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Forums - Sales - 7th gen is a huge wake-up call to Sony

dbot on 13 March 2009
Squilliam said:
Do they make humble pie with apple? I like apple.

Microsoft has been forced to eat the Apple version of humble pie.  Sony just eats the plain version.

 



Thanks for the input, Jeff.

 

 

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dbot on 13 March 2009
TacoBoy49 said:
Apple can do it, Sony can't. Apple also sells a crap ton of $3000 laptops. Sony can't. Apple is special that way.

Apple is selling a $3,000 pc with an Apple operating system.  Sony is trying to sell a $3,000 with a Microsoft operating system.  Do you see a difference?

 



Thanks for the input, Jeff.

 

 

hatmoza 2.0 on 13 March 2009

Its the bitter truth people .Its time to swallow that reality tablet !



dbot on 13 March 2009

@Numenex:  I actually thought that this was an unsourced article written by someone else.  I guess I will say good job.  I don't completely agree with your post, but some of the points are excellent. 

I don't think Sony took the customer for granted with the PS3, I think they tried to provide too much value and thought the customer had a higher tolerance to pay it.  I really hope that Sony is documenting their lessens learned from the PS3 and don't make the same mistakes next generation.  Obviously, they need to value engineer the PS4 to maximize value and minimize cost.  The PS4 needs to be based on the same cpu/gpu.  Don't switch, third parties will have "mastered" it by the time the time the PS4 is released.  They may not love it, but at least they will know how to make love with it.  Plus they would have free 100% backwards compatibility.

I think your points are fair regarding Sony's mistakes, but there are some positives.

  • The PS3 is a high definition system.  The transition from standard def. to high def. costs money, your first and second party developers need to come up to speed and it adds substantial cost to your base sku.  It will be interesting to see how Nintendo makes the transition next gen.
  • Free online gaming.  This is a huge competitive advantage.  I wish they would stamp this on every PS3 box.  It's not that it's just free, but they have built this business model on not charging for this service.  If Microsoft converted Xbox Live to a free service, they would have to rethink their model.  Sony is already postitioned to gain revenue off of PSN.
  • Blu-ray.  Let's face it, it isn't going anywhere.  It is the High Definition standard for the future.  You can try to convince yourself that a standard definition dvd is good enough, but it isn't.
  • First party development.  Sony realized they could invest all of their money in buying exclusivity, or invest in developing their own exclusives.  They are now in a position to get all of the multiplatform games, while publishing terrific in-house titles.  

So I guess you could say it isn't all bad for Sony.



Thanks for the input, Jeff.

 

 

haxxiy on 13 March 2009

I agree with TheSource. Nothing to add though.



 

 

 

 

 

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xman on 13 March 2009
TheSource said:

I dont know, PS3 is probably going to top 30m in Europe alone, and its still got the potential to hit 20m-25m or so in the Americas. Its never going to be the gravy train PS2 was, with 145m consoles shipped in total from 2000 to 2010 and 1.55b games or whatever shipped but PS3 might still move as many as 750m games depending on how high the hardware gets. I'd go 60m to 75m lifetime for PS3, with certain markets resembling DS vs. PSP in Japan late in the sales life of PS3 and Wii.

The problem for Sony is that Nintendo used to profit over a hundreds of millions to billion of dollars a year in the 1995-2004 period when they sold ~20-25m consoles + portables at their best and had publishers ship ~80m-130m games per year on their systems. Now, Nintendo sells ~60m consoles + portables per year, and has publishers ship 350m-400m games per year on its systems. The amount of content (games) shipped for Nintendo systems is higher than anything Sony ever achieved with its systems (mainly due to Sony never having a portable before 2004) and Nintendo achieves the record volume at higher margins, which just makes them more a more formidable foe than ever.

That "weak" Nintendo of 1995-2004 was able to come back and obliterate Sony's game-division profitablity records ($3b in a year vs. $1b or something), total software shipped for manufacturer records (~390m vs. 270m) and total videogame systems shipped in a year records (58m Wii & DS in the year ending March 2009, compared to 37m PS2 + PSP + PS3 in the year ending March 2008).

So the revitalized Nintendo now sells more content, earns more money, and sells more machines than Sony ever had, and its hard to imagine Sony pulling off a similar rebound in the global financial crisis when there margins were never as good as Nintendo's to begin with, mainly because Nintendo profits on hardware while Sony loses alot on hardware, at least initially.

The current Nintendo is the company rediscovering what it made so powerful in the first place

Basically Nintendo follows one rule PROFITAILITY even when they dont sell a boat load of systems they make money.  I think MS and Sony have learned from nintendo the next generation is going to be interesting.



PS3, WII and 360 all great systems depends on what type of console player you are.

Currently playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Fallout 3, Halo ODST and Dragon Age Origins is next game

Xbox live:mywiferocks

HappySqurriel on 13 March 2009

The question I have is whether it is too late for the PS4 ...

Starting with the SNES Nintendo made some serious mistakes (with the largest and most noticeable being made with the Virtual Boy and N64) and with every generation they seemed to fix the problems of the previous generation only to find that the market was moving away from them. In fact, with the Gamecube Nintendo seemed to have corrected all of their previous mistakes and rebuilt all of the third-party bridges they previously burnt and yet it was Nintendo's worst performing console ever ...

Basically, the problem Sony has now is they will be focused on preventing what happened in this generation and it may be easy for them to miss what they should do in the next generation.