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PS3 price drop: not anytime soon.
Posts
I made a post like this on page two and was told I was petty. I laughed.
I thought 360s were cheap and affordable.
Compared to a certain other system, they are. Hell, it's even cheaper than gaming on a high-end PC.
But it's still a several hundred dollar investment. Is it affordable compared to the competition, but when you buy it just for one game and have absolutely zero interest in everything else, then you really shouldn't be given financial responsibility (i.e. he's an idiot). Hell, the two other games DarkWarrior mentioned interest in he also said are probably coming to PC, in which he'd play them on that system. Ugh.
Theres been no evidence that it would be delayed...ever.
What I don't get is why you even bothered buying a 360 if you hate the platform so much. And Dead Rising isn't a reason. One game, no matter what console, isn't reason enough to buy an expensive piece of equipment.
GTA4, Mass Effect, the PGR series, Blue Dragon, Gears of War, Bioshock, Halo, Lost Planet, Crackdown, I could go on.
Absolutely no XBOX 360 game interests you? You could've just waited for the PS3, and avoided a depreciated price on that 360.
Well, he seemed to enjoy Gears of War enough to play through it.
At least Ownage was civil.
Ugh *smacks head*, where haven't I been? I'm not the one dragging 'retard' out of their witty repertoire because I don't like someones opinion.
I do love how whenever I say I don't like 360s in a PS3 topic, everyone posting in the PS3 topic says how much they get hard for 360s. Maybe I'm in the wrong topic, I should probably hang out in 360 areas because I'm obviously missing the point.
The point is that if there aren't any 360 games you think are worth buying other than Dead Rising then you were a dumbass for buying one.
Marinade some chicken in the save data, then throw it straight on the grill.
Don't forget the potato salad.
I don't know.
I think it's interesting that Sony stuck to that model for their third generation of consoles. Why didn't they take the route Nintnedo was going and go for cheap and appealing to all? It only makes sense in this point in the game.
Honestly, I think if Sony hadn't insisted on including the expensive (both cost and to consumers) Blu-Ray drive, the PS3 (which would have launched at a more sensible price) would be on top right now, and the other two makes would be behind.
You know, I will admit that I am a Nintendo "fanboy," but you got to hand it to them. This is their fifth time around the block with a game console, and they've learned their lessons well.
I remember reading in David Sheff's book how when Nintendo first got started in the American market, they refused to follow the rest of the toy industry with "December 10 dating," which basically said that you agree to pay the retailers back for any product not sold by December 10 (This may be worded slightly wrong...please correct me if anyone can explain it better...I'm not even sure this method is still used today).
Well, Howard Lincoln looked at this policy and said "this is fucking crazy!," and they refused to do this.
I see a parallel here with the advent of the GameCube (which I believe was the first console NOT initially sold at a loss; please correct me if I'm work), where Nintendo looked at the traditional razor and blades model and said "wait a second...why the hell are we still doing this? It's crazy to keep selling this thing for a loss!" And therefore, they no longer sell on a razor and blades model. Sure, you still need to sell the console to sell the games, but they make money either way. It's no longer about enticing the customer to buy your console so you can make some money on the games themselves. You're making money either way!
Point is, I don't understand why Sony didn't see this and go for it. They could have easily made the PS3 with cheaper components and sold it for a small profit, too. Nothing prevented them for doing that...
TL;DR: Nintendo has learned their lessons well; Sony still has much to learn.[/i]
3DS Friend Code: 0404-6826-4588 PM if you add.
Up until the Xbox there was never a mainstream console that was sold at a loss.
The PS2 is iffy, but everything I've read indicates that if it was ever sold at a loss, it was only for a period of a few weeks during the initial launch.
Say what? I'm pretty damn positive that the NES, SNES, and N64 launched at a loss.
3DS Friend Code: 0404-6826-4588 PM if you add.
Anyway, if recent newspaper articles are to be believed it seems like Microsoft is intent on making the Xbox 360 profitable by 2008 which probaly means little if any price cut in 2007.
Yeah, "consoles are sold at a loss" is an old myth.
The Dreamcast was actually the first console to be sold at a significant loss (the Saturn was sold at a very small loss initially - but not enough to worry about).
I read a rant about it once that was pretty informative... I think this is it:
http://www.actsofgord.com/Proclamations/chapter02.html
I've heard that too, but it's a myth. Nintendo have repeatedly claimed that the only console they have ever sold at a loss was the Gamecube, and it was only sold at a loss for a very short period (a few months) after launch.
Nintendo really didn't really need to learn anything. They've always been extremely profitable and have been a top 3 toy company for a long, long time. THey don't need to be a market leader to make a lot of money, selling consoles at a profit, and making cheap-to-develop, high-sales games.
Even though they have been the minority market-share console for 2 generations they've made much more money than their marketshare would suggest; because their first party-titles are generally all million-sellers.
However, they haven't expanded the market for a long-time in the home-console market, simply content to remain profitable. It will be their challenge if it can simulate Sony's success at expanding the market. Remember, Sony's success previously was at having triple-A titles that appealed to entirely new audiences of people. Gran Turismo was a huge hit, showing that there was a market for car-sims out there. FFVII was a huge-hit expanding the RPG market from Japan to America and Europe.
Simply, put, hot, triple-A titles sell systems and also expand the demographics of your audience. Nintendo definitely has a big hit now in terms of Wii-Sports (which was cleverly bundled with the system). However, its release games for the next year or so, do not show such genre-smashing, audience-expanding hits, so I would be extremely hesistant to call the Wii the inevitable market-share leader in a battle that will definitely be fought over 5-6 years.
Sony's strategy has always been very, very long-term. They planned a 5 year life for the playstation and apparently they want the playstation 2 to last around 10 years (hey, its still going strong after 6).
With the PS3, its apparent they were willing to give up some short-term marketshare in order to push blu-ray and win the next-gen disc format war. The licensing money from this business is huge and will likely be bigger than even its playstation 2 business today.
If blu-ray wins the next-gen disc wars, and according to most industry analysts it's ahead now and has the most momentum, it may be a required purchase for all those who purchase hdtv's in order to enjoy high-def content. This is one of the fastest growing markets out there, and bound to grow even faster because all broadcasts are mandated by the FCC to be digital by mid 2009. Indeed, while it may look like the Wii will be everyone's second console in the short-run, in the long-term, due to the highly probably eventual success of blu-ray, the PS3 may end up being the default console of the most households.
Of course thats far off, and there are many variables, I'm just providing an alternate view that Sony may not have made a "mistake" at all by cannabalizing its own PS2 sales.
Drallo: It's pretty well known that the PS2 was initially sold at a loss but broke even within its first year.
Anyway, this thread is pretty retarded. Anyone that expected them to say "yeah we're dropping the price at this exact date" is a complete idiot.
Agreed...I'm not saying I could run Sony better than Sony can...Hell, I'd probably fuck it up even worse.
I just find it so interesting that two companies who were once so extremely close to marketing a console together can have split so far and gone down so very different business paths.
The way I see it, the PS2 is Sony's NES/SNES. It's too early to say, but I think the PS3 might turn out to be Sony's N64..sure, it will have some great games, but ultimatley, it will turn out to be a mistake.
Whether they pick up the pieces and regroup like Nintendo did remains to be seen.
3DS Friend Code: 0404-6826-4588 PM if you add.
Heh, I was thinking about doing that.
From the article I linked on the previous page:
If it was ever unprofitable, it must have been for an extremely short period of time.
Sony did, however pour massive amounts of money into manufacturing facilities for the PS2. It would have taken them quite a while to earn that money back.
Modern industrial development is such that things become cheaper as you sell more units.
This is because the marginal cost of each unit of hardware is very cheap; its merely paying the factories to produce them that's very expensive.
That is why Blu-Ray is more expensive than HD-DVD; you have to build new factories to pay for Blu-Ray; the marginal cost for both types of discs is about the same (in the short run, HD-DVD is faster too; wheras blu-ray can do multiple layers in one-pass, possibly making it cheaper in the long-run).
From most accounts, I read that the hardware was break-even within the year and Sony more than made up for hardware losses with Software sales since the PS2 launched with a lot of different games. Howard Stringer says the PS3 will break even by the end of the year which is not hard to believe considering how expensive Blu-Ray is now and the shrinking of die-size on the cell to 65nm this summer.