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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Alternate history: What if PS3 launched without Cell or Blu-Ray at $399?

victor83fernandes on 13 March 2020
d21lewis said:
victor83fernandes said:

360 had everything done right, I doubt they could do it again.

I remember the games, Oblivion, Table tennis, Fight night, Gears of war, Halo 3, Forza 3, rainbow six vegas, dead rising, Test drive unlimited, call of duty 2, saints row, FEAR, Ghost recon - advanced warfighter, Hitman blood money, call of duty 3, the godfather, Battlefield 2, phantasy star, Prey, need for speed, project ghotam 3, condemned and many more. All of these games before the ps3 even came to Europe.

If you really liked videogames at all, you had to have a 360 back in 2005/2006, I'd have waited a couple months for ps3, but that was a huge library of games already available in HD graphics with a fantastic controller that had vibration, I paid 360pounds in UK, the ps3 was supposed to be 500pounds without controller vibration. And it was backwards compatible with a lot of games.

As much as I loved ps2, I had to go 360. I ended up buying a ps3 when uncharted came out.

The fact that in the end the ps3 still outsold the 360 is mind boggling to me as a real gamer who enjoys games. It makes no sense. Its as if people bought into the brand instead of the best library. More so when the xbox 360 played a lot of Xbox games such as Baldurs gate, Black, Batman begins, Burnout 3, colin mcrae4, commandos 2, Constantine, crimson skies, doom 3, Fable, Far cry instincts, GTA trilogy, Halo games, Jade empire, Max payne 1 and 2, Medal of honor, Ninja gaiden, Panzer dragon, Prince of Persia, red faction 2, return to castle Wolfenstein, Shenmue 2, silent hill 2, soul calibur 2, star wars games, and many many more.

PS - I do not believe Microsoft will ever again have that library advantage, sony will not let them. And I wont fall for the talks about several teams and games coming, I remember how they fooled me with the Xbox X because a couple games were cancelled. 

You would have had to be crazy to chose ps3 over 360 at least for the first 3 years. Specially if you play online, xbox live was way better than psn back in 2006.

Even at a higher price, the PS3 had some good selling points. HDMI and Wi-Fi at a time when XB360 offered neither out of the box. Free online (which I still believe was only free to combat the success of XBL Gold) offering the "meat" of what XBL had to offer, a decent web browser, Linux support, etc.

I agree XB 360 had the better library for a few years, the better price (again, offering the important stuff people wanted in a console) and a better online service. Plus the 360 just kept offering features the PS3 hardware got later or never got at all (ie: External HDD support).

That damn RRoD, lack of quality exclusives later in the gen, and gamers just being loyal to Sony in more parts of the world was just too much to overcome. Still, going from hardware that sold like 24m to 80m + is something to be proud of.

That was a hell of a war. Wonder if we'll ever see another like it?

Back in 2005/2006 online gaming on consoles was not so popular at all, so the antenna being bought separately was a great idea to keep the costs low, I never bought one.

Not many people had hdmi either, but the component cables had great picture anyway, most people I new didn't even have an HD TV in 2005.

I agree with you on the free online, but if you ask any online gamers back then, they would rather pay for the much better service, psn was bad back then.

Lets be honest, most console gamers back in 2005 wanted a great console with a lot of great games and as cheap as possible. 

The only reason I bought one at launch was because PS3 came almost 1 full year later to Europe, so I couldn't wait, specially with Oblivion which was for me game of that generation.

That was not a war, Microsoft just had the advantage of 1 full year without competition as the only HD console on the market, even sony fans gave in.

Had sony released on the same week the story would have been very different.

Bear in mind here in Europe ps3 was almost twice the price, 360euros vs 600euros but I still believe had they released the same week, sony would have outsold the xbox by far.

Same thing this coming next generation, if xbox series X releases in November 2020, and ps5 would be delayed to November 2021, I would buy the X on launch day, and that would become my main console, I wouldn't wait.



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DonFerrari on 13 March 2020
Doctor_MG said:
DonFerrari said:

PS1 and PS2 were weaker than the competition and that didn't affect a single iota on the sales of both. So if PS3 because of Cell removal ended up being slightly weaker than X360 that wouldn't really impact the sales negatively, while 200 USD less for PS3 would certainly made sales go up a lot. The Multimedia discount on sales for PS2 and PS3 should stop already, look at the tie ratio it is similar to X360 and PS4 so piracy, DVD or BD Player were very minimal distortions on the sales total.

The PS1 and PS2 had a huge benefit with the medium that they were using. The Nintendo 64 didn't perform well because third parties did not want to use the medium that they provided, and game prices were extraneous. The PS2 also started with a great medium, DVD's. Nintendo tried to compete with their mini-disks but, unfortunately, there hold on the market was already reduced and third parties weren't in support of their products as much (mini-disks also held around half the data as a DVD). Meanwhile, Microsoft was an entirely new contender in the market, and had to work very hard to receive the support that Sony received as a baseline. Of course, it helped that the PS2 played DVD movies out of the box where the Xbox had to have a separately purchased dongle and remote. 

Obviously, power isn't everything, but one reason that people purchased the 360 in comparison to the PS3 was it's better performance in games like Call of Duty. In fact, that's a typical mention up and down this thread. Basically, what I'm saying, is just that the Cell wouldn't necessarily mean that there would be better quality ports. All it means is that there would be easier ports in the beginning of it's life-cycle. 

"The multimedia discount on sales for PS2 and PS3 should stop already"

Why? A good DVD player back in 2000 cost about as much as a PS2, and the PS2 did a whole lot more. Sony advertised this feature-set as well. The first Blu-Ray player cost $1000 and released in June of 2006...just five months before the PS3 launched at $500-600. To deny the idea that some people purchased these consoles based on their multimedia capabilities is ridiculous. It wasn't the only reason to buy those consoles, but for some it was a big reason. Also, I'm not talking about piracy at all. I'm just talking about hardware purchases. 

Sure PS1, 2 and 3 had a good media solution that on the case of Nintendo competitor made several 3rd party go exclusive to them (besides Nintendo relationship being bad at the time). But the buy of the console for the use to hear CD or buy DVD and BD were minimal.

Haven't said no one bought PS2 or PS3 for those reasons, but that was a very minimal quantity that nowhere would really change the quantity of consoles sold.

curl-6 said:

So the general consensus seems to be that Cell/Blu Ray were a mistake, and that the system would've been better off without them?

The Cell/Bluray themselves weren't mistake but what they brought, high cost and difficult to develop made a big negative impact to PS3.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

Doctor_MG on 13 March 2020
DonFerrari said:

Sure PS1, 2 and 3 had a good media solution that on the case of Nintendo competitor made several 3rd party go exclusive to them (besides Nintendo relationship being bad at the time). But the buy of the console for the use to hear CD or buy DVD and BD were minimal.

Haven't said no one bought PS2 or PS3 for those reasons, but that was a very minimal quantity that nowhere would really change the quantity of consoles sold.

How can you say that with any amount of confidence though? At launch the system was constantly praised for it's Blu-Ray capabilities. It was the CHEAPEST Blu-Ray player on the market at launch, and for a good time afterward. Not to mention it was the only Blu-Ray player at the time that could also get bonus content from the internet. 

This was all when HD TV's were starting to pick up sales, and before streaming. Anyone who decided to upgrade to an HD TV was going to get another HD companion device, and Blu-Ray handily beat HD DVD. If someone was looking for a Blu-Ray player and noticed that the PS3 was $400 cheaper with MORE features than the competition you bet they'd be choosing that device. Especially since many people were stating that the quality of playback surpassed those of other Blu-Ray players on the market at the time. So: cheaper, more features, AND better quality?

Less people purchased the PS1 as a CD player (though it was a great CD player at the time too), but a lot of people did actually purchase the PS2 and PS3 for their multimedia capabilities.



Dulfite on 13 March 2020

Whose to say Cell supported PS3? Are we even certain people play video games in that universe? Even if so, whose to say the PS3 exists in it? Not to mention the Cell Saga originally ended in 1993 originally in Japan. If they had predicted the PS3 a whopping 13 years in advance that would be astounding!



Charlesalb87 on 13 March 2020

well we could have a high end PS4 in this gen

the problem is that modern consoles are holding back gaming, because gamers want to save money, just look at this downgrade: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX_WePhiYHE, thats why i spent $599 in the PS3

Consoles gamers about PS3: Its overpriced
Sony: Alright, we gonna fix that with the PS4

PC gamers about PS4: Its underpowered
Sony: WTF!!!!



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DonFerrari on 13 March 2020
Doctor_MG said:
DonFerrari said:

Sure PS1, 2 and 3 had a good media solution that on the case of Nintendo competitor made several 3rd party go exclusive to them (besides Nintendo relationship being bad at the time). But the buy of the console for the use to hear CD or buy DVD and BD were minimal.

Haven't said no one bought PS2 or PS3 for those reasons, but that was a very minimal quantity that nowhere would really change the quantity of consoles sold.

How can you say that with any amount of confidence though? At launch the system was constantly praised for it's Blu-Ray capabilities. It was the CHEAPEST Blu-Ray player on the market at launch, and for a good time afterward. Not to mention it was the only Blu-Ray player at the time that could also get bonus content from the internet. 

This was all when HD TV's were starting to pick up sales, and before streaming. Anyone who decided to upgrade to an HD TV was going to get another HD companion device, and Blu-Ray handily beat HD DVD. If someone was looking for a Blu-Ray player and noticed that the PS3 was $400 cheaper with MORE features than the competition you bet they'd be choosing that device. Especially since many people were stating that the quality of playback surpassed those of other Blu-Ray players on the market at the time. So: cheaper, more features, AND better quality?

Less people purchased the PS1 as a CD player (though it was a great CD player at the time too), but a lot of people did actually purchase the PS2 and PS3 for their multimedia capabilities.

Being on VGC for a long time and looking at all the discussions over it and evidence.

I just gave you a very strong thing to look at. PS2 sold 150M+ consoles and 1.5B+ SW tie ratio of 10:1, PS3 sold 87M consoles and 1B SW tie ratio of 11.5:1 . Those aren't that much different from the average on the gen they were into.

So even though there were people that bought PS2 for DVD and PS3 for BD that isn't on a quantity that would really have changed much the totals. Do you have evidence for this "lot of people"?

Just look at how many bought the HD-DVD for Xbox (not many), or how the BD adoption rate was slow because there was a war format (at the time it ended BD players were already much cheaper than PS3). Considering most outlets claim the war was won because of PS3 having the BD, and at that time PS3 was below 20M or so (go check how much DVD players were sold before the war started, or how many BD players sold after it became the standard) and you'll see that this amount is very little (and sure that most of that 20M were diehard fans of Sony).

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/05/sony_cuts_price_of_blu-ray_player/

Price of the BD players dropped quite fast after the format war finished. So PS3 wasn't the cheapest player for more than some months.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

Doctor_MG on 13 March 2020
DonFerrari said:

Being on VGC for a long time and looking at all the discussions over it and evidence.

I just gave you a very strong thing to look at. PS2 sold 150M+ consoles and 1.5B+ SW tie ratio of 10:1, PS3 sold 87M consoles and 1B SW tie ratio of 11.5:1 . Those aren't that much different from the average on the gen they were into.

So even though there were people that bought PS2 for DVD and PS3 for BD that isn't on a quantity that would really have changed much the totals. Do you have evidence for this "lot of people"?

Just look at how many bought the HD-DVD for Xbox (not many), or how the BD adoption rate was slow because there was a war format (at the time it ended BD players were already much cheaper than PS3). Considering most outlets claim the war was won because of PS3 having the BD, and at that time PS3 was below 20M or so (go check how much DVD players were sold before the war started, or how many BD players sold after it became the standard) and you'll see that this amount is very little (and sure that most of that 20M were diehard fans of Sony).

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/05/sony_cuts_price_of_blu-ray_player/

Price of the BD players dropped quite fast after the format war finished. So PS3 wasn't the cheapest player for more than some months.

"Sony has cut $100 (£50/€74) off the recommended retail price of its new next-generation DVD player in an attempt to forge ahead in the Format Wars. The BDP-S300 now costs $499 (£250/€370) - half what the company's first dedicated Blu-ray player cost when it was launched six months ago"

At this point in time (June 2007) Sony had cut the price of it's 60GB variant to $499. Just a few months later they introduced a new model that was 40GB for $399. This source proves nothing aside from dramatically dropping costs of Blu-Ray hardware which was already well documented. PS3 was still a very cheap Blu-Ray player and still had more features. It wasn't until after 2008 that PS3 was no longer had a majority of the market for Blu-Ray players.

From what I found, in January of 2008 Toshiba announced that only 1M HD-DVD players were sold. HD-DVD was barely part of the format war, and every single sale of PS3 counted towards Blu-Ray sales. By the end of 2007 19.25M Blu-Ray players were sold. Which, at this time, there were 12.85M PS3's sold. PS3's took a significant portion of the Blu-Ray sales market and absolutely helped push that format as the winner.



Charlesalb87 on 13 March 2020

After everything, the PS4 and PS3 manage to be misunderstood by a lot of people

Not to mention that the Wii outsold the PS3 and X360 despite being an overclocked gamecube



curl-6 on 13 March 2020

DonFerrari said:
curl-6 said:

So the general consensus seems to be that Cell/Blu Ray were a mistake, and that the system would've been better off without them?

The Cell/Bluray themselves weren't mistake but what they brought, high cost and difficult to develop made a big negative impact to PS3.

So if they resulted in a big negative impact, does that not make them a mistake?



The_Liquid_Laser on 14 March 2020

In this scenario I think PS3 would have faired better against the XBox360.  Perhaps take 1/3 of 360 sales and give it to the PS3.  But the two consoles, combined, would be the same even on a YoY basis.  Those first few years of Generation 7 belonged to the Wii and a cheaper PS3 wouldn't have changed that.



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