What hasn't been addressed enough here, is not the console ps3 sales, it's their software sales. Granted everyones first reaction is that, "Wait till the good stuff get here!" but no one who's buying the system is a gamer, gamers aren't buying the ps3. Heck only one game per 3 consoles is being sold. And thats the ratio if you don't count the existing 900,000+ userbase, if you add them only 1 game is being bought with a system per every 4 or 5 systems sold. Even if you think the ps3 is a trojan horse that will later convert its userbase to sales, I don't see how that'll happen, if you don't want to buy a single game when you first get the most state of the art video game system, you most likely won't want to get a game at all. That means most of the ps3 sales are blu-ray movie player sales. Their attach rate is falling through the floor. Now publishers have to say to themselves, it's not selling well, and most of what's selling isn't for games. And what's going to kill Sony is they lose money on the system sales, and make it on software, what good is a system that sells, when no one is buying the games? And don't tell it's good enough to just push blu-ray movies, if that were true why bother investing billions in the gaming industry, and just give out cheap blu-ray players from the start. The attach ratio right now is a huge siren going off. Even the X360 is selling more games, and thats more important to publishers then a userbase, if they don't believe the userbase is here to buy games.

Dolla Dolla said: Development for the PS3 is difficult, long, and costly. A new SDK for the PS3 is supposed to come out this summer.

The current PS3's SDK is in fact ridiculous, as anyone can see by reading the following article:

http://www.innerbits.com/blog/2007/05/09/ps3-memory-footprint/

Quick summary - PS3's operating system currently takes 52 MB out of its 256 MB main memory, and 32 MB of GPU memory, while the Xbox 360 OS occupies a total of 32 MB memory (no distinction between main and GPU memory in the 360 since it's shared).

Being a software developer, reading that makes me think that this SDK was developed by a bunch of crappy AND recently-graduated CS bachelors. It seems that Sony's mistakes go farther than marketing, PR and decision-making...

 I think it will be a while until the PS3 is *proven* to be capable of technologically better games than the 360, if that ever happens... Microsoft's experience with development environments is one more stone sitting on Sony's back.

PS: By the way, 1 out of the 7 Cell SPEs is reserved for the PS3's OS. Forum bug, click the second link! (archive.org links contain "http://", that's probably the cause for the bug)

http://www.ps3portal.com/?view=article&article=352&p=2">http://web.archive.org/web/20060415183759/http://www.ps3portal.com/?view=article&article=352&p=2

The OS memory waste is 100+ Mb when using networking. There is also additional waste of memory that is used for framebuffers because the PS3 video scaler is crap. (can only scale horizontally and only from certain resolutions) So, if you have a 1280x720 game, but you want to support 1080p output (which is preferred since some TVs only take 1080i/p and not 720p), worst case is that you need to stretch blitt your 1280x720 screen to a double buffered 1920x1080 frame buffer. Lets see, 1920*1080*32bit*2 = ~16Mb. If you had a functional scaler you'd only need an extra 1280x720 buffer which is ~3.5Mb so the difference (~12.5Mb) is pure memory waste on top of the 100Mb. If you for some reason want 16-bit per component all the way the waste is doubled.

The PS3 is far from dead. Japan might be a nightmare now, but it will save the PS3. It's quite simple really, success is relative. The 360 is doing OK there (success is relative, again), but it'll be no competition there to the PS3.

fooflexible said: What hasn't been addressed enough here, is not the console ps3 sales, it's their software sales. Granted everyones first reaction is that, "Wait till the good stuff get here!" but no one who's buying the system is a gamer, gamers aren't buying the ps3. Heck only one game per 3 consoles is being sold. And thats the ratio if you don't count the existing 900,000+ userbase, if you add them only 1 game is being bought with a system per every 4 or 5 systems sold. Even if you think the ps3 is a trojan horse that will later convert its userbase to sales, I don't see how that'll happen, if you don't want to buy a single game when you first get the most state of the art video game system, you most likely won't want to get a game at all. That means most of the ps3 sales are blu-ray movie player sales. Their attach rate is falling through the floor. Now publishers have to say to themselves, it's not selling well, and most of what's selling isn't for games. And what's going to kill Sony is they lose money on the system sales, and make it on software, what good is a system that sells, when no one is buying the games? And don't tell it's good enough to just push blu-ray movies, if that were true why bother investing billions in the gaming industry, and just give out cheap blu-ray players from the start. The attach ratio right now is a huge siren going off. Even the X360 is selling more games, and thats more important to publishers then a userbase, if they don't believe the userbase is here to buy games.

I agree with that from a video game perspective, but it is true that Sony intended the PS3 primarily as a trojan force for bluray.   The PS2 was a powerful catalyzer to the nascent DVD market and Sony figured why not control the movie format this time also.  The problem they face of course is that they may not win (they have a lead in a tiny market which is good but it doesn't portend victory yet), most people won't be ready to upgrade to HD movies for many years, by the time they are most will probably prefer DVD quality digital downloads over expensive HD players and discs, and regardless of what happens Sony appears to have done permanent damage to their video game division.  The PS3 should be used in business schools as the textbook example of how not to ruin the most profitable part of your company.  Whatever happens, Sony wasn't simply looking at software attach rates, bluray sales also factored in.  What Sony forgot in its quest to outdo Nintendo's famed maltreatment of 3rd parties was that 3rd parties only care about software sales.

KruzeS said: The PS3 is far from dead. Japan might be a nightmare now, but it will save the PS3. It's quite simple really, success is relative. The 360 is doing OK there (success is relative, again), but it'll be no competition there to the PS3. The problem is people are still looking at this as a three horse race, it's not. This is a two horse race, even Microsoft and Sony predicted that at E3, just with the wrong spin. One horse is the Wii the other is the PS360 (and the PC). Yes, the Wii wins, hands down, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for the alternative. If you forget the Wii for a second, you'll have the 360 dominating America, the PS3 owning Japan and both spliting differently the remaining countries with an edge to the PS3. Now, you've got to know that some games just aren't fitted for the Wii (not that I like them myself)! If publishers want to sell them in Japan they have to put them on the PS3, if they want to sell them in America they'll put them on the 360, and if they want a shot at selling worldwide, they'll have to port them all around. We are already seeing this happen - exclusives being dropped or reevaluated - much more than we're seeing support being dropped for these consoles and added to the Wii. There will be a market for these games - the PS3 and 360 combined will be significant. Of course publishers are now waking up and announcing support for the Wii, but that doesn't mean they'll drop the PS360. Actually, those better be novel things they're bringing to the Wii, otherwise they won't stand up. EA's MySims will be big, but Sims wouldn't be so big - and you can bet that realistic looking life simulator still has a shot in the PS360 (and PC) combined.

What you say makes sense, but if most games exist for both the 360 and the PS3, and the 360 being much cheaper than the PS3 (and that will never change), most people would choose a 360 rather than a PS3, even in Japan right?

fooflexible said: What hasn't been addressed enough here, is not the console ps3 sales, it's their software sales. Granted everyones first reaction is that, "Wait till the good stuff get here!" but no one who's buying the system is a gamer, gamers aren't buying the ps3. Heck only one game per 3 consoles is being sold. And thats the ratio if you don't count the existing 900,000+ userbase, if you add them only 1 game is being bought with a system per every 4 or 5 systems sold. Even if you think the ps3 is a trojan horse that will later convert its userbase to sales, I don't see how that'll happen, if you don't want to buy a single game when you first get the most state of the art video game system, you most likely won't want to get a game at all. That means most of the ps3 sales are blu-ray movie player sales. Their attach rate is falling through the floor. Now publishers have to say to themselves, it's not selling well, and most of what's selling isn't for games. And what's going to kill Sony is they lose money on the system sales, and make it on software, what good is a system that sells, when no one is buying the games? And don't tell it's good enough to just push blu-ray movies, if that were true why bother investing billions in the gaming industry, and just give out cheap blu-ray players from the start. The attach ratio right now is a huge siren going off. Even the X360 is selling more games, and thats more important to publishers then a userbase, if they don't believe the userbase is here to buy games.

I touched upon that very point in my last "essay"

Sony's business plan is designed to have game software make up for the losslead strategy that causes *SOLD* PS3's to lose money. It's easy to get caught up solely on hardware which does matter in building a wide enough base for potential software sales but software sales is the whole crux of how Sony planned out this system. When that doesn't pan out it's exponentially worse for their outlook. They may get console sales but all this does is put them further in the hole since they played the ill-advised losslead game.

Lossleading is a pisspoor strategy. I can't see for the life of me why Sony continues to try this after being revenue champ the last 2 gens. That is only good to use when trying to penetrate a new field like with Microsoft and the XBox. And it takes hellafunds to pull that off in the first place.

Sony was trying to set up a two-fer that funds both its gaming division and its general consumer media division with blu-ray. Profit from hit games; profit from hit blu-ray movies. I talked with RolStoppable about this in a conversation. I think Sony put it together like this because of the poor kept profits from the PS1 & 2. In comparison to the record revenue Sony didn't profit dominantly. And I think they wanted to get an edge to impress investors. To show up Microsoft in hopes of running them off. And to have bragging rights and fulfill their legacy in the gaming world by extending dominance over 3 gaming generations. Something not done in the console world before. A videogaming version of "4 more years!"

They made it too top-heavy and got caught on the fence. I think they missed the boat on both halves of that planned equation to be honest. I don't see the viability in either side of that HD-DVD/Blu-Ray dealie. They are niche formats it looks to me. I got a feeling obsolescence is on the horizon for both of these formats due to some unforeseen left-fielder coming up with something better. Read Malstrom at TheWiikly.com he points out several examples of this very thing in one of those articles of his.

3rd party needs games to sell. And always have. Period. And they need profits from said games to be viable. So even if sales between systems are lower on one than the other if it took less money to make then it's still all good. Userbase counts as for potential growth in buyership of games. They're gonna get tired soon and I think they already are. When they finally get fed up one of these 2 systems is gonna drop out and I don't see it being XBox 360. There's a reason why that system's green & off-white like the colors of a dollar bill.

John Lucas 

KruzeS said: The PS3 is far from dead. Japan might be a nightmare now, but it will save the PS3. It's quite simple really, success is relative. The 360 is doing OK there (success is relative, again), but it'll be no competition there to the PS3. The problem is people are still looking at this as a three horse race, it's not. This is a two horse race, even Microsoft and Sony predicted that at E3, just with the wrong spin. One horse is the Wii the other is the PS360 (and the PC). Yes, the Wii wins, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for the alternative. If you forget the Wii for a second, you'll have the 360 dominating America, the PS3 owning Japan and both spliting differently the remaining countries with an edge to the PS3. Now, you've got to know that some games just aren't fitted for the Wii (not that I like them myself)! If publishers want to sell them in Japan they have to put them on the PS3, if they want to sell them in America they'll put them on the 360, and if they want a shot at selling worldwide, they'll have to port them all around. We are already seeing this happen - exclusives being dropped or reevaluated - much more than we're seeing support being dropped for these consoles and added to the Wii. There will be a market for these games - the PS3 and 360 combined will be significant. Of course publishers are now waking up and announcing support for the Wii, but that doesn't mean they'll drop the PS360. Actually, those better be novel things they're bringing to the Wii, otherwise they won't stand up. EA's MySims will be big, but Sims wouldn't be so big - and you can bet that realistic looking life simulator still has a shot in the PS360 (and PC) combined.

The types of graphics intense games that you refer to aren't that popular in Japan.  If the PS3 has only sold say 1.5-2 million, many of which as bluray players, when the Wii breaks 10 million why would any developer spend $15-25 million to make one of those games for the PS3 in Japan?  They'll figure out how to get it on the Wii.  The PS3 and 360 have a major flaw when it comes to Japan anyways, as some developers have recently mentioned, they're so huge they take up 1/4 of the living room and would crush the average Japanese person if they fell off a shelf (ok I exaggerated a bit).  Yes in the future Sony could fix that, but by then the Wii will have such a huge lead it won't matter anymore. 

Also somthing to remember, in this hypothetical future where Sony has gotten the PS3's price down to a near mass market level, enough games finally exist to possibly justify purchase, the PS3 is perhaps small enough that a Japanese guy doesn't need to call his buddies over to help him get his PS3 into his house, when all this is happening we'll be seeing the Super Wii at E3/TGS/whatever 2009.  By that time the PS3's poweer will be cheaply leapfrogged so why splurge on a PS3 then?

The US and Europe are different but this is a Japan thread so I'll leave it at that.

What's got to be disturbing is that 360 software outsold PS3 software again. Really, a retailer doesn't have any reason to even keep PS3 software on the shelf at these levels.

oops wrong thread. ignore me