Playstation 3 pricing announced

[John Crichton]

He's not talking about flatscreen TVs (or rather, he's not talking about LCDs, DLPs, plasmas, or old-school projection TVs). He's talking about 26" and 30" widescreen CRTs, which are pretty widely available for $500-$800 (if there had been $500 30" CRTs three years ago, I'd have one).

Yah.

They are big and bulky, but they more than get the job done. I'd highly recommend one for any gamer or entertainment enthusist. I bought the thing to mainly watch DVDs and at the time I just wanted to play Madden on one so I could see more of the field. Turns out it's some of the best money I've ever spent. I actually lucked out as HDMI was just coming out and for some reason Sony put one on it when everything else at that price point just had component inputs and usually just one. 1 HDMI + 2 component inputs was a little luck based off some good homework.

 

[John Crichton]

It depends what Intel, AMD, and IBM Microelectronics were offering MS. I'm a lot less concerned about owning all the IP, and about making the system unusual (and therefore hard to hack) than Microsoft was. I also think that MS overestimated the importance of being first to market; I wouldn't have launched the 360 last year, when it was clear neither Sony or Nintendo would (in fact, they're only launching consoles this year because MS did last year; otherwise we'd see the PS3 in 2007, when it almost makes sense to launch a console with a Blu-Ray drive). Heck, I'd've made sure Halo 3 and KotOR 3 were launch titles.

But I'd bet that the best thing IBM could make for a console last year that would be a tweaked PPC970FX (the low-power G5, seen in the last PowerPC iMacs). Single core, but with an excellent vector unit. The dual-core version costs too much and uses too much power for a console. Intel could have provided a tweaked Pentium M "Dothan", or possibly two of them for conventional SMP (the Pentium 4 is too power-hungry for a console; the Pentium D is right out); AMD could have provided a tweaked Athlon 64 (though not an X2; too expensive).

You, sir, just exploded my brain. I understood very little of that.

I think I explained above why the Cell's terrible for games, except to add that asymetric multiprocessing on the Cell is even harder to do well than symetric multiprocessing on the Xenon or standard dual-core CPUs, that the Cell's SPEs just aren't good for all that much. When Sony was intending to use two Cells in the PS3, and not have a dedicated GPU, they were halfway decent for processing graphics -- but nowhere near as good as ATi and nVidia's dedicated hardware, which was why they had to scramble and sign on nVidia at the last minute.

Because it's launching in 2006, not 2005, IBM could probably make a dual-core G5 that fit in a console's power envelope. AMD's costs for Athlon 64 X2s are lower now than they were last year. Intel could provide a Core Duo (a Core 2 Duo would be excellent, but they're launching in the next month or two and will still be too expensive by conventional console economics in November).

Okay. Sounds good. Heh. Honestly, I really think that lots of what you say is accurate but with a company as successful as Sony I think they know what they are doing. And, I really can't tell if you are thinking they made a big mistake in choosing how to make the PS3 or not.

 

[John Crichton]

And I think that while the hardcore consumer is willing, or more likely already has, spent money on that setup, the casual gamers have not, and likely will not. Things may have changed somewhat since the two years I stopped selling electronics, but the average customer didn't come in looking even at a flatscreen television. And while flatscreens seem to be more prolific now, the point is that your average consumer, and thus casual gamer, IMO, is not going to be spending thousands of dollars to play video games. And that's why you can't bring up the next-gen playability as a benefit, because the majority of people won't have sufficient set-ups to take advantage of it.

drothgery had it right, but my basic point was that it doesn't take thousands of dollars to get a good HD/home theater setup. You can put the whole thing together for a grand.

 

[Zappo]

A precisation. What drothgery explained - that out-of-order single-threaded performance on Cell is going to be relatively bad - applies to the 360's Xenon as well. The winners in that field are PCs, with their complex and powerful single cores. I don't disagree with that.

My opinion OTOH is that devs will relatively quickly find ways to make more in-order and multi-threaded code for many parts of their games (though not all). This way, they will gain more performance out of the sheer number of cores than what they lose because of the core architecture. It seems that both Sony and Microsoft think the same thing.

 

[drothgery]

Okay. Sounds good. Heh. Honestly, I really think that lots of what you say is accurate but with a company as successful as Sony I think they know what they are doing. And, I really can't tell if you are thinking they made a big mistake in choosing how to make the PS3 or not.

I think Sony made a big mistake with the PS3's CPU, and may get away with it because Microsoft and Nintendo made smaller ones; they probably won't get away with it, because the PS3's price will consign the PS3 to second place at best outside of Japan, and because even at $600, they're taking a loss that they really can't afford to on each console. No one has ever made money selling consoles at a launch; only Microsoft has ever built marketshare that way.

It's also worth noting that Sony's not doing very well lately, oustside of the PS2. Their consumer electronics lines are in trouble due to Samsung, Apple, and a bunch of others. The movie industry isn't doing well, and Sony's properties are no exception. Same goes for music. They're far less capable of taking big losses from consoles than Microsoft.

Sony did what they did because it's a logical extension of what they did with the PS2, and they think that succeeded (they're wrong; the PS2 succeeded in spite of its CPU, not because of it). MS did what they did because they wanted an unusual architecture that's hard to hack and that they'd own, and because IBM Microelectronics (who were already working on the Cell, and didn't want to design two complete console CPUs) was the low bidder. And Nintendo did what they did because it was very cheap.

Researchers have been putting enormous amounts of effort into finding ways to make multi-threaded programming easier for decades. And they haven't gotten very far in doing it. So I'm extremely skeptical of any major breakthroughs in the next five years.

And when the biggest names in PC game programming say that there's very little benefit to multi-threading in games -- and almost none beyond two threads -- I believe them.

 

[Arnwyn]

because the PS3's price will consign the PS3 to second place at best outside of Japan,

Fascinating. People continue talking about the price as if it were to remain the same over the entire console's lifecycle.

History, of course, clearly contradicts such speculation (as I'm sure we all remember the introduction prices of the PSX, Saturn, and N64 - and which one ended up with the most market share).

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Fascinating. People continue talking about the price as if it were to remain the same over the entire console's lifecycle.

History, of course, clearly contradicts such speculation (as I'm sure we all remember the introduction prices of the PSX, Saturn, and N64 - and which one ended up with the most market share).

The 360 will be about a year old when the PS3 comes out. It'll have a year's worth of releases, and if rumors are to be believed, it will cost half of what the PS3 costs. Even if the PS3 drops $100 a year later, it'll still be second place to the 360.

The PS3 will take second place outside of Japan. There is no way Sony can remain on top. They have WAY too much going against them.

Also of note, one of the things going against them are the developers themselves. John Carmack (the creater of Doom) was recently interviewed on G4. He basically said that the Cell chip was a nightmare to program for, and developers were only going to work on it because Sony was trying to strong-arm them with their brand name. He said that while the PS3 has more potential power than the 360, it is so hard to program for, developers will never try to push it to its limits.

Of course, this is just one man's opinions, but Carmack is a verteran of the industry and a genius to boot.

In addition to that, a few moments earlier, they had CliffyB on, the guy in charge of Gears of War and a major player at Epic. He came out and said, in not so many words, that even though they were using both systems, he too preffered the 360.

Now, on top of that, IGN reports a rumor that the 360 might get Metal Gear.

 

[drothgery]

Fascinating. People continue talking about the price as if it were to remain the same over the entire console's lifecycle.

Where is anyone saying that (except in relative terms)?

All my argument requires is that the PS3 be significantly more expensive than the Xbox 360 and the Wii for the next two or three years (which it will be; their hardware costs are substantially higher than both Microsoft's and Nintendo's, and Sony's less financially able to take losses on hardware). If the PS3's $299, the Xbox 360 is $149, and the Wii is $99, the same financial incentives will play out as they do when the PS3 is $599, the Xbox 360 is $399, and the Wii is $199.

It doesn't require that Sony stick with the $599 price indefinitely.

History, of course, clearly contradicts such speculation (as I'm sure we all remember the introduction prices of the PSX, Saturn, and N64 - and which one ended up with the most market share).

IIRC, in the US, the Saturn launched first at the highest price ($399), and had the lowest market share. The PSX debuted at $299. And the N64 was $249, but its games were more expensive due to being the last cartridge-based box (other than handhelds). The PSX was also the easiest to develop for, by far, of its contemporaries, and Sony had the lowest licensing fees.

 

[KenM]

I saw an interview on G4 from E3. I forgot who it was but he said that Sony mad it harder for 3rd person devolpers to make games for the PS3 due to the way they designed the hardware. This will turn alot of devolpers off.

 

[Arnwyn]

All my argument requires is that the PS3 be significantly more expensive than the Xbox 360 and the Wii for the next two or three years (which it will be; their hardware costs are substantially higher than both Microsoft's and Nintendo's, and Sony's less financially able to take losses on hardware). If the PS3's $299, the Xbox 360 is $149, and the Wii is $99, the same financial incentives will play out as they do when the PS3 is $599, the Xbox 360 is $399, and the Wii is $199.

Possibly - but, of course, we have no idea what the prices will be in a couple of years. Heck, even you botched up your (already wildly speculative) price ratios. (I.e. if the PS3's $299, then following the current price ratio, the Xbox 360 will be $199. But I digress!)

While I don't claim to specifically know Sony's cost structure and finances to a fine degree (and immediately dismiss speculation from anyone who isn't in their accounting department - even their public financial statements never tell the whole story about what a company can and can't do - I am a professional accountant after all) and whether they can reduce their prices to a specific degree, I do have a hard time believing that they won't be competitive on this front.

But who knows? Predicting market share is a funny business - but yeah, as in all things, I can see the price possibly hurting them. Let's see how hardcore consumers really are about video games...