| IcaroRibeiro said: Sony lost more money because they needed to keep the console going on for years. A garbage console that costed them insane 800 USD to manufacture. The irony is: With such cost per united produced PS3 would generate massive losses even if the launch was a huge success. How has it ever passed for C level still beyond me. But anyways... Nintendo dropped the Wii U rather quickly. Courtesy of PSVita bombing, which gave a lot of leeway for launching their hybrid console aligned with the moment where 3DS was starting to lose steam If PS Vita was as popular as PSP 3DS market share would be eroded and Japan market would not turn into Nintendo playground. This alone would have impacted Switch launch, negatively I sometimes wonder whether Nintendo would follow Sony path and keep eating losses for many years to delay Switch until the right moment (enough top tier games ready for launching, as well as hardware development completely well done) or if they would accelerate a 3DS successor at risky of failing to deliver their best games at launch. Regardless, I wouldn't say market punished Sony, because honestly there wasn't much to punish. PS3 was a very good platform and with most of the genre defining games amd the high sales are just a reflection of its library. We can't say the same of Wii U, it was a very week console all around Launch price was detrimental but majority of people simply don't buy at launch. At the middle of its life PS3 was more affordable thus it was viewed as a normal console. A similar comparison to be made should be 3DS. The launch price was big but once it got a price cut things were already sorted out |
Garbage console? It had better games than the ps4 imo. And I still use it as one of the best blu-ray players that actually remembers where you left off without the need to see all the warning screens again. It's still the best media center supporting the most formats.
The console was anything but garbage, but indeed very expensive to make thanks to blue laser diode shortages when the console came out. It was already expensive because of adding blu-ray, yet the shortages and need to launch quickly to combat HD-DVD, and the 360 already being out for a year, drove the price up a lot.
PS3 added otherOS to make it a bit less expensive for consumers as it could pass as more than just for entertainment (lower import taxes on general purpose computers) however that backfired. They never intended the ps3 to subsidize server farms, for example
https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html
About the 33rd largest supercomputer in the world right now is the US Air Force Research Laboratory's (AFRL) newest system, which has a core made of 1,760 Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles.
At a reported loss of $240 per ps3 sold at the time, Sony basically subsidized the US Air force with over $422 thousand dollars. And that's just one of many of these ps3 clusters. https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/3/20984028/playstation-supercomputer-ps3-umass-dartmouth-astrophysics-25th-anniversary
However Sony couldn't afford to lose nor drag out the Blu-ray HD-DVD war and PS3 did quickly turn the tides in that. But I have no clue whether the investment in the Cell processor paid off. It was hard to program for and with the 360 having the early lead it was a pita to port games to the cell. Sony's first party turned out great looking games later in the generation and the Cell even led to some new AA techniques, yet the PS3 always trailed behind in multi platform titles. Those late gen great first party games did give the momentum to ps4. 360 started great, then MS killed its momentum with Kinect and TV TV TV :/
Sony also eventually managed to turn the losses around and by 2010 started to make money on PS3
https://www.pcworld.com/article/512740/article-4244.html
So it would have been a bad decision to kill ps3 early! Instead ps3 was still produced until 2016 and made money back for the PS4 R&D.
Meanwhile Nintendo played it wonderfully, delaying BotW to come out day 1 with the launch of the Switch. It was perfect timing, just a year after Sony and MS launched their pro consoles which kinda failed to deliver, here comes the Switch hybrid console with the biggest console seller ever.
WiiU wasn't weak, it was poorly marketed and the fickle blue ocean had their fill of Wii Sports etc. The WiiU had great games, full BC with Wii yet to the general consumer it looked like a peripheral to the Wii. Low sales meant 3rd parties losing interest and Nintendo not getting their returns on software sales.
The WiiU still lasted 5 years (same as GameCube and just a year less than Wii), not the shortest console generation. Original XBox only lasted 4 years!
