Will the PS3 be a success?

Mongo

Hi

I'm debating that the PS3 like the first two will be a huge success.He differs and says the Wii and X-box will out sell it.What do you think?

Cheers

Noelie

I think the HD war needs to be won and in Sony's favour for it to have any chance, since that is still up in the air it's hard to tell

Crucifix

Depends what you mean by success. I reckon it'll be a successful console, but it won't nessicerly outsell the other consoles, and/or "win" that generation.

ntlbell

titanic springs to mind.

quad_red

said - it depends what you mean by 'success'.

Will it trounce the competition this generation, as the PS2 did? Extremely doubtful.

I think the price point and Sony's insistence on loading the PS3 down with expensive and arguably surplus to requirements tech, will delay it's 'break even' point considerably.

Saying that, I think it's foolish in the extreme to proclaim the console a dead duck, whatever the hardcore gamer attitude on the net. Most PS2 owners I know are the loving the thought of a PS3. Maybe not immediately but as soon as a few games come out to justify buying the console.

morbo

The PS3 is going to turn out to be like the last few versions of Windows. Buy it, then throw away the installation CD and download fixes for all the bugs that shouldn't be there in the first place.

The PS3 has turned out to be a disaster for Sony in nearly every market place, especially in Europe. I am really happy about this. Maybe it'll show some other companies that we're sick of being ripped off.

The only reason I'd buy one is if they dropped the price for the top-end PS3 to below €350 by the summer. Sony keeps going on about how they're loosing money on every console the sell, and that's why it's so expensive (even though it's only really expensive in Europe!). Oh, boo-hoo, Sony! Every company looses money on console sales. It's the games that make all the money! PS1, PS2, XBOX, XBOX 360, Wii, etc. All these sold at a loss, but they were nowhere near the price of the PS3.

Another think that just makes me angry, people at the UK launch event got a free 46" 1080P HD TV worth €3000! http://www.hdtvuk.tv/2007/03/uk_ps3_launch_f.html That's Sony trying to keep hold of a market they think is important, while ignoring the rest of Europe, who on percentages, buy and play far more games than the UK.

But to answer your question, no. It will not be a successful venture!

xanthor

The WII is likely to come out tops based on price alone.

PS3 has the potential to match or exceed the 360, but price + lack of exclusives
is going to mean Sony have their work cut out for them.

Crucifix

morbo wrote:

Every company looses money on console sales. It's the games that make all the money! PS1, PS2, XBOX, XBOX 360, Wii, etc. All these sold at a loss, but they were nowhere near the price of the PS3.

I believe the Wii was sold above cost. Though you're right, selling at a loss is the norm.

savemejebus

The wii is actually sold at a profit.[Crucifix beat me to it]

I think it was a stroke of marketing genius for Sony to give away the tvs last night, it immediately creates a good impression - something they've failed to do for the longest time - and gives the (false) impression of sony being a company that cares and rewards their loyal customers.

As to why the UK and not the rest of europe, it's simple the UK is a huge market for sony but it is currently firmly in the hands of MS so sony need to play catchup big time and do everything in their power to try and gain momentum there.

Will the ps3 be successful, i'd have to say yes. Early adopters will love it because it's one of the cheapest BD players out there. Casual gamers will love it because it's "Playstation tm" branded and the gormless will love it because adverts and tabloid newspapers will tell them to.

Hardcore gamers will eventually join in because you can't be a hardcore gamer and not have all platforms to play all platform games. Little big planet has many naysayers salivating already.

And there are a million arguments why blu-ray shouldn't have been included but at the end of the day they said HD gaming, people jumped at the tag-line and then choked and grumbled when they found out the cost.

I won't be giving up my 360 (or gamecube for that matter) but I know I will own a ps3 at some point, otherwise what use is my 1080p HD TV?

Ciaran500

savemejebus wrote:

otherwise what use is my 1080p HD TV?

Play 1080p 360 games on it?

morbo

Crucifix wrote:

I believe the Wii was sold above cost. Though you're right, selling at a loss is the norm.

Ya. It was. Just checked it out. But that's because Nintendo made a games machine. Not a games/dvd/blu-ray/tv/internet/radio/stereo/toaster/shower! Don't get me wrong, I'd much prefer the Wii if it played DVD. That's a basic function you'd expect from any electronic good that attaches to a TV these days, but I don't like the idea of having my entire media life bundled into a PS3. My reasoning for it is simple; I'll still need a PC no matter how much crap you stuff into my games console!

savemejebus

Ciaran500 wrote:

Play 1080p 360 games on it?

no hdmi on 360 yet though and my component is otherwise occupied

morbo

savemejebus wrote:

no hdmi on 360 yet though and my component is otherwise occupied

You know the rumors about the Black 360 with 120GB HD and HDMI output? I'd like one of those! Apparently, it has improved the 'noise problem' as MS call it.

savemejebus

yeah I'd love one too but seriously would you buy another 360 for hdmi and a bigger hdd (prob costing about €500) or would you buy a ps3 and have the best of both worlds?

morbo

Good point. I'm still miffed at MS. I'm on Xbox 360 number 3 so far. First one suffered some catastrophic failure of the graphics card, the second, well, the inside sort of just melted, and now the one I have will not for the life of me save the time and date! Every god damn time I turn it on I have to input the time and date. I have problems getting online with it, and it is way too noisy to sit down and watch a DVD with. But other than that, it's probably the best games console available. Love the games.

savemejebus

Time and date sounds like a bad bios battery

Helix

id say if its not dead by then, itll come into its own in 3 years time

penexpers

savemejebus wrote:

Casual gamers will love it because it's "Playstation tm" branded

You think a casual gamer is going to fork out €750 euro when there's the Wii for almost a third of the price. Get real. I'm a casual gamer and I won't be touching the PS3 with a barge pole and I know lots like me who won't buy the PS3.

qwertplaywert

aye
for me ,ps3 not a opinion right now,cause parents will never get a decent sized hd tv[ maybe a small one,but my mam HATES large tvs] and no broadband[and no real chance of being able to get it any time soon], so theres 2 of the attractive things about it...the games coming out look good though, but not enough to justibe spending 700 euro on a console for gaming alone
for me, 360 is proberly gonna be my next console

savemejebus

penexpers wrote:

You think a casual gamer is going to fork out €750 euro when there's the Wii for almost a third of the price. Get real. I'm a casual gamer and I won't be touching the PS3 with a barge pole and I know lots like me who won't buy the PS3.

To me a casual gamer is someone who wants the latest fifas, NFS, burnout etc. Many of these have grown up on the playstation brand so it would be wise not to underestimate the power of that. Also many may not be aware of things such as delays, reduced backward compatibility etc. Not everyone reads internet forums etc. as avidly as many of the people on here. A lot of people seem to forget that the gamers that post on boards only make up a tiny portion of the demographic that games companys aim for.

The wii is great and I love it (actually I'd love one ) but if you look around here you hear people bemoaning the lack of games coming out for it and saying it is a novelty and can't really compete. If we took these people as representative of the demographic the wii is aimed at we could really say it's screwed. The real market for casual gaming is humongous, the wii has tapped into a certain area of it and is doing so using innovation which is fantastic. However taking the 10 million 360 owners and 5 million wii owners into account, sony still have a huge market share, and in my opinion it's the other 90 million or socasual gamers/playstation owners that i'd imagine sony are aiming for.

As for price, don't forget tonnes of casual gamers bought a ps2 for £400 punt when it came out and that was a pretty significant chunk of change back then. They justified it by saying that "well it's a dvd player too". Now they can do the same with Blu-ray which, if current whispers coming from the states are to be believed, may actually be gaining ground in the format skirmish (not a war yet in my opinion)

Helix

the difference is that people had heard of dvd when the ps2 was released

how many people in the street know what bluray is?

savemejebus

More than you'd imagine i think. Anyone who walks into xtravision from now on, anyone that reads fhm, maxim etc. (the casual gamers I mentioned), anyone reading the sun or sunday world - any ps3 articles will no doubt talk about blu-ray.

quad_red

savemejebus wrote:

Time and date sounds like a bad bios battery

****. I thought twas normal (if annoying). My 360 never kept the time and date when turned off

4Xcut

savemejebus wrote:

yeah I'd love one too but seriously would you buy another 360 for hdmi and a bigger hdd (prob costing about €500) or would you buy a ps3 and have the best of both worlds?

I don't think its to cost more. I could be wrong but i think that instead of a first major price cut, m$ are going to just improve on somethings. Seems a good idea as they still undercut the ps3 by 100/200 dollars or 100/200 euro(well done whoever did that currency conversion.

savemejebus

@ quad red - I could be wrong, just based on previous pc experience, when a machine loses it's time and date it means the bios isn't receiving the juice it needs to keep the info in memory. this power is usually supplied by a battery.

@4Xcut - I think that kotaku mentioned a price of $479 dollars for the new version of the xbox, that is what i was basing 500 euro on as i can easily imagine a dollar for euro conversion and then another 20 for ireland, actually would probably be 510 as companies seem happy to add 30 onto products these days.

Still even at 400, I can imagine people being pissed off if they had to buy another 360 to get what should have been a standard feature when the old one is working perfectly

4Xcut

apologies, didn't see the price mentioned. However i don't think its a case of people having to buy a new 360. its just an upgrade that some people may want and if they do they can buy it. It doesn't effect the functionality of your or my 360, just gets rid of that little thing sony have over m$

Kevin2006

In response the the OP question. The console has been out a day here in Europe, its too early to predict. However, it is an extremely powerful machine. Now all it needs to do is provide it with top games - and I have no doubt over the coming years it will do so.

scrapland

I think the PS3 will be a success. Maybe at the end of 5 years it wont have the domineering effect Sony's previous two consoles has had, but that's a good thing for the consumer.

The more the maufacturers fight each other for the top spot the more benefits we will see in the end. Price reductions (damn well needed after 12 months of €75 360 games), better first party titles as they vy to out do each other.

I think this console war will pretty much end in a draw with all three consoles garnering around 1/3'rd of the market each.

The big one will be whatever comes next.

thefinalstage

morbo wrote:

Good point. I'm still miffed at MS. I'm on Xbox 360 number 3 so far. First one suffered some catastrophic failure of the graphics card, the second, well, the inside sort of just melted, and now the one I have will not for the life of me save the time and date! Every god damn time I turn it on I have to input the time and date. I have problems getting online with it, and it is way too noisy to sit down and watch a DVD with. But other than that, it's probably the best games console available. Love the games.

Yep bad battery. Mine does the same but I don't care. I just connect to live and its fixed :P.

Helix

savemejebus wrote:

More than you'd imagine i think. Anyone who walks into xtravision from now on, anyone that reads fhm, maxim etc. (the casual gamers I mentioned), anyone reading the sun or sunday world - any ps3 articles will no doubt talk about blu-ray.

but all they say is that the ps3 has it

people know that ps3 has bluray, but i dont think they know or care enough about it to have it sway them, not the average joe bloggs anyway

i think sony were insane going with bluray for the ps3 anyway, but then again this IS the company who tried to roll out minidisk

savemejebus

Helix wrote:

but all they say is that the ps3 has it

people know that ps3 has bluray, but i dont think they know or care enough about it to have it sway them, not the average joe bloggs anyway

I don't think that knowing much about it or caring is important here, just knowing the name and allowing sony to use it as a buzzword should be enough. Imagine the conversation:

dude 1 "here have you heard about blu-ray it's new it's shiny and all the papers and mags say it's fantastic, and the ps3 has it wow"

dude 2 "why is it so good then"

dude 1 " who cares, if these highly respected media outlets say it it must be true "

i think sony were insane going with bluray for the ps3 anyway, but then again this IS the company who tried to roll out minidisk

and the company that launched betamax, both of which have two things in common
1) lack of backing by 3rd parties which caused them to fail as consumer products
2) being the basis for professional products that are still in use - betacam for tv and minidisc for radio, something many people fail to point out when bashing them.

Actually there is a third thing both were very hight quality, something that I quite like in products).

Sony have rectified no.1 for blu-ray by making sure they had lots of companies on board before placing their eggs in that basket and no 2 was never a problem for them.

I'll be interested to see how it rolls out but as i said before, I'll probably end up with all three consoles due to a severe case of gadgetitis:D

Helix

no question about the quality of bluray, minidisk or betamax at all

BUT the public generally stick to affordability first and foremost, and with what they know second

bluray isnt really included in either category

itll probably become the industry standard for cinemas tho

Kevin2006

Helix wrote:

no question about the quality of bluray, minidisk or betamax at all

BUT the public generally stick to affordability first and foremost, and with what they know second

bluray isnt really included in either category

itll probably become the industry standard for cinemas tho

What are you on about? You can now walk in to most Xtravisions, if not all, and rent a blu-ray dvd for the same price as a regular dvd. The same cant be said about hd-dvd. Also, you can buy blu-ray films on the net for nearly the same price as you'd pay for a regular dvd in a shop.
The ps3 is out 2 days, give it a chance before completely writing it off.

smcelhinney

Helix wrote:

the difference is that people had heard of dvd when the ps2 was released

how many people in the street know what bluray is?

Funnily enough, told my dad I was getting one of these for my bday, and that if he wanted to get me a present, a Bluray movie would be good..

Proceeded to ask the cashier for a blue movie...


Classic..

(But I'll take the blue movie too, da..)