Mmmmmkay. The great battle. And I haven't even put my two cents in yet. Pardon my newbie-ness if I happen to re-hash old arguements.
Who will win the war? Well, to me, the answer is obvious who SHOULD win the war.
Back in the day, the PS2 got off to a great start. It got to market first, about a year before the Gamecube, the only real competition at the time. Sure, there were other consoles, but who wanted them? It was more expensive than we might have wanted, BUT! it could play DVD's, which had just hit the market around the same time as the PS2! And at $299 it was cheaper than a dedicated DVD player, which at the time of the PS2 launch were mostly retailing for $399 and up. So you got a cheap DVD player with a built in kick-azz game console! Awesome tactic, Sony. And we'll just call the backwards compatibility a bonus. And here is where we see Sony's wonderful new business model. We'll sell a new overpriced console with a new media format, and while we're busy losing money on the hardware, we'll rake in the dough on software sales. Then, once everything really takes off and our new media format becomes the industry standard, everything gets cheaper to make, we start making money on the consoles AND the software, and we all get big fat raises. And how much did they rely on this model? Well, let's take a look at the PS2 launch lineup.
Armored Core 2 (Agetec, Action)
DOA2: Hardcore (Tecmo, Fighting)
Dynasty Warriors 2 (Koei, Action)
ESPN International Track and Field (Konami, Sports)
ESPN X-Games Snowboarding (Konami, Sports)
Eternal Ring (Agetec, RPG)
Evergrace (Agetec, RPG)
FantaVision (SCEI, Puzzle)
Gun Griffon Blaze (Working Designs, Action)
Kessen (EA, Adventure)
Madden NFL 2001 (EA, Sports)
Midnight Club (Rockstar, Racing)
Moto GP (Namco, Racing)
NHL 2001 (EA, Sports)
Orphen (Activision, RPG)
Q-Ball Billiards Master (Take-Two Interactive, Simulation)
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 (Midway, Sports)
Ridge Racer V (Namco, Racing)
Silent Scope (Konami, Shooter)
Smuggler's Run (Rockstar, Racing-Adventure)
SSX (EA, Sports)
Street Fighter EX3 (Capcom, Fighting)
Summoner (THQ, RPG)
Swing Away (Paradise Golf in Japan) (EA, Sports)
Tekken Tag Tournament (Namco, fighting)
TimeSplitters (Eidos, First-Person Shooter)
Unreal Tournament (Infogrames, First-Person Shooter)
Wild Wild Racing (Interplay, Racing)
X-Squad (EA, Action)
Maybe 9 or 10 titles that I can ever actually remember seeing with my own two eyes. Impressive? Hell, no. What a spectacularly dreary lineup. BUT! it can play DVD's! Sony is showing us that it doesn't give a w00t about the titles. It just wants to get DVD's off the ground. And it worked, for the most part. The PS2 dominated the market for most of it's life, and still has a strong following today.
Moving forward, Sony releases the PSP. The PSP continues to have an incredibly weak game library, and UMD movies? Remember those cute little things? Again, we see Sony trying to push a new media format onto the market, and look how well that fared. Not to mention the fact that the PSP had several hardware issues, and just feels retarded in your hands. It puts me in mind of a slimmer Atari Lynx. It's awkward to hold, and the analog sticks (which originally helped put Sony's PSX on the map) are ridiculously unusable. Oops.
And now, we see that Sony is following the same model with it's PS3 release. But this time, it has some serious roadblocks in its path. Let's take a quick look at the PS3 launch library.
PS3 Launch Titles
November 2006
NBA 2K7 - 2K Sports
NHL 2K7 - 2K Sports
Call of Duty 3 - Activision
Tony Hawk’s Project 8 - Activision
MARVEL: ULTIMATE ALLIANCE - Activision
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Bethesda Softworks
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 - Electronic Arts
EA Sports Fight Night Round 3 - Electronic Arts
Need For Speed Carbon - Electronic Arts
Madden NFL 07 - Electronic Arts
RIDGE RACER 7 - NAMCO BANDAI Games
Mobile Suit Gundam: CROSSFIRE - NAMCO BANDAI Games
Sonic the Hedgehog - Sega
Full Auto 2: Battlelines - Sega
Resistance: Fall of Man - Sony
NBA 07 - Sony
Genji: Days of the Blade - Sony
Untold Legends Dark Kingdom - Sony Online Entertainment
Blazing Angels Squadrons of WWII - Ubisoft
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas - Ubisoft
F.E.A.R. - Vivendi Universal Games
Respectable? Perhaps. But well over half of the launch lineup is nothing but legacy titles and your latest incarnation of sports titles. Way to ride those coattails, Sony. We don't want original content. We don't want to see new, innovative games. We just want to play drive real fast and play with our balls. Again. BUT! it can play Blu-Ray movies! Here's the problem, though. When the PS2 released with the ability to play DVD's, there was NO high-end competition for DVD format movies. In this case, however, HD-DVD's hit the market about a month before Blu-Ray, killing Blu-Ray's first-to-market advantage. Add to this that the PS3 released a year after the Xbox 360, and was even beaten to market by Nintendo's "My First Game Console". With an extra year to develop their product, Sony manages to gift us with a system that is largely "on par" with the XBox 360 in terms of graphics, but is much more difficult for developers to work with. This means that Sony is going to take a big hit while dealing with third-party developers, as it will take significantly longer to develop new titles, not to mention that the process is much more difficult with Sony's devkit, and will generally cost developers more in the end.
And so, we see that Sony is:
1. late out of the gate
2. launching a "comparable" system
3. at a much higher price point
4. with yet another new media format (also second to market)
5. into a market with HD-DVD, a cheaper competing media format (which DVD's didn't have to worry about)
6. while Blu-Ray pretty much "requires" an HDTV to see any difference in quality
7. not to mention being wholly uninnovative, replacing Live Acheivements with "Entitlements" and stealing the Wii's controller scheme ("Our controller is motion sensitive! Nintendo who?")
8. and without many of it's much-touted "exclusive" content.
So, what does Sony have going for it? Well, there's always backwards-compatibility, which is shaky at best at the moment, and soon to be DISCONTINUED in (I believe) the 60 GB PS3, which will be the main setup moving forward. So, basically, the PS3 has NOTHING going for it. What it USED to have is going down the tubes, along with Sony's hopes, dreams, and Christmas bonuses.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
PS3 Signals the Death of Sony
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I hate to knock you completely off your high, but allot of your facts are no longer true.
When PS first launched, it's format was difficult to work with as a developer. But since about August Sony actually changed the developer interface in the system that allows for much easier developer access.
Almost all of the backward compatibillity issues have been fixed, it simply requires an OS update which will be availble on any new game you buy or availible via internet. The PS2 BC funtion was only pulled from the 40gb, and per the sony forums the rumor that it would no longer be availible for the 60gb is just a rumor.
Sony is also launching a new 160gb version to compete with the Xbox eliete.
(The following is opinion not fact so don't flame me.) I think that the Blu-ray functionality WILL make the system last longer than you think. Because the system has more capabillities hardware wise it will be able to last further into the next round of consoles before Sony is forced to release something else.
BTW - you don't need an HDTV to notice the deifference. Playing a Blue Ray actually "forces" tv's into a higher resoloution. Even though it still isn't as good as it could be, trust me you notice a difference. Though, I'm sure the same can be said about HDDVD's, but I do like Blu-Ray better.
Also, I really think this article was good, I just wanted to let you know that some of your info might be a little dated.
I would be interested to see a mirror article with the Xbox. One of the reasons I decided on the PS3 was because of all the issues I have experienced with my friend's 360's (I have fixed a few now) while PS has had it's bug, they haven't been the same caliber as the Xbox
Actually, while we DID go through a couple of 360's, the Elite we have now (had/may have again) has been working quite well, with no glitches. I think it's entirely possible that at least SOME of the problems we had with the previous 'Boxes may have been due to the environment they lived in. We're apparently tough on electronics. We go through stereos and DVD players fairly quick. Might have something to do with 3 smokers living in the house, as well as many long nights of drunken friends stumbling about. Who knows?
I hadn't heard about Sony CHANGING their dev platform, but I did hear that they're making it about half as expensive, since everyone's so bitchy about it.
Whether or not Blu-Ray helps the PS3 is still up for grabs. Like I said, if the PSP were depending on UMD sales to keep it afloat, we'd currently be dropping surplus PSP's on Iraq to save money on bombs and food drops. As for the hardware capabilities, I have yet to experience anything that makes me think, "WOW. There's NO WAY my 360 could do that." I've also had very little experience with the PS3.
As for my dated info, sorry. I use what sources I can find. I lost my Game Informer subscription a while back, so I may be a little behind the times, lol.
Yeah I SERIOUSLY agree with the statements made about the UMD Movie and Music thing. What a joke. It's a format not compatible with ANYTHING so who gives a rat's !@#$?!?!?
I think your jab at the control scheme on it are from personal taste. I prefer the PSP over the DS any day. Trying to play Metroid with a stylus is like trying to wrap a turd with cling wrap. It can be done, but you just want to wash your hands afterwards.
My friend Justin is on his 5th XBox now. Takes great care of it. The only reason he won't switch is because he owns so many games now. There are so many problems with the system you should google "XBox 3 red lights." There are people profiting off homemade repair guides because the problems are so common. It mostly has to do with poor soldering and quality control. It's a real mess.
As far as the tech... under the hood is about twice the hardware specs of the box, unfortunately nobody can afford to develop any games that will utilize it. The result is a game that looks... the same.
Post a Comment