What is Digg?124 Comments
- truspector, on 10/12/2007, -4/+157Ask anyone on the street who is not tech minded who will win the next gen dvd war. I bet they can't even tell you who is playing.
- Gustomucho, on 10/12/2007, -20/+77It forgets about Blue-ray movie. If Sony wins the next-dvd-gen war they will need to sell alot less games than stated. If the PS3 sell well, they will have a good market % of next-dvd-gen players.
Sony isn't expecting to sell 30 games/console, that is sheer dumb accounting, there is alot more than that to factor in.
How many people will buy a new Sony TV for HD gaming/movie?
How many people will buy accessories for PS3?
How many people will pay for online content (games/movies)?
What about blue-ray movie, will they sell well to PS3 owners?
Will the PS3 be the HD-DVD killer?
It is pretty easy to come up with a simplistic answer, 10$/per game, they lose 300 /console, 300/10 = 30. - kelbear, on 10/12/2007, -3/+37Sony isn't trying to win a console war. They're trying to win a format war. They've decided that the playstation is expendable. Otherwise they wouldn't have bundled the blu-ray player and then there wouldn't be a supply problem(since the limited supply is due to difficulty in procuring the blue-ray laser for the drive), and they wouldn't have the huge pricetag stemming for the high manufacturing cost of this new blu-ray tech. Then the PS3 would be close to a comparable price with the Xbox360 premium.
But that's not what Sony wants. they're not just trying to be a loss-leader in the console market, but also a loss-leader in the format war. And it's evident which is more important to them.
Sony doesn't particularly care if they don't make money during this console's product lifecycle(i.e before the next set of consoles come out). What they want is to have a larger install base of blu-ray vs. HD-DVD. Whether or not they'll be able to profit off of THAT is what they're most concerned with. That too remains to be seen since most are ignorant or ambivalent regarding the new formats, and are satisfied with DVDs. - jmzook, on 10/12/2007, -6/+33Who has $1,800 to spend on video games? I certainly don't, but since I won't be buying a PS3 it's kind of a moot point.
- DrakeTheRedEye, on 10/12/2007, -9/+32Many people I have discussed this with, have never heard of blueray. Everyone and their mother has heard of DVDs.
General consumers will go with what is familiar (and backwards compatible), not another temporary media format like betamax. - RafiParrr, on 10/12/2007, -4/+27Can you say: "Overpriced Downloadable Content"?
- edrift101, on 10/12/2007, -4/+22The simple fact is that the majority of consumers out there have large DVD collections (that they are very happy with) and are not in a big hurry to buy everything again in one of two new untested formats - hoping that they guessed right.
- SkippyDoorknob, on 10/12/2007, -5/+23Doh! Nobi-Wan beat me to it, oh well, here was my comment anyway:
Everyone knows what a DVD is these days. Pretty much everyone knows that there's such a thing as HD-TV even if they don't have one (since the networks plaster things like "Available in HD" all over their shows).
So when they go to Best Buy or where-ever and see something labeled "HD-DVD" they will immediately know what it is: A DVD that has a high-def movie on it. They see something called "Blu-Ray" and there is no name connection to existing technology that they already know about. For all they know, that's some sort of Martian death ray. It has no familiarity to antyhing they've seen before.
For that reason alone, I think HD-DVD has a huge advantage. Don't underestimate the product name-recognition of the non-tech general public. - blah128, on 10/12/2007, -15/+28truspector, this is so true.
- eplawless, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15@xianfrost
You make me wish I didn't agree with what you're trying to say. - frobme, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12"By one analyst’s calculation, which assumes that Sony makes about $10 in revenues on each game whether produced by itself or a third party, 30 games must be sold per PS3 console"
"One analysts" calculation, unattribed, with no numbers other than an estimated $10 in revenue per game, no indication of declining cost assumptions on hardware manfacturing, no indication of what subsidy media (blu-ray) sales may provide this number, and no indication of what unit volume does to that return curve. In the same paragraph the un named analyst states the PS2 needed an 8:1 tie ratio to make money, despite the fact that Sony is currently (I believe, based on a quick Google search) at 11:1 and making money literally hand over fist on that line. So they made all those billions on that last 3 games average to a PS2 owner, apparently.
I'm not a PS3 fanboy. I'm just sick of reading whatever straw some overzealous kdi can grab at to malign "insert electronics of choice here". Who freakin cares. Buy what you like, the market will decide with or without your preaching. - Rayonic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10@Microdot :
How many of those have release dates?
Fact is, most (sane) people are going to wait either for a price drop or some must-have games to come out. Probably both. The question is can the Playstation brand survive until then, without permanently losing this generation. - 13tongimp, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Agreed, this has been the strategy with every single console they have launched and so far it has been successful in the long run. I'm not a fan of any one company, because being a fan of a corporation is retarded, however those who point at loss-leading products as being a failure don't even begin to have a grasp of how the industry works. This is why most fans are best left to playing the games, and not discussing the business of them.
- TheUngod, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I can say it...but not 3 times fast :(.
- xerokitsune, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I would say expendable is a bit too strong of a word, I would say that for the PS3 their gaming division was definitely not having the final word on hardware.
I do think that the format war is far more important than making money on the PS3 in the short term, over the long term(as hardware prices go down) eventually they will turn a profit on the system. If blue-ray floats then they will turn a fast profit on DVD hardware sales.
I personally think Sony is relying too heavily on the fan-boy mentality(brand loyalty) and the PlayStation name. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Other than Metal Gear Solid, Devil May Cry, and Final Fantasy 145 there are no games on there that anyone recognizes as being worth 60 dollars
Blow it out your ass you fanboy *****. - CLucas916, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Also the cost of manufacturing the PS3 will come down in years to come as the hardware gets cheaper
- eplawless, on 10/12/2007, -8/+16I think they're willing to eat that sort of a loss to penetrate the market with blu-ray players. I know that I wouldn't even consider buying a blu-ray player by itself, but I bought a ps3 and if a movie I want comes out on blu-ray, I'll pick it up over the dvd version. Microsoft missed a great opportunity by not including the HD-DVD drive in their console in order to cut down the price. Sony would be ***** if every 360 out there played HD-DVDs. As it stands, Sony has a fighting chance.
- Dominatus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Sony did NOT push a competing format to CD, they helped develop the CD originally, along with Phillips:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD
Sony did also NOT push a competitor to the DVD. Hell they put the DVD in the PS2 for god's sake, where do you people make up this ***** from?
"Philips and Sony abandoned their MMCD format (not to be confused with MultiMediaCards) and agreed upon Toshiba's SD format (not to be confused with secure digital cards, although the logo for the SD disc format would be re-used for the SD digital card format) with two modifications that are both related to the servo tracking technology. The first one was the adoption of a pit geometry that allows "push-pull" tracking, a proprietary Philips/Sony technology. The second modification was the adoption of Philips' EFMPlus. EFMPlus, created by Kees Immink, who also designed EFM, is 6% less efficient than Toshiba's SD code, which resulted in a capacity of 4.7 GB as opposed to SD's original 5 GB. The great advantage of EFMPlus is its great resilience against disc damage such as scratches and fingerprints. The result was the DVD specification Version 1.5, announced in 1995 and finalized in September 1996." - politech, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7FUD A Scottish colloquialism for the vagina.
Gotta love Wiki! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Care to elaborate on the wall street claims??
- boombashi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8@ Nobi-Wan
"Do we have any Apple DVD players under our TV's? No, they're Sony, Toshiba, Samsung, etc., etc...not Apple or Microsoft."
I do. It is called an MICROSOFT XBOX-360, and it does a hell of a lot more than and standard DVD player. In a couple of Months Apple will have their answer to the Media Center , currently called iTV which will most certainly play DVD under someones TV...plus a whole lot more. The stand-alone DVD player is all but dead in my book. - Harabeck, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Boo hoo Xian, are you upset that Sony is in trouble?
- sdwilly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@n00bster
Same codec support actually, and you forgot less space.. - andydumi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Thats only up front. In about a year, the cost of manufacture will drop, and eventually they will actually turn a profit. MS is already making profit on the Premium console, even if its only about 30 bucks. Also, while games have a 10 dollar profit margin, accessories have a much higher margin, especially cables and such which can be about 1000% markup.
- Microdot, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12"It's not like diggers search for bad PS3 stories, Sony just makes a lot of bad press."
and yet... the articles about the wii chewing up discs, or wii's not loading, or wii's craptacular bait and switch in vc, never make it to the front page.
i wonder why that is?
oh.. thats right. this is digg. i forgot. - marklj, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7@dj
Your comment is drenched in bias. Read your rantings again with a clear head and you will see that you have no objectiveness to speak of. - eplawless, on 10/12/2007, -9/+15@WhereAmI
Apple's backing blu-ray too. - igraham09, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Sony FTL!
- Stonedonkey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Their pockets aren't as deep as you give them credit for, kelbear. And if their production doesn't pick up like *right now,* they won't have the install base, either.
Keep in mind this is the same company who brought us Betamax, a competing compact disk standard, mini-disc players, the UMD, and the PSP, off the top of my head. Their won-loss percentage has been historically abysmal.
Besides, there's no format war to begin with. Not when customer uptake is in the single digits. Not when their standalone BRD players keep getting delayed and delayed. (You can get a dedicated HD-DVD player for less than half the cost of a BRD player that isn't even on the market yet.) Not when the overwhelming majority of the world is still using regular TVs.
In the end, things are not looking good for Sony. At all. - Pelapp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I really don't get that we the customers are fighting in the so called "console war". Shouldn't it be the companies who fights and we that reap the benefits of their urges to please us ?
Everybody should root for all the consoles, 'cause the more popular they become the more money will go into developing great games, and isn't that what we're all interested in ? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10XianFrost, you are the biggest sony fanboy ever.
- Nobi-Wan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8The Playstation is NOT making them money right now. Sony's game division is actually losing money. A LOT of it, too.
- Leo21k, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Its been forever since Ive purchased a brand new DVD or Game. I usually buy all my games used from gamestop and movies used from Hollywood video or blockbuster if at all.
I only owned 11 games all of last generation and all of them are multiplayer... Single player games that are beatable with little replay value I'll just rent or buy really cheap used and sell back to gamestop when I'm done. - theblackgecko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Divide that over five years. I'd wager most of the people reading this article blow $360 per year on gaming goodness.
- RPharazon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6He's obviously talking about the hobo with a big Sony tattoo posted at Wall Street yelling about how the PS3 is going to win in all this.
Nobody believes him, of course, because he's drunk, smelly, and a hobo.
That, and Sony is clearly on the path to major losses. - mandarin, on 10/12/2007, -8/+12Dont like it? Dont read it. Easy as that.
- aegis9975, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The main issue here is that the PS3 won't cost this much to produce forever, if you look at the PS2 or 360 while it may have lost buckets of money for the first several millions they aren't always going incredibly expensive to make so it won't always cost 30 games to make a profit.
The PS2 helped DVD get into the market, helped build the momentum where studios largely supported the format, which in turn drew more customers to the format. At the time, red-laser DVD diodes were incredibly expensive, much like the Blue-laser diodes that are $100+ in cost for the Blu-ray. These costs will come down over time. PS3 won't always cost over $800 to make.
This is something the article (for people who actually read it) concedes. In fact, the article is really titled "Weak yen could help Sony’s PS3 succeed". - saggygrandma, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I am a fan of both consoles and I completely agree
- sdwilly, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4One more thing. I wasn't sure what you meant by more durable, so I looked into it quickly and found this on Blu-Ray (via Wikipedia), but couldn't find anything similar about HD-DVD, could you link your source please.
"Hard-coating technology
Because the Blu-ray Disc standard places the data recording layer close to the surface of the disc, early discs were susceptible to contamination and scratches and had to be enclosed in plastic caddies for protection. The consortium worried that such an inconvenience would hurt Blu-ray Disc's market adoption. Blu-ray Discs now use a layer of protective material on the surface through which the data is read.
Both Sony and Panasonic replication methods include proprietary hard-coat technologies. Sony's rewritable media are sprayed with a scratch-resistant and antistatic coating.
TDK also announced a way to remedy the problem in January 2004 with the introduction of a clear polymer coating that gives Blu-ray Discs substantial scratch resistance. The coating was developed by TDK and is called "Durabis". It allows BDs to be cleaned safely with only a tissue. The coating is said to successfully resist "wire wool scrubbing" according to Samsung Optical technical manager Chas Kalsi. It is not clear, however, whether discs will use the Durabis coating or if the use of the coating will prove too expensive.
Verbatim announced in July 2006 that their Blu-ray Disc recordable and rewritable discs would incorporate their hard-coat ScratchGuard technology which protects against scratches, abrasion, fingerprints, and traces of grease." - okcomputer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3i seriously doubt that sony ordered a couple million 60GB hard drives at $54 each. i could walk into micro center and pay that much. this article is just speculation.
- Rayonic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@Stonedonkey:
Betacam shouldn't be confused with Betamax. They use some of the same underlying technology, but are not cross-compatible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacam - yournamehere, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4you seriously need to read up on where the power is on each system and what the benefits are. k?
- Lobut, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6For the most part I agree but the Wiimotes' smashing tv's and Zelda glitches and such have made front page.
- leffunov, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's total BS!!! This article doesn't take Blu-ray disc license fees into account besides the fact that accessories will always be sold as a profit.
- Gus1, on 10/12/2007, -12/+14To make 30 must-have games is gonna take a long time.
- yournamehere, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3No, the more consoles there are the more money developers have to spend to make the games for each system. the more they have to split their resources. the more licensing fees they have to pay.
how is that a 'win-win'? - brotherfranciz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Man, I'm going to Digg down everything xianfrost has ever posted because he called me a ***** ass clown twice... only kidding...
No, seriously though, what is a "***** ass clown"? - totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7Its amusing to see what other stories the original Diggers of these types of story Dugg:
http://digg.com/users/Ian_Dass/dugg
Lots of PS3 love there :p - truspector, on 10/12/2007, -15/+17@neo
Why not attack my statment and prove it false instead of trolling like usual. -
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