oversimpliying the concept of "economies of scale".

Why shouldn't something like this realistically cost more than $99-$129? Says who? Just because the sum of the components to make the device might be $50-60? What about the development costs? What about the Q+A costs? People are going to expect this thing to play every single PS1 game if it has the drive. That means ensuring they all work. And I assume they're going to want their memory cards to work as well. That's a whole other can of beans. Ohh and the digital copies of those games? You need to test those as well. Not exactly trivial.

No one would want a PS1 with preloaded games? I remember people saying the same thing about the NES classic.

Believe whatever you want to believe. At the end of the day, Sony isn't going to make your console, and you've been told why.

Brah, Sony is famous for their TV and DVD upscaling technologies, these dudes can leverage the knowhow from their entire workforce, a small <200 employee company has to source expensive parts to manufacture them, not Sony.

The PS3 had already a PS1 upscaler built in since 2006, it just wasn't a priority to be the purest form back then, the upscaler is good but not the best according to My Life in Gaming but they can easily make it if they prioritize it for the retro market.

It shouldn't cost anymore than $129 because it's not expensive for Sony to make. It's basically a PS1 with a HDMI out, those things sold for $99 more than a decade ago. The PS1 Classic would easily sell even for $149. "And I assume they're going to want their memory cards to work as well" nah, they dont need to go that retro, if they would, whats the problem?

I want this system because I think about the yuuuuge Japanese only PS1 library, which alone rivals many consoles entire libraries. I want a modern, simple way to play them on my HD TV, no hassle with emulators or upscalers.

 

See here's the part you still fail to get, that upscaling technology that framemeister or whoeever they are is utilizing might be patented. Which means if Sony wants to use it, or develop their own using the methodology described in the patent they'd have to come to a licencing agreement with the patent holder. Or, they can use their existing upscaling technology that they own the patents to, that they use in playstations and DVD and blu ray players, and on their smart TVs that's good enough for pretty much every one of their customers. Huh... I wonder which one they're going to use.

It shouldn't cost more than $129 to make? Based on what exactly? Because the PSone sold for $99 a decade ago? Did that PSone have upscaling technology? Did that PSone connect to PSN? No? Well I'm pretty sure that developers were utilizing morsel of processing power the PSone could muster, so it looks like they're going to have to come up with some supplementary processing that plays well with the existing PS1 architecture, which isn't arbitrary. Furthermore the PSone featured some propreitary chips. Those might actually be impossible to reproduce today without some considerable expense. Considering how technology has advanced, and these chip manufacturers have upgraded their facilities, it's entirely plausible they don't have the means of downgrading their production lines to produce chips of that nature any more. Thus, if Sony were to actually reproduce these chips, (which is the only way to guarantee perfect compatibility with literally every PS1 game) it might be more expensive per chip to produce them today than it was ten years ago. Why do you think Nintendo opted to use a modern processor that was total overkill in the NES classic? Because it was more than capable of doing a good enough job emulating the 30 games that they were including in the box, and because they were only emulating 30 games, they only had to make sure that the system emulated those 30 games well enough.

My point being, this is not nearly as simple as you're making it out to be. Adding a PS1 disc reading and/or memory card compatibility adds a tremendous amount of complexity and expense to the development, QA and production of such a device. It's so needlessly complicated when a simple box that emulates built in games would make the primary market for such a device more than happy. You speculations on price and consumer interest in paying that much for a device are almost completely baseless.

This is clearly another case of a gamer selfishing thinking "I want a device, therefore there's no reason for <insert company here> not to make it for me". Sorry man, but your love of Japanese PS1 games as a north american gamer makes you niche as fuck. Sony can't make any money off of catering to people like you. You need to accept that.

Finally, source that "retro games" are a $1 billion a year industry? Based on the NES classic, which grossed Nintendo 3.2 million X $60 = $192 million, and well we have the atari flashback and at games genesis at less than $8million in sales between them. Where is the other $800 million coming from, and more importantly, if you're talking about the increased value and reselling of 20-30 year old games, how on earth can Sony, Nintendo or whoever actually profit off of that?