TheSource said: Japan will buy American products. This has been brought up before - look at the ipods in Japan - huge. Microsoft still needs better content for Japan, and to some extent, for Europe.

The ipod is the only one. Besides iconic things like Levis or McDonalds that also aren't heavy industry. Ask General Motors how much American products the Japanese will buy. Ask GE how many TV's they sell in Japan. 

 

Do you HONESTLY think the 360 is so bad, that it sells fine everywhere else but nothing in Japan, and it's not because they simply boycott it? Then you're not very smart. And you cant say it's the games because 360 has more Japanese RPG's in Japan than PS3 does.

 

HappySqurriel said: jman8 said: The lost-leader strategy can still work as long as the systems are on the market longer than before, which is what Sony and Microsoft are shooting for. I've said it a number of times, the 360 and PS3 are gonna be around for another 7-10 years. Sony has pretty much confirmed this all those times they've been claiming the PS3 is "futureproof." So if the 360 is around for a total of 8 years, and is selling at the same rate as the XBOX1, the 360 would sell 50 million units. Along with Live and all the other fees, microtransactions, and overpriced accessories, MS could conceivably make a profit this time around by the end of the 360's life. But how often has a trailing console been able to survive 7 to 10 years? Just because a company says that they see a long life in a console doesn't mean it will have a long life (Nintendo said they thought the Gamecube was going to be a good system for 8 years). There is a reason why consoles are a cyclic/generational market; after 5 or 6 years you can produce a system for $200 which is 10 times as powerful as a system which was $2000, consumers begin looking for new games (and new types of games), and interest in the market as a whole begins to decline. Part of the drive in the market is that there is always something new, if you're unwilling to produce the new product someone else will and they will become the dominant player. In general you are right, the longer life (which dominant consoles get) is one of the ways to recover from the loss leader strategy; but this goes back to the only way the strategy works is if you're the dominant console.

no way 360 or PS3 has a life cycle of 7-10 years.  Life cycle has much, much more to do with userbase then it has to do with power or things like blu-ray.  PS2 is going on 7 years, and is the longest life cycle for any recent console and it is certainly nowhere near future proof.  PS1 also had one of the longest life cycles, and was far less powerful than n64.  What PS1 and PS2 have in common is they had huge install bases. 

The PS3 will have a 7-10year life. Why?
To make a PS3 with 6x faster processor in 6 years... will cost them the same the PS3 at launch. I dont think sony will launch with another 600$ machine.

So it would be 3-4x faster... if it comes out in 6 years. Then your paying 300$ for a console that can do games that look 25% better. I would not pay that. I would not BUY that.

Ok, so in 8-10 years, sony might release a new console. The PS3/360 are so fast, so high tech. To follow the 8x+ speed diffrence from each generation to the next... the PS4 will cost around 800-1200$. I dont think sony will do that.

So wait 2-4 years beyond the 6 year point. Your looking at 400$ and 200$ for the console. As likely the PS4 will have 4-8 cell processors. (since they are such great communial processors they scale great. Likely they will use them on the PS4, so that way if you made a game for the PS3... you could port your engine to the PS4 for next to free, and actually still be optimized. The graphics chips being produced today scale as well. Do they have 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1028, 2056 shader pipelines? You tell your game how many your useing, and then you tweak the number of shaders your program runs. Basically once agian, you can have 4-8x more power, and very easily use it beyond what is there.

I expect the PS3 because of those reasons to stick around for at least 8 years.

Nintendo could release a console with 2x the power of the Wii in 6 months, and sell it for 200$ at a profit. 

sharky said: TheSource said: Japan will buy American products. This has been brought up before - look at the ipods in Japan - huge. Microsoft still needs better content for Japan, and to some extent, for Europe. The ipod is the only one. Besides iconic things like Levis or McDonalds that also aren't heavy industry. Ask General Motors how much American products the Japanese will buy. Ask GE how many TV's they sell in Japan.    Do you HONESTLY think the 360 is so bad, that it sells fine everywhere else but nothing in Japan, and it's not because they simply boycott it? Then you're not very smart. And you cant say it's the games because 360 has more Japanese RPG's in Japan than PS3 does.

PS3 is selling like crap too, and the only reason it is selling at all is because of the playstation name.   Sony has dominated the last 2 generations.  The reason the 360 doesn't sell IS because of the games, and lack of (or lack of quality of) advertising.  The japanese market is completely different from the american/european market, and the Japanese will buy the games if you release them. 

Explain to me what kind of games people are buying on 360? 

Here, let me go through the 360 games in the top 50 American charts and lets see if they have any appeal to japanese gamers:

Guitar Hero 2 - none

Fight Night Round 2 - almost none

Rainbow Six: Vegas - none

Tom Clancy Ghost Recon: Advance Warfighter 2 - none

Gears of War - none

Crackdown - none

Def Jam Icon - none

Major League Baseball 2k7 - small appeal

NCAA March Madness 07 - none

Oblivion - very little

Lost Planet - moderately high appeal (actually sold well in Japan for a 360 game)

NBA 2k7 - very little

Call of Duty 3 - none

WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2007 - none

Madden NFL 07 - none

 

Do you get it now?  The only game out of any of those that has appeal to Japanese gamers is Lost Planet, and even that was made with American gamers in mind.  Do you really expect the Japanese to like shooters and american sports games?

Go look at the Japanese charts, and see if you can find the same games on the American charts.

 

HappySqurriel said: jman8 said: The lost-leader strategy can still work as long as the systems are on the market longer than before, which is what Sony and Microsoft are shooting for. I've said it a number of times, the 360 and PS3 are gonna be around for another 7-10 years. Sony has pretty much confirmed this all those times they've been claiming the PS3 is "futureproof." So if the 360 is around for a total of 8 years, and is selling at the same rate as the XBOX1, the 360 would sell 50 million units. Along with Live and all the other fees, microtransactions, and overpriced accessories, MS could conceivably make a profit this time around by the end of the 360's life. But how often has a trailing console been able to survive 7 to 10 years? Just because a company says that they see a long life in a console doesn't mean it will have a long life (Nintendo said they thought the Gamecube was going to be a good system for 8 years). There is a reason why consoles are a cyclic/generational market; after 5 or 6 years you can produce a system for $200 which is 10 times as powerful as a system which was $2000, consumers begin looking for new games (and new types of games), and interest in the market as a whole begins to decline. Part of the drive in the market is that there is always something new, if you're unwilling to produce the new product someone else will and they will become the dominant player. In general you are right, the longer life (which dominant consoles get) is one of the ways to recover from the loss leader strategy; but this goes back to the only way the strategy works is if you're the dominant console.

I would argue that 2nd or third place consoles don't survive because the makers choose not to support them in favor of producing a new system with new technology that is miles ahead of yesterdays tech. In 4-5 years, is technology going to make that leap we have seen in the past? Arguably, the leap from the PS2 to the PS3 was minimal compared to previous transitions. For the general consumer, they don't see a huge difference between last gen and next gen. On top of that, how cost prohibitive is it going to be to develop for a new generation of exponentially more powerful systems in 4-5 years. Also, I'd argue that people are pretty much sick of having to upgrade their systems so often. I think that's a big reason the PS2 is still selling so well. This last point is a bit harder to prove so I'm willing to throw it out. But the biggest reason these systems are gonna be around for as long as I think whether they're number 1 or not is because of the huge investment made by both MS and Sony. They might as well fight it out for as long as possible because it is possible to at least break even or minimize your losses by hangin around. I guess it's possible we see new MS or Sony systems that are sort of like the Wii in that they're updates of previous systems. Problem is that in Sony's case, they're whole strategy for the PS3 is based on the longterm 10 year plan at the cost of the shortterm. I don't see them giving up on the PS3 so easily.

 

Sony and Microsoft are reenacting the Thirty Years' War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War), though I do hope that it will be over in not 30, but 3 years. They will leave lots of scortched earth, and I think the winners will be Nintendo for Games and Apple for Digital Download. I predict that the Apple TV will sell 4-6 million units this year and 50 % more next year. That will bury any dreams for MS to dominate the digital living room and ultimately kill the 360 unless it can survive on game sales alone, which I think it can't.

Xbox is an anomally. They dropped $2 billion on Live, $400 million on Rare, and slashed the price by $100 6 months after launch. This wasn't a strategy about making their system profitable over the long term. This was about building a brand to last generations.

Microsoft's better off focusing on Europe than Japan, though to do PS1/PS2 numbers would require everything in spades.

jman8 said: HappySqurriel said: jman8 said: The lost-leader strategy can still work as long as the systems are on the market longer than before, which is what Sony and Microsoft are shooting for. I've said it a number of times, the 360 and PS3 are gonna be around for another 7-10 years. Sony has pretty much confirmed this all those times they've been claiming the PS3 is "futureproof." So if the 360 is around for a total of 8 years, and is selling at the same rate as the XBOX1, the 360 would sell 50 million units. Along with Live and all the other fees, microtransactions, and overpriced accessories, MS could conceivably make a profit this time around by the end of the 360's life. But how often has a trailing console been able to survive 7 to 10 years? Just because a company says that they see a long life in a console doesn't mean it will have a long life (Nintendo said they thought the Gamecube was going to be a good system for 8 years). There is a reason why consoles are a cyclic/generational market; after 5 or 6 years you can produce a system for $200 which is 10 times as powerful as a system which was $2000, consumers begin looking for new games (and new types of games), and interest in the market as a whole begins to decline. Part of the drive in the market is that there is always something new, if you're unwilling to produce the new product someone else will and they will become the dominant player. In general you are right, the longer life (which dominant consoles get) is one of the ways to recover from the loss leader strategy; but this goes back to the only way the strategy works is if you're the dominant console. I would argue that 2nd or third place consoles don't survive because the makers choose not to support them in favor of producing a new system with new technology that is miles ahead of yesterdays tech. In 4-5 years, is technology going to make that leap we have seen in the past? Arguably, the leap from the PS2 to the PS3 was minimal compared to previous transitions. For the general consumer, they don't see a huge difference between last gen and next gen. On top of that, how cost prohibitive is it going to be to develop for a new generation of exponentially more powerful systems in 4-5 years. Also, I'd argue that people are pretty much sick of having to upgrade their systems so often. I think that's a big reason the PS2 is still selling so well. This last point is a bit harder to prove so I'm willing to throw it out. But the biggest reason these systems are gonna be around for as long as I think whether they're number 1 or not is because of the huge investment made by both MS and Sony. They might as well fight it out for as long as possible because it is possible to at least break even or minimize your losses by hangin around. I guess it's possible we see new MS or Sony systems that are sort of like the Wii in that they're updates of previous systems. Problem is that in Sony's case, they're whole strategy for the PS3 is based on the longterm 10 year plan at the cost of the shortterm. I don't see them giving up on the PS3 so easily.

Well, I generally agree that people are probably less and less likely to upgrade their system because of "state of the art" graphics being that they're not entirely dissatisfied with current generation graphics; moving from the PS3 to PS4 will probably be a very difficult sale. If the Wii ends up being as successful as I anticipate I expect that game developmet will take a dramatic shift when looking at more powerful systems; most developers (up to 80%) will stick with "Sharper" (higher resolution textures, somewhat higher detailed models) versions of simple graphics that could be produced on the Gamecube/Wii while a smaller portion (say 20%) will take full advantage of the system.

Where I disagree is that I don't think that the trailing systems could survive if the console manufacturer supported them. Even if you (as a first/second party) fully support the current console third party developers are likely going to shift to a newer system; in particular a newer system which is either selling better or has a larger userbase. Eventually the only game you will get from third party developers will be Madden, and at that point nothing will keep a console alive.

Seems like a few years ago PCs were caught up in the MHz/horsepower race, but that has now taken a back seat to efficient, silent, cool, cheap and most of all, "powerful enough" hardware.

Is this the trend? Seems like consumer behavior is slowly favoring this approach (witnessing the sales of the "next-gen" consoles vs "last-gen's two Gamecubes duct-taped together" Wii)

I personally don't believe for a second that Microsoft entered the industry to turn a profit!

Everyones going to laugh when they read that but I have many reasons to believe it, first I have an uncle who works in Seattle (M$) and one with IBM. I used to have conversations about the industry alot with them. My uncle in Seattle always said that Sony was becoming a threat. Sony had back when the PlayStation came out begun to talk about it taking oncomputer's and by PlayStation2 was really considering and openly talking about entering the personal computer buisness. Long story short Microsoft views Sony as hostile to their core market and dominant position in the PC industry.

Microsoft lead the fight by supporting Sega in numerous different ways with the DreamCast. Sega and Microsoft grew pretty tight and both companies had vested intrest in seeing DreamCast succeed. Microsoft needed/Wanted to kill Sony off stop it at the source (PlayStation). however DreamCast began to fail, and Sony became increasingly powerfull.

So around 1999/2000 Microsoft began looking at entering the industry likely as a hostile assualt to damage Sony's market shares and profits. Microsoft looked immediatly into a partnership or buyout of Nintendo. This didn't work for many reasons. M$ quickly in matter of a year or so began and finished the X-Box while other companies spend up to half a decade developing a single console Microsoft jumped in as fast as they could.

From day one Microsoft has had a three phase plan this plan consists of three consoles. Right now we have heard it mentioned many times lately. Microsoft has stated various times regardless of the 360's sales out come their will be a third console. Microsoft is determined more then ever to kill Sony off or at least break its ability to become a future threat. Microsoft has reverted to supporting Nintendo's DS which intern could be seen as a hostile move against Sony's PlayStationPortable.

Kutiragi (spelling wrong) said specifically that the PlayStation3 was a cheap computer, a personal computer. A home entertainment system set to replace computers. The PlayStation3 can be seen as a the first real step by Sony to specifically target Microsoft's strong hold the PC.

In the end I believe Microsoft made the X-Box not to really enter the game console wars but to see to it Sony didn't enter the PC wars. Microsoft's more then dominant share in the PC industry could not be compromised and Sony's a growing global threat to companies world wide. We have one more console to go and lets see just how affective this strategy is.

Besides it seems to be working Sony couldn't possibly muster the power to break into the PC market now. Their constant losses and now layoffs show they are in no position to pursue the PC market much further. If everything goes right Sony's PlayStation may even cease to exist which would end this chapter once and for all!