BusinessWeek Online article on PS3 delay

[Arnaud_M]

Nothing earth-shattering, but still an interesting read:

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbi...412_598932.htm

Arnaud

[lips]

interesting how they say this; yet, anyone whom recieves the business week publication will not be affected by any delay. I am trying not to imagine the business deligate in a boeing 777 first class reading this, worried about his stocks, begins chocking up a congac on the rocks onto his $200 tie his fortune 500 company owning son gave him for christmas. I mean, give me a break.

[xbdestroya]

Interesting read Arnaud!

This paragraph stood out in my mind for commentary:

But ask management gurus what they think and they'll wag a disapproving finger. To them, the PS3 delay is a classic case of a mismanaged project and feature overload. "You can't wait for certainty. In the technology business, that's always true," says Joel Koppelman, CEO of Primavera, a Bala Cynwyd (Pa.)-based company specializing in product planning. "There's always something better coming along."

I agree with this comment to an extent, in that the typical technology environment is one of constant innovation and competition, but when we're talking about a product that is going to be sold for 5/10 years and will be competing with the same competitors throughout that time in part based on it's features, well frankly I think the situation is different. Not to mention that here they seem to be talking about Blu-ray, when the PS3 itself is in part meant to be a vehicle for Blu-ray into the homes of the consumer. And they suggested it be cut? They're not seeing the forest through the trees.

[Viper]

Agreed, XBD. The console market is incredibly unique in that competiting consoles cannot just come out of the woodwork at will. It's one of the most cyclic electronic industries out there.

[Z]

But ask management gurus what they think and they'll wag a disapproving finger. To them, the PS3 delay is a classic case of a mismanaged project and feature overload. "You can't wait for certainty. In the technology business, that's always true," says Joel Koppelman, CEO of Primavera, a Bala Cynwyd (Pa.)-based company specializing in product planning. "There's always something better coming along."

that is the reason I couldn't buy a new TV in more than a decade. there is always a newr model and a better design coming in a couple of months.
you have to put your foot on the ground or you'll never buy anything.

[LaLiLuLeLo]

The console market is unique because consoles, especially initially are a large investment on everyone's part, from the developers down to the consumer. And the industry can't support consoles coming out at the frequency that t.v.s and other appliances come out because the formats aren't universal. Maybe if one console played all video games, but that model won't work until.....I have no idea if that could ever happen. But dreamcast is proof that the market can't support even 4 consoles. And people look down on being 3rd place in the console market like it's the plague. Being 3rd place in the t.v. industry is like, what, amazing?!!

And yeah Z, you have to buy something at some point, if you're always waiting for the best technology you'll never buy anything.

[LiquidEagle]

I don't think that's the case with Sony though. I don't think they're so indecisive that they're putting things off constantly because they see something they want to put in the PS3. It's been well-known for a long time that PS3 will use Blu-Ray, and the fact that it's not standardized and is pushing back the PS3's release is just an unfortunate fact. I don't think Sony wanted to improve the yields on the Cell or upgrade the wireless in it to keep it current -- I'm pretty sure it was all Blu-Ray. Actually i think there was one other thing that xb brought up in a thread that could have been a possible delay, but I don't think it's a situation like this article is describing.

btw, +rep for this article & input, Arnaud

[Smokey]

that is the reason I couldn't buy a new TV in more than a decade. there is always a newr model and a better design coming in a couple of months.
you have to put your foot on the ground or you'll never buy anything.

thats true Z i cant see why people wait. if ya want it get it.

[xbdestroya]

Actually i think there was one other thing that xb brought up in a thread that could have been a possible delay, but I don't think it's a situation like this article is describing.

Yeah there was the new HDMI standard as well, which in fact that article also refers to, but I just put that in with Blu-ray; if you want to include it, wait for it, don't just skip it. We're talking a couple of months delay on a product with a life of years.

Actually on the side, the development situation was such that it's probably for the best that these standards issues forced a delay of the consoole anyway.

[Arnaud_M]

Actually on the side, the development situation was such that it's probably for the best that these standards issues forced a delay of the consoole anyway.

I completly agree XB, actually I even suspect that this "standard issue" is an excuse from Sony. BlueRay players from Sony will be on the market in some weeks (don't recall the exact date, but it's very soon) and obviously these players will integrate the rumored "delayed technology" alledgedly responsible for PS3 delay. My guess is that Sony is putting up an excuse for being late on other fronts, probably games development or yield optimizations. Hopefully not both

Arnaud

[xbdestroya]

Well the AACS standard and it's inclusion into the BD spec has been a legitimate problem, and you'll not that BD has been delayed a couple of times now - not to mention HD-DVD for the same reasons. I truly feel that even if one issue had been resolved for a Spring launch, the others would have kept it from happening. It just happens to be the case that a November launch allows time for the correction of all these snags, and since I was expecting November for the NA territory anyway, well it works out fine for me.

[OmniStalgic]

good read...

[Z]

The console market is unique because consoles, especially initially are a large investment on everyone's part, from the developers down to the consumer. And the industry can't support consoles coming out at the frequency that t.v.s and other appliances come out because the formats aren't universal. Maybe if one console played all video games, but that model won't work until.....I have no idea if that could ever happen. But dreamcast is proof that the market can't support even 4 consoles. And people look down on being 3rd place in the console market like it's the plague. Being 3rd place in the t.v. industry is like, what, amazing?!!

the problem is exclusivity. I think the future of gaming cannot stay the way it is with only two or three consoles on the market. I believe in one time, consoles themselves will be licensed. so there may be only two or three standards, but there will be more than 20 versions to chose from. like a more mature example of the 3DO and Panasonic's Q GamCube version. in fact, there may be one version of a multiplatform game that works on all three (in a further, more idialestic future for consumers) with exclusives only running on particular systems. something like PCs today.

[Crossbar]

I don't think that's the case with Sony though. I don't think they're so indecisive that they're putting things off constantly because they see something they want to put in the PS3. It's been well-known for a long time that PS3 will use Blu-Ray, and the fact that it's not standardized and is pushing back the PS3's release is just an unfortunate fact. I don't think Sony wanted to improve the yields on the Cell or upgrade the wireless in it to keep it current -- I'm pretty sure it was all Blu-Ray. Actually i think there was one other thing that xb brought up in a thread that could have been a possible delay, but I don't think it's a situation like this article is describing.

btw, +rep for this article & input, Arnaud

A little bit hard to judge Sonys behaviour without inside information, but I also assume Sony has had their roadmap for Playstation fixed for quite some time and it included some of this future technology and that was a risk they were prepared to take in order to build a platform with long life cycle. It will help them sell TV screens and drive and possibly accelerate the HD-market.

I think it is pretty obvious that MS was not prepared to take any risks, in the field of new media HD-DVD etc. or new video outputs like HDMI and frankly they do not have the same incentive of doing that as Sony has, so I can't really blame them. They are aming to get first to 20 million units sold and as things are looking today, I do not rule out that they will achieve that! They will probably anyhow gain market share from Sony this generation, but as the market is growing it may not make much difference to Sony.

[EvilTaru]

A little bit hard to judge Sonys behaviour without inside information, but I also assume Sony has had their roadmap for Playstation fixed for quite some time and it included some of this future technology and that was a risk they were prepared to take in order to build a platform with long life cycle. It will help them sell TV screens and drive and possibly accelerate the HD-market.

I think it is pretty obvious that MS was not prepared to take any risks, in the field of new media HD-DVD etc. or new video outputs like HDMI and frankly they do not have the same incentive of doing that as Sony has, so I can't really blame them. They are aming to get first to 20 million units sold and as things are looking today, I do not rule out that they will achieve that! They will probably anyhow gain market share from Sony this generation, but as the market is growing it may not make much difference to Sony.

Actually things are going FAR SLOWER than MS had hoped, even with the headstart, the way things are going now, I doubt MS would even hit 5-6 mil before Sony catches up with them, and blows right past them, forget about gaining marketshare, or hitting 10 mil first, it's not going to happen for MS at this point. Sony has yet to BEGIN gaining major momentum with the PS3, we're seeing MS showcasing almost all of their big guns now, and aside from MGS4, the PS3 line-up has yet to even show its true strength and already it will have a major perception advantage.

The problem is that so many of MS' big games are going to be running on UE3, even the exclusives, and while UE3 is very competent in terms of graphics, it HAS to cater to everything from single processor intel pentium to dual cores to xbox360 cpu to Cell, it will certainly be scalable, but ultimately it will never be as good as what the best exclusive devs working on the PS3 can come up with on their own because they will never have to worry about cross-platform portability or having to hold anything back whether in terms of content, graphics or gameplay. MS' strategy is more along the line of hoping that that exclusive PS3 titles won't significantly distinguish themselves from multiplatform titles running on third party middleware in terms of both gameplay and technology-wise, and drawing a lot of support from PC developers, and the "it looks good enough for next gen, and the competition won't be much different, so why not choose us since we're on the market first?" mentality, which I think for them is a mistake, the further we are in the upcoming generation, the more the difference will be apparent.

[Crossbar]

Actually things are going FAR SLOWER than MS had hoped, even with the headstart, the way things are going now, I doubt MS would even hit 5-6 mil before Sony catches up with them, and blows right past them, forget about gaining marketshare, or hitting 10 mil first

Yes, Microsoft will not reach the goal of having 4.5-5.5 million units shipped by June, as predicted here: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=13895
But they now have got their three production plants working as planned: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=15539
According to Sony they will have shipped 6 million PS3s before end of March next year. I am not such a fanboy that I can put a blind eye to these facts.
Microsoft will certainly give Sony some healthy competition this round.

Sony has yet to BEGIN gaining major momentum with the PS3, we're seeing MS showcasing almost all of their big guns now, and aside from MGS4, the PS3 line-up has yet to even show its true strength and already it will have a major perception advantage.

E3 will give us some information on this.

The problem is that so many of MS' big games are going to be running on UE3, even the exclusives, and while UE3 is very competent in terms of graphics, it HAS to cater to everything from single processor intel pentium to dual cores to xbox360 cpu to Cell, it will certainly be scalable, but ultimately it will never be as good as what the best exclusive devs working on the PS3 can come up with on their own because they will never have to worry about cross-platform portability or having to hold anything back whether in terms of content, graphics or gameplay. MS' strategy is more along the line of hoping that that exclusive PS3 titles won't significantly distinguish themselves from multiplatform titles running on third party middleware in terms of both gameplay and technology-wise, and drawing a lot of support from PC developers, and the "it looks good enough for next gen, and the competition won't be much different, so why not choose us since we're on the market first?" mentality, which I think for them is a mistake, the further we are in the upcoming generation, the more the difference will be apparent.

Some bold claims, I think we will see some visually stunning exclusive games on the 360 when the devs get some mileage with the hardware, no doubts about it. Cell is a magnificant piece of silicon, but I am still waiting for the complete spec to be able to judge the power of the complete system. And after all it's the game support that counts, but judging form the report in the March issue of Edge the PS3 has the greatest support today, but these things can change if the PS3 does not get the right volumes fast enough. I think it is to early to claim a victor when one of the contestant has not yet enterd the race.

[EvilTaru]

I doubt MS is even selling through enough numbers to reach 4.5-5.5 mil by June, they're basically doing around 1 mil per month, and that's AFTER they've supposedly double/triple their manufacturing capacity (Sony is doing 1 mil/month right from the get-go, with ability to ramp up production even more down the road), but MS is simply NOT selling through that many per month, we're talking about almost 500,000 for both NA and Europe (because Japan has pretty much become a lost cause with around 1000 per month) and they're not even selling half that many in NA according to NPD hardware numbers. When the PS3 launch, the two numbers will be relatively close that the headstart will have been squandered for the most part.

No doubt there will be some very pretty xbox360 games running on UE3, and I've already stated that UE3 is capable of some very nice visuals, but MS developers are very dependent on third party middleware like UE3, and will visuals be capped there? Will the PS3 not be capable of producing visuals AND gameplay surpassing what UE3 with many more technically experienced exclusive developers developing games using proprietary technology especially for it? Just looking at the majority of the early launch games, the quality of the lighting (high quality HDR lighting is basically a GIVEN) and the extent of the physics (Heavenly Sword is doing havok ragdoll but in a MUCH LARGER scale) are in general more impressive than the majority of the games for the xbox360. That's not to say xbox360 won't have some good-looking gems but I doubt they're enough, you're seeing them trying to hype them up from an early standpoint. SCEWW right now simply has higher quality and more technically adept first/second party developers on their side.

[xbdestroya]

I doubt MS is even selling through enough numbers to reach 4.5-5.5 mil by June, they're basically doing around 1 mil per month, and that's AFTER they've supposedly double/triple their manufacturing capacity (Sony is doing 1 mil/month right from the get-go, with ability to ramp up production even more down the road), but MS is simply NOT selling through that many per month, we're talking about almost 500,000 for both NA and Europe (because Japan has pretty much become a lost cause with around 1000 per month) and they're not even selling half that many in NA according to NPD hardware numbers. When the PS3 launch, the two numbers will be relatively close that the headstart will have been squandered for the most part.

Well to be fair, the thirs XBox plant just came online, and the Sony 1 mil/month figure won't be at launch, but rather beginning in 2007 I believe they said. I could be wrong; the exact quote is around here somewhere though.

[Domination]

Well to be fair, the thirs XBox plant just came online, and the Sony 1 mil/month figure won't be at launch, but rather beginning in 2007 I believe they said. I could be wrong; the exact quote is around here somewhere though.

Sony said after launch. But still, if they are expecting to produce 1 million units a month by March of 2007, rather that be the actual day or their ficial year, that is still a lot of units for that time period.


To EvilTaru, I'm not going to go as far as predicting any market gain between these two since anything can happen within that time. So with that out of the way, I believe with this new startegy Microsoft has chose to embraced, they will either profit or lose less money on the Xbox this generation. It all depends on the amount of competion Sony brings to the table.

On the hardware side, I have found myself pondering some of the exact samethings and for quite sometime now. But dispite the many conclusions I may have come to for those reasons, I'm holding off for an exhibition. That way we are absolutely certain to whatever outcome.

Now, I don't mean to sound too pessimistic, but I am very skeptical about Sony's launch on the software side. A part of me believes that Sony is going to slowly introduce triple-A software while the other half sees Microsoft as too much of a threat for both Blu Ray and the PS3 for Sony to give them such an opportunity. In all, I'm not really expecting much.

[EvilTaru]

Well to be fair, the thirs XBox plant just came online, and the Sony 1 mil/month figure won't be at launch, but rather beginning in 2007 I believe they said. I could be wrong; the exact quote is around here somewhere though.

Like I said, at the current rate the xbox360 is selling (with no help from Japan), they won't sell anywhere close to their 1 mil per month.




I think the exact quote is 6 mil by end of fiscal year 2006 (march 2007), they are doing 1 million/month right from the start and not ramping up to 1 mil, they'll be ramping up FROM 1 mil, and it also makes sense from the perspective of achieving 6 mil by March 2007 because they would have to make MORE than 1 mil per month to reach that number.