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Gabe Newell bombshell quotes
- Thread starter alexandros
- Start date
In retrospect - the only major difference between PS2 and PS3 launch trainwrecks was that one of them happened unchallenged.JohnnySasaki86 said:
And making train-wrecks commercially viable long term is kind of par-for-the course in this industry (even more so in software side).
Not sure what relation Gabe's quote has to that? General standard of console industry for past 20 years has been to ditch legacy architecture(and usually hw-providers) with every generation.
What comic is this?
the other major difference was that the ps2 made a profit later on and the ps3 is billions in the red.
Which is exactly what they're doing now with PS4. Only if they had stopped in January 2007, they could have spared themselves from years of losses. And it wouldn't have all been for naught - some aspects like Blu-ray would have proven to be worthwhile investments.
butter_stick
Banned
Beared, white haired Gaben look fucking awesome.
Technosteve
Banned
PS3 should of invested in ARM parallelism vs Cell, to bad Vita is dead in the water.
TigerUppercut
Member
Alias
alexandros
Banned
As they have been For years. This goes without saying.
Uh, isn't this a question that should be directed at the guy who actually wrote the article? Even the conclusions are not mine, the guy who wrote this piece said the same things.
"Considering an argument" means trying to see if it has objectively any merit. As the article points out, some of Newell's older quotes were dismissed at the time, only to be proven right later.
Maybe I could have phrased that better, I basically meant "for many years".
More Fun To Compute
Member
Gamers can't handle the truth about gaming. All we can deal with without getting confused is cheerleading about how the future of all the brands and IP we like is going to be so awesome.
Basileus777
Member
If they had stopped in 2007, it would have been the end of the Playstation brand. Canceling the PS3 would have been tantamount to pulling out of the video games business.
davonaytor
Member
He's pretty much the opposite of Pachter.
I wouldn't go that far, snatched from Pachter's wiki:
Pachter considers himself a Democrat, claiming that "Republicans care about themselves; Democrats care about other people." Pachter supports same-sex marriage, jokingly explaining that "gay people should be allowed to be as miserable as the rest of us married people."
But Gabe is wise enough not to mingle in such arguments, I am however convinced his marriage isn't miserable.
Holy Order Sol
Member
So basically if he keeps this up he becomes the Anti-Pachter.
EDIT : beaten with ferocious fury
EDIT : beaten with ferocious fury
Then they would have been even better off financially.
LemonGremlin
Member
“It’s addictive. I mean, we are all addicted to the game,” admits Newell. “Ordinarily, when developing a game, you tend to get pretty tired of it because you have to go through all it and play it about a thousand times. By the end you’re like, ‘OK, I don’t ever want to see this game again.......At the end of the day, we all go home, turn on our computers, and play DOTA 2 until about 3am,” he continued. “That’s a pretty good sign; when jaded developers want to keep playing the game they’re making in their spare time as well.”
Valve time.
Valve time.
Loss for the gamers.
They have done a remarkable job for the ps3 even though it may not recoup the losses suffered at the start of the gen.
However PS4 can be change their fortunes, so you never know.
More Fun To Compute
Member
Cancel PS3 and continue some PS2 support. Wait for people to get sick of Wii. Release a reworked PS3 with easy to develop for hardware with Move that blows the 360 away in terms of performance due to newer hardware.
Disaster.
- Cancel PS3 and continue PS2 support: which means cancelling all production contracts they had, that means reforming the production lines again and it means restarting the PS2 game-development and marketing -> Billions in loss.
- Wait for people to get sick of the Wii: Let's say that was about the middle of 2011, meaning putting the PS2 on life support for 4 years. But then you forget the Wii software-market would be a lot healthier as it would be more interesting to develop Wii games (due to PS2/Wii multiplatform cross-over instead of PS3/360 cross-over)
- Reworked PS3 that blows the 360 away: But that would have no support of publishers because they invested millions in developping for the previous console you ditched almost immediately. It would mean no cross-over with the 360.
- It would mean their development studios would have nothing to do during 4 years, or have limited stuff to do because your PS2 games won't sell as well. It means attracting no talent because they're bleeding to the competition.
Your point makes absolute zero sense.
He wasn't spot-on with that comment at all.
More Fun To Compute
Member
I don't know. It seemed like PS2 was still very strong for a long while there. It depends on how early they would have been able to identify that their cell strategy was poor. Wasn't that the point when they decided they had to put standard graphics card tech in it? And for first parties, good launch games for a system more powerful than 360 would take a long time develop. Maybe we would even have had Last Guardian for it by now.
electroshockwave
Member
Sony dumping the PS3 and trying to come back would have been akin to Sega trying to launch a new console in 2005. The brand would have been fucked as both consumers and publishers that invested in the PS3 would have no trust in them at all. Gabe was being overzealous in 2007 but anyone seriously entertaining the idea now that Sony should have backed out of this generation is an idiot.
Well, if you say it like that! If only it was that simple.
So you think supporting development cycles for 3-4 year would be possible for Sony right after they had to pay off so many companies to cancel the PS3 production contracts? Your strategy would ruin SCE completely.
Went from clear first with massive marketshare, to last place and wiped out any profit from the best selling console of all time. As a gamer the PS3 is great, but if I'm boss of Sony I'd be calling it a disaster.
More Fun To Compute
Member
So it was impossible for Sony to ever make money from the PS3 because of contracts?
Apparently Sony can't do simple strategies that make them money any more.
electroshockwave
Member
But the comment wasn't about coming in third, it was about cancelling the PS3 and giving up on making games/persuading companies to make games for it. With hindsight that's ludicrous.
I know that feeling, Gabe should put that quote on the store page for DOTA 2.
These kind of huge corporations once engaged in a product with external partnerships, contracts and third parties, it becomes prohibitively costly to scratch that completely and start over. Bit the bullet and keep rowing further. Do adjustments post release. Learn for future products.
MightyHedgehog
Member
Whatever the case with PS3 and Cell, it didn't really help Sony in the long run, did it? I mean, they're staring at a situation now where they may not be able to really compete in the console arena after this current generation, due to the huge and on-going financial clusterfuck that they created for themselves with bad decisions they made in 2004 onward. Gabe showing up on stage four years after he shat on Cell doesn't really change his original overall statement, that Sony fucked up from the very beginning and it has cost them dearly and still, to this day, does since it affects their next console for, at least, legacy support and that matters a whole lot when you expect that PSN accounts should carry purchases forward and it costs Sony to include PS3 hardware in the next one to maintain that full capability.
You're joking right? sony gaming division would have been finished if they listened to his ridiculous 'advice'
From a business point of view it would have been a disaster and sony would join sega in terms of consumer brand distrust
sony's problems have nothing to with the cell. If sony launched with he cheapest game console on earth it woud have never stopped the wii revolution and coupled with the loss of third party exclusives the tone was set
that depends on your perspective, the ps3 still hasn't made any profit for sony. I'm pretty sure there would have been alternatives to that.
From what I see in the quote I didn't read it as saying the main point is to cancel the PS3, he just added that in to illustrate how badly he thinks they've messed up
There's the quote again and I still read it that way and I think, with the points I made in the post you responded to, he was justified in saying that.
Let's just say company A makes a deal with company B. Company B will work for company A for 5 years and make company A's product. This will equal a revenue of X, which gives a nice profit to B but is not expensive to A. A will make a profit on their finished product and B will make a profit on their work. Now company A decides to cancel the product. They still have to pay company B because of the contract, however, they aren't selling a product so they get stuck paying for something that they won't sell. Of course, company B won't produce anything, but still a huge fine needs to be paid. Company B won't just allow A to cancel the contract. Even if A doesn't sell their product with a profit, but with a loss. The loss is still smaller than not selling at all.
And I'm suggesting that, considering past losses and an unfavorable future, they would have been better served to get out of the games business in 2007. I'm speaking in hindsight, since this thread is about Gabe Newell making crazy predictions, after all.
xValentine
Member
Thank God Sony doesn't trust Gabe Newell back then.
The gaming business is one of sony's core strengths. It's the only consumer electronics manufacturer that has a dedicated gaming division. They will not abandon it.
Just because management make stupid decisions does not mean you concede market position and withdraw in a 20 billion industry
MightyHedgehog
Member
I'll stick to my guess. And I never suggested how they should've gone about it, only that, with the benefit of hindsight, they really picked wrong. I would never have had them go cheap, but rather, with more familiar, developer-friendly software and hardware than they did. It would have saved them a lot of money they still haven't managed to get back and may never.
More Fun To Compute
Member
What is stopping company A saying that the contract is no longer working any more but it can still work if it was re-negotiated. And what if overall loss X of division with current strategy is greater than cost of cancelling project Y.