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Flake wrote:So what do you guys think Sony did wrong?

$599.

Launching a console at that price, even with all of the extra features the PS3 had, was ridiculous. People weren't willing to pay that much for a Christmas present for their kids.

They'll have to wait until next generation to do better, and I think that the best way to do that will be to put out a stripped down machine that is under $400 (preferably under $300) at launch and features good buy not great hardware. The return on investment is just too high for top-end hardware.

Overpriced PS3, Removal of BC, removal of USB ports, removal of OtherOS, some poor hardware design choices (a fixed memory system over a dynamic one like the 360, poor quality graphics accelerator), constant PR faux pas (leap year bug. Telling PS3 Fat users to essentially stuff themselves or pay the Sony Tax -- £120 for a PS3 repair is a complete fucking joke, especially when you aren't receiving your machine back and no guarantees of receiving a like for like console).

Overpriced PSPGO, shafting current PSP owners by not supporting UMD, still haven't released all the UMD games for download from PSN, retracting their offer for current PSP owners to trade their physical games for digital ones.

Need any more?

Need any more?

Not using the name Game Boy and creating one, before Nintendo did.
I mean come on now, Game Boy... Walkman; it even sounds Sony.

So basically, overall, not being Nintendo

From the point of view of the average person, the 360 came out long before the PS3, it was much cheaper, and had all the same games that everyone likes to play. e.g. FIFA, CoD, PES
I think its as simple as that.

Nobody wanted to pay $600 to buy more expensive games that were already on the Xbox 360. Sony has realized this mistake, and are doing an excellent job at getting their shit back together.

I'd laugh if Sega ever came back to knock Sony off their perch the same way Sony did to the Dreamcast. CORPORATE REVENGE

Incognito D wrote:From the point of view of the average person, the 360 came out long before the PS3, it was much cheaper, and had all the same games that everyone likes to play. e.g. FIFA, CoD, PES
I think its as simple as that.

I completely agree with this. If the 360 and PS3 are seen as interchangeable, people are going to buy the cheaper 360. That's one reason why I think console developers need to make boxes that play games that are unique to their system, instead of having the same games on multiple platforms. If you're just making a console that plays the same games as the other consoles, you start to get to a point where game systems become like DVD players - different brands that play the same format - there is zero innovation there. I think, because Sony is primarily an electronics developer and isn't as heavy on the software side, it was easy for them to get into the mindset of treating a video game system like a DVD player and that's what went wrong.

newt42 wrote:I'd laugh if Sega ever came back to knock Sony off their perch the same way Sony did to the Dreamcast. CORPORATE REVENGE

you know i personally see sega making a come back. they are really starting to pull there shit back together. besides sonic team (and i have no idea if sonic 4 will be their saving grace, or just one of those sonic games) sega has been doing a great job in there other games. It might take a long time, but im getting hopeful that one of these days we will see sega hardware besides games.

What if Sony had never entered the console market? Intriguing stuff for alternate universe fans. I imagine Nintendo would have firmly regained its lion's share of the market, with 3DO calling it quits anyway after M2 failed to resurrect the 32-bit console. Could we have seen another competitor entering the market in the latter half of 1996? Looking back it must have been insane that a much smaller market was supposed to sustain the following: Genesis/MD+32X+SegaCD, SNES, 3DO, M2, CD-i, Jaguar, PS1, Saturn, Ultra64 AND DOS/Windows 95 (to be fair the NeoGeo was a niche market anyway so didn't include it)

The PS2 wasn't dead yet and it is a cheap dirty whore.

Seriously, everybody has been with a PS2 at some point and it's only about $10 bucks on average for a game in the used bin. Ironically, it is the strength of their previous system coupled with the steep price for their new system that did Sony in. People did the math:

PS3: $600
PS3 Controller: $55
PS3 Game: $60

Total: $715 spent before you play your first and only PS3 game.

(Oh, and you're gonna want an HD TV if you don't have one yet, so maybe add another grand to that.)


On the other hand, PS2 games can be bought used for about $10 bucks. So that would mean for that same $715 I could get about 71 games for my PS2. Wow! I could have an awesome PS2 library, or I could just be another guy with a PS3 and 1 game. The PS3 is nice and all, but the PS2 is still a good system and it has hundreds of worthwhile games. The PS3 isn't 71 times better than the PS2, so it's kind of hard to justify the high price point.

That's what kept me from buying one anyway. I didn't buy an Xbox360 or a Wii either for the same reasons. I did need a new laptop though, after my old one broke, so now I'm a Steam junkie and play my modern games on PC. That was an expense I could justify because I needed a laptop anyway, so why not spend a little extra to have a nice one.

Flake wrote:forced all of us to buy new DVD copies of what we already had on VHS (those big black movie bricks for you youngins).

Sony pushing Blu Ray is another thing that hurt them. Now, I personally love my games on Blu Ray; it saves me from having to disc swap, which had already been eliminated during the PS2 years. Yeah, it's fine when it's a one time thing, but Star Ocean 4 massively dropped the ball there. However, by moving to Blu Ray they jacked up the price of their system, which, as already mentioned, really hurt their sales. Plus, they did not have a killer app at launch that would convince people to buy the PS3 over the established 360. Sony forgot the big difference between DVDs and Blu Rays. The switch from VHS to DVD was HUGE from a customer usability and functionality standpoint, similar to the change between cassette and CD. When I bought a new DVD I had chapter skip, no rewinding, and special features like deleted scenes and commentary. With Blu Ray I have better picture quality and twice the price. Oh, and I don't notice the picture quality unless I have a nice AV setup.