The Big PS3 Pork Pie - Naughty Sony!

[TheBuZZard]

You can love it but its not true.

[5lab]

Sorry Stoo, real world impinging on internet use is a real bummer

Anyway, the power of the latest 'next' generation is impressive but I've yet to see anything that offers the sort of generational leap seen when the N64 was released. It's difficult to match the impact of Super Mario 64 and yet there seems to be little inclination from developers to try and match or even exceed it. The processing power of these new machines will, as you point out, afford developers the opportunity to fully develop a realised physical environment and match that with the sort of graphical output only dreamt of a few years ago. If, however, this simply translates as more realistic ball physics with more recognisable digital avatars in the latest FIFA offering then what's the point? Who is willing to take the new technology afforded to them and try to push the whole industry in a new and exciting direction?

Now looking at the cost of the hardware, what could happen there? The type of dual card SLi set you mentioned earlier, if bought to upgrade a pc, would cost what? £500-£600? And they're building a whole system around such a set up, with a brand new, custom built processor. Even allowing for the fact that they traditionally take a hit on the hardware, you could be looking at a price of about £500 on launch. Obviously these are only assumptions but the original XBox, for example, only launched three years ago for £399 so I might be in the same ballpark with £500. When they take a hit on the hardware, they generally expect to make up the difference in software sales which bring us back to an expected increase in the price of games which will now have to recoup development costs AND [huge] hardware losses.

All of which is bad for the average consumer and could stifle future market growth as people simply refuse to pay those sorts of prices for their gaming entertainment. People don't want to spend, say £500, on a peice of equipment that has maybe a built in obsolesence of four years. The one thing the console manufacturers seem to have missed in their efforts to sell their particular brand as the essentiall-do-everything (DVD, CD, games, digital Recorder, etc) is that when people buy one, they want it to last longer than a few short years before having to change it. If the general public (not the so called 'hard core' gamer who'll buy anything) doesn't but into this new generation then the market will begin to stagnate. If the market doesn't grow then we'll see more of what happened to Crawfish, Acclaim, Eidos, et al and the we will all be poorer for it.

i disagree on several points there..

firstly you suggetst that the n64 was a big graphical improvement, but i personally think that acolade should belong to the mega 32x (megadrive addon) that gave 32bit power to the people a year or so ahead of any competitors..

you seem to suggest that all the power is 'wasted' on just using better gfx, but that is what the punter wants.. the most playable games of the last few years have been, imo, with the exception of cs-s, counter strike, bishi bashi special, jungle beat, the eyetoy games, and zelda minish cap, none of which use the best power from a system.. point being that you dont need a lot of power to push the boundries of gaming..

will a punter pay £500 for the hardware? no, but i don't think it will be that much. the xbox launched in 2001, when the equivilent spec pc would cost around £800. its price was soon below £300 (within weeks i believe). the price dropped again to £200 within 6 months. £200 for 6 or 7 years of new games (ps1 games were around for years after the ps2 came out..) is very good value, and i think teh punter will agree. you need to understand that ms make a loss on each xbox sold, but it doesnt matter because they make the cash back with licencing.

[Beach]

i disagree on several points there..

firstly you suggetst that the n64 was a big graphical improvement, but i personally think that acolade should belong to the mega 32x (megadrive addon) that gave 32bit power to the people a year or so ahead of any competitors..

No, I'm not suggesting that the N64 was a big graphical improvement. The impact of SM64 on that machine was the introduction of a fully realised 3d world that had never been seen before. The move from 2d to 3d is still, in my opinion, the biggest leap that console gaming has seen. The only accolade the mega 32x deserves is that it was one of many pointless add-ons, generally ignored by the public, that preciptated the gradual decline of Sega leading them to abandon hardware manufacture alltogether.

you seem to suggest that all the power is 'wasted' on just using better gfx, but that is what the punter wants.. the most playable games of the last few years have been, imo, with the exception of cs-s, counter strike, bishi bashi special, jungle beat, the eyetoy games, and zelda minish cap, none of which use the best power from a system.. point being that you dont need a lot of power to push the boundries of gaming..

Don't quite understand your point there fella. You're right, innovation in gaming is not dependent on the power of a given system. Often the simplest games can be the most innovative. I'm only saying that extra grunt is a waste if all it produces is a more accurate representation of David Beckham in FIFA 2007. It'll still be the same awful EA produced update. Punters do want better graphics but, in my opinion and yours it seems, better graphics do not necessarily mean a better game.

will a punter pay £500 for the hardware? no, but i don't think it will be that much. the xbox launched in 2001, when the equivilent spec pc would cost around £800. its price was soon below £300 (within weeks i believe). the price dropped again to £200 within 6 months. £200 for 6 or 7 years of new games (ps1 games were around for years after the ps2 came out..) is very good value, and i think teh punter will agree. you need to understand that ms make a loss on each xbox sold, but it doesnt matter because they make the cash back with licencing.

The xBox hasn't been out 4 years yet and 360 is due for release in October/November so, using you pricing above, that's £200 for 3 years, not 6 years. Whilst it's true that no is forced to buy the new system, games will dry up for it and the XBox is no PS1 so don't expect games to be produced for years to come.

Secondly, MS aren't making monet back, they're losing it hand over fist and the XBox division is running at a huge operating loss. The point is they can absorb it due to the massive revenue other parts of MS generate but it can't go on for ever. The industry is talking about increasing the price of games, they feel the market can stand it. With the new bells and whistles of the coming next gen titles, they think they can charge about £60 a game. Whether they can or not, time will tell.

[Yohji]

You can love it but its not true.

Like most things..

[da.Guvna]

Secondly, MS aren't making monet back, they're losing it hand over fist and the XBox division is running at a huge operating loss.

I'm pretty sure I read a couple of month's back that MS had released financial figures showing that the xbox division had finally started to make a "significant contribution" towards their overall profits (which must be quite a lot if it's considered "significant" relative to the rest of the profits they make).
Additionally, the only real reason they HAD to make a loss in the first place was because they were a new-comer to the console industry. When the Xbox launched, your average punter didn't make a distinction between the meaning of 'Playstation' and 'console', the terms were synonymous. Not many people even realised there was a competitor to the PS2, even when the GC came about, so the only way for Xbox to get noticed was by under-cutting the competition.
I pre-ordered my xbox a month before launch because I thought there was going to be a mad rush for it, just like the N64. When I went to collect it on launch day, apparantly I was the only person to have turned up for one!

Apart from that though, I agree with everything you've said. The cost of developing game content is going through the roof, and this generation is going to be especially competitive now that Sony and MS have pulled out the big guns. As soon as the PS3 launches, hardware prices are gonna plummet, and the only way to make that back is through software sales (and further micro-sales for extra content through Xbox Live). I'm not sure how many people are gonna be prepared to pay £60 for anything but the most exceptional games.

There's going to come a point where the branch finally breaks and industry growth slows right down, and when that happens it'll be interesting to see what happens in PC land. I reckon public domain games will make a come-back.

[Beach]

If you look at this link it reports that whilst losses have reduced, they are still losing money. For the quarter ending 31st March 2005 that was an operating loss of $154 million. This second link reports that the home divison which INCLUDES XBox posted a profit in Q2 but doesn't break it down any further. The financial situation isn't terribly clear but I can't see console sales making a "significant contribution" towards their overall profits.

[da.Guvna]

Right you are.

I based my argument on the following statement:

"Strong hardware sales, coupled with the phenomenally successful Halo 2, means that Microsoft made $84 million on total sales of $1.41 billion. This is compared to a loss made this time last year of $397 million on $1.27 billionn [sic]."

Not sure where I got the "significant contribution" bit from.....might have dreamt that up myself, haha, although that quote was from within another article, so they might have said it.

Anyway, it's older news than your gamespot link, so I guess it's wrong. It also doesn't say whether that is profit or not, so it's likely just gross sales.

[Beach]

Lol, it's probably largely irrelevant fella. You're right when you talk about how they entered the market as a newcomer to that field and launched at a competetive price point to attract consumers away from the PS brand. But I think all the console manufacturers take a hit in the early years of a consoles life and only start to make a profit on hardware sales several years after launch. I wouldn't be that surprised if MS had started to turn a small profit but I bet the R&D for 360 cost a pretty penny and I bet there's not a lot, if any, of that profit left. But we digress, at least we agree on the rest of the argument

[Stoo]

Virtually all consoles are sold at a loss, (a bit like mobile phones), the money is then recouped from games sales and licences (as well as "value added services" such as x-box live etc).