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Kaz Hirai: "PS4 hardware is already profitable"
- Thread starter Spiegel
- Start date
staticneuron
Member
What on earth are you talking about? Consumer's spoke with their wallets. That is how is how the market works. Blame the consumer? Yes, in this case that is exactly the case. It's profitability signifies that consumers are willing to pay for it.
We'll have to respectfully disagree then. We have a choice to buy the things we want. Hostile practices, marketing doesn't force anyone to go out and buy a product.
No matter how hostile something is....proof is in plenty of Microsoft products failing, and the giant that was once Sony being in the shape that they're in. Sony was Sony when the PS3 released and even though it was releasing off the heals of the PS2....consumers made a choice to not buy as much as Sony wanted and it in turned forced them to change in order to get those customers back. See the X1....consumers forcing Microsoft to make change based off their choices.
Consumers made a choice to not buy products and these companies suffered. You can't switch that around because something you may not like became popular because of those same consumer choices.
ChronotriggerJM
Member
I don't understand how anyone could be upset about this. There is still a ton of value per dollar in what they're offering you.
One cannot build a PC from retail that matches a PS4 and includes a dual shock 4.
This is fantastic news, I certainly wouldn't want SCE being shut down due to lack of profits.
One cannot build a PC from retail that matches a PS4 and includes a dual shock 4.
This is fantastic news, I certainly wouldn't want SCE being shut down due to lack of profits.
They are trying. It's hard to cut the cord on the PC and TV division.
your conjecture is just as good as mine. Except mine historically is more accurate than yours. Thx for trying though
But isn't it the opposite? The reason we don't see high-end PC exclusives like Crysis anymore is because there are not enough people out there buying Titan cards to justify that kind of investment. A new console cycle allows developers to push PC hardware further because there are more people with higher powered consoles out in the wild. If the console market fell through you wouldn't suddenly see developers taking advantage of the latest PC hardware. The AAA market would probably collapse due to the huge decrease in user base.
GoofsterStud
Member
Why is Jack partaking in the endeavor?
Uno Venova
Banned
I'm hard just thinking about how well they will do financially.
i doubt it is much profitable, as their optimistic predictions show $200m in Operating profit for next year.
Joe_Incognito
Banned
Then where did the losses come from this quarter? R&D? And will they ever recoup the billions lost during the ps3 era? A time when they allegedly lost all the profits they made on the ps2.
GoofsterStud
Member
A sunk cost is a sunk cost.... Get over it.
As far as losses, don't forget the Day One shipping they were doing at the end of the month. That has to cost as well.
How much did the PS2 make?
Principate
Saint Titanfall
I believe the point is that only lasts for so long typically a year or two, then it's back to not really pushing pc hardware and if the consoles generation is longer then the problem is worse.
Also using Titan is kind of missing the point, even among pc gaming enthusiast rarely do people buy Titans because that's literally Nvidia price gouging top end due to lack of amd competition. When they talk about holding back they're not really talking about Titans more high end cards.
I also wouldn't say games like Crysis left because they weren't sustainable. The first game despite being pc exclusive was still amongst the series high selling titles. It's more the fact like the rest of the industry they were chasing dat COD money even if money could be made more money was potentially made on consoles if they made it big.
Iacobellis
Junior Member
I don't see them moving away from x86 soon. Times have changed, developers are more willing to save money and port their game to your platform rather than make it from the ground up exclusively for that system. If Sony ever is daring again, it better be PS2 daring. Not PS3 daring.
RoyaleDuke
Banned
Wow, I knew the PS4 would be a success but I didn't think it would be that successful.
Good for Sony, and hopefully that means good for us as well.
I would love to see another generation where we reach the levels of variety and creativity that we had during the PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, PC days.
Good for Sony, and hopefully that means good for us as well.
I would love to see another generation where we reach the levels of variety and creativity that we had during the PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, PC days.
"I think it is interesting how Sony imitated the Nintendo approach (minus the gimmick) by having moderate hardware without a complicated design that is profitable day 1 and allow the economics of scale to increase margins over time. It makes sense for the buisness to act in this manner after the PS3, in order to get profitable in the shortest amount of time possible.
This doesn't do much for me as a gamer, especially since I also game on a PC and I expect this generation to be a similar duration to the previous one with the continual spiral upward of inflated software costs/smaller content offerings on software, services and features.. I do find it interesting that they did this and still managed to be the most powerful (non-PC) console on the market currently and was initially less expensive than the Microsoft offering.
I think the (potentially) sad take away from this situation is that there will be no strong tech push going forward in the console market anymore. It wouldn't surprise me if the next generation is also conservative like this one and anything "pushing the bounderies" will be using older and more "well established" practices instead of experimentation and only making marginal steps outside of comfort zones. Things like VR, I almost expect to be sold as either an enthusiast add on or at a premium teir for the experience and intially segregating the market in the generation it is introduced with the following generation having a more blue ocean approach to implementation and adoption using established practices and a smaller tech leap than the previous generation made overal."
Sony did not imitate Nintendo. And the PS4 is not "moderate" hardware. Yes, they are using PC parts but they are still custom. They've adopted this method strictly because of what happened last Gen with the hard to use architecture and well, y'know, 5 billion dollar loss. And besides, last gen consoles were severely outclassed by PC's out the gate even though the manufactures lost so much money trying to keep up. In the end, it was worthless.
A closed environment is not a bad thing. It allows the developer to utilize and explore a platform completely vs using brute force to get average results. Developers will never be able to utilize any GPU and API's are still very inefficient. All of that money put into a Rig only to have slightly cleaner graphics and high res textures.
This doesn't do much for me as a gamer, especially since I also game on a PC and I expect this generation to be a similar duration to the previous one with the continual spiral upward of inflated software costs/smaller content offerings on software, services and features.. I do find it interesting that they did this and still managed to be the most powerful (non-PC) console on the market currently and was initially less expensive than the Microsoft offering.
I think the (potentially) sad take away from this situation is that there will be no strong tech push going forward in the console market anymore. It wouldn't surprise me if the next generation is also conservative like this one and anything "pushing the bounderies" will be using older and more "well established" practices instead of experimentation and only making marginal steps outside of comfort zones. Things like VR, I almost expect to be sold as either an enthusiast add on or at a premium teir for the experience and intially segregating the market in the generation it is introduced with the following generation having a more blue ocean approach to implementation and adoption using established practices and a smaller tech leap than the previous generation made overal."
Sony did not imitate Nintendo. And the PS4 is not "moderate" hardware. Yes, they are using PC parts but they are still custom. They've adopted this method strictly because of what happened last Gen with the hard to use architecture and well, y'know, 5 billion dollar loss. And besides, last gen consoles were severely outclassed by PC's out the gate even though the manufactures lost so much money trying to keep up. In the end, it was worthless.
A closed environment is not a bad thing. It allows the developer to utilize and explore a platform completely vs using brute force to get average results. Developers will never be able to utilize any GPU and API's are still very inefficient. All of that money put into a Rig only to have slightly cleaner graphics and high res textures.
El-Pistolero
Member
Please Sony, bleed so you could quit the market! I think your remarks about the hardware not being bleeding edge are better addressed to MS who, despite being Uncle Picsou rich, decided to go the cheap route.
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
phxxBullet
Banned
:faceplam:
What it has to do with the thread? Mhh.. I dunno.. lemme see.. maybe that part where I said a console and a PC are the same thing anyways, so it's useless to compare both, like comparing a 400$ pc with a 1200$ pc?
Iacobellis
Junior Member
I miss the variety of games PS2 had. All those obscure Japanese titles that got localized meshed with the AA American ones...
PHOENIXZERO
Member
Started selling for a loss but not for nearly as long as they did with the PS3 nor as big. The money sunk into the PS3 and years of losses wiped out whatever profits they had from the division IIRC, But yeah, Sony didn't start seeing a profit on PS3 hardware until 2010 and even then it was very small. The problem now with the PS3 profitability and why the "super slim" is still so big is that Sony made the same mistake MS did with partnering with Nvidia and their apparent unwillingness to work with Sony to create a Cell/RSX SoC.
Because the gif was made before Jack left?
I oppose a price-cut, if a profitable PS4 means a PS5 (not before some 6-7 years later, though)
Excellent loop!
Excellent loop!
How so? Some Steam Machines manufacturers are already saying that they will be the least profitable devices that they will sell. And they don't have the added revenue of a consistent stream of software royalties as Sony has. Steam Machines market will likely collapse to 2-3 brands from big PC hardware manufacturers or Valve will need to step in (I don't think they will ever do that though).
TimeEffect
Member
It's good to see Sony so open with indie games, and things like Kickstarter keep that "middleware" variety alive.
I feel the VITA would be perfect for new Jak and Daxter (or Daxter), Ratchet and Clank, Medieval, Alundra, etc. games, but Sony hasn't really pulled the trigger on that.
Games like Octodad feel like titles I would expect to see in the PS2 days, and it was shocking to see it receive a lot of attention (it seems to be selling well on PS4).
Sony has so many IPs that seem like middleware-- I'm playing Puppeteer through PS+ right now and am amazed at the work behind the craftsmanship of that title. I don't know how profitable it was, but I wish we'd see more of that on the digital store for PS4.
It's true that things do slow down, but that is inevitable. The growth of computing power far outpaces developers ability to take advantage of the tech that already exists. Look how far things have come since the launch of the 360 and the PS3. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to be constantly chasing the latest tech especially when only a fraction of people can actually take advantage of it. Also it's not as if PC gamers are getting a raw deal. They are still getting higher resolutions and frame rates thanks to their extra power.
I think you missed my larger point with the Titan example. It's true that very few people are going out and buying those monstrosities, but the fact still remains that the number of people who have high-end video cards are in the minority. It is in the developers best interest to make a non-shitty experience for the widest variety of hardware possible. This includes both consoles and more moderate PCs.
It's true that Crysis sold pretty well, but we now live in a world where 6 million in sales for Tomb Raider is considered disappointing. AAA game development has become so expensive that developers cannot focus soley on PC anymore. Hell most "next-gen" games still need to be able to run on last-gen hardware.
Memory producers are moving towards low power RAM for mobile devices. You can look at the price history and see how much it has gone up.
Wii U is even just around 30W
velociraptor
Junior Member
Yep they have. Now I think obviously this is very good news for Sony. Shame the company is in such a bad shape because I would not have minded a slightly more powerful console. Don't get me wrong, for the price it is a fairly powerful system. Although I can't help but feel $50 extra may have gotten us something like a 7950 slapped on the system. Personally I would even buy a PS4 at $499 if it was much more powerful.
I do hope this generation doesn't last as long though, but to be fair, it took quite a while for the PS360 generation to hit it's stride. Games seemingly take 2-3 years to develop. If that is the case, I can imagine games being released for this system all the way until 2019-2020.
LegendofLex
Member
Not to mention that the way Nintendo's designing their future architecture, everything on Wii U will probably be forward compatible forever. It's really surprising how user-focused Nintendo has been in terms of hardware design, even if the actual software experience hasn't been up to par.
And stuff like that is why no console maker went with an Nvidia GPU this time. AMD is just much more friendly to the needs of console makers compared to Nvidia.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
The thing is if you look at Steam statistics and next gen consoles current sales they're actually not. At the very least in comparison to XB1. Also what your talking isn't some great issue. It's what developers where doing before last generation. Before last generation the majority of western development was on pc, COD was pc exclusive they all chased at the higher end of the spectrum.
There was nothing fundamentally wrong with this model. Consoles simply were more popular and western developers were finally able to take advantage of them them.
ShaiKhulud
Banned
PS4 is profitable? Wow. Just wow.
Now a few words for PC maniacs. Guys, i have very capable PC (for video and other multimedia work apparently) right now. i5 3570, GTX670, 12gb ram and all this stupid words... And you know what? Transistor was released, At first i've paid 20 bucks for Steam version via SG Games website. What i've got? Jaggy framerate (only god knows why), Steam went crazy about saves and deleted the entire game (rare bugs, but still bugs) along with saves with 2h of gameplay, DualShock 3 via DS3Tool somehow crashing Win7 into the bluescreen... And so on. I'm not saying that it cannot be fixed. It could, and after an hour MAYBE my game will work as i desire. But hell, it's an hour of my free time, that cots very much, actually because of my highly sensitive executive job.
And guess what? I've paid another 20 bucks for PS4 version of Transistor, completed game in 5 hours with gamepad, without FPS-drops and other BSOD-like shit and Steam-related miracles.
People don't buy teraflopses or shader model version. The buy... well, the experience, And the truth is more fast, responsive and easy-to-use gaming experience is anywhere (WiiU, Xbone, PS4, past-gen), but my beloved powerful PC.
Now a few words for PC maniacs. Guys, i have very capable PC (for video and other multimedia work apparently) right now. i5 3570, GTX670, 12gb ram and all this stupid words... And you know what? Transistor was released, At first i've paid 20 bucks for Steam version via SG Games website. What i've got? Jaggy framerate (only god knows why), Steam went crazy about saves and deleted the entire game (rare bugs, but still bugs) along with saves with 2h of gameplay, DualShock 3 via DS3Tool somehow crashing Win7 into the bluescreen... And so on. I'm not saying that it cannot be fixed. It could, and after an hour MAYBE my game will work as i desire. But hell, it's an hour of my free time, that cots very much, actually because of my highly sensitive executive job.
And guess what? I've paid another 20 bucks for PS4 version of Transistor, completed game in 5 hours with gamepad, without FPS-drops and other BSOD-like shit and Steam-related miracles.
People don't buy teraflopses or shader model version. The buy... well, the experience, And the truth is more fast, responsive and easy-to-use gaming experience is anywhere (WiiU, Xbone, PS4, past-gen), but my beloved powerful PC.
test_account
XP-39C²
Yeah, maybe that is what he ment. When he said higher first, and then cost in parentheses after that, i assumed that he talked about that the 7200RPM HDD had a higher cost/price than a 5400RPM.
With custom build, i'm talking about that you need to set up a own production line for the PS4 that makes the motherboard etc.. They're not just picking already produced parts and put them together like anyone can do when they build a desktop. Setting up a own production line cost extra money compared to just putting parts together (plug-n-play style) that are already made. I also doubt that they are ordering parts for i.e 50 million PS4s at the same time and keep those parts in stock, so the order placed for parts are lower to begin with, which should drive up the price (as i mentioned, console prices tend to drop once they get produced in a larger scale).
You're right that PC parts have a markup (because their business model is to make money of the hardware itself only, while consoles rely much on income from software sales as well).
But if you're saying that what i said regarding custom parts doesnt come into it, what do you mean is the reason for why the PS4 is $399 (which Sony said that they sold at a loss to begin with, meaning that it cost them more than $399 to produce it)? And why can you get a more powerful PC for not that much more money?
Maintenance
Member
PS4 is profitable? Wow. Just wow.
Now a few words for PC maniacs. Guys, i have very capable PC (for video and other multimedia work apparently) right now. i5 3570, GTX670, 12gb ram and all this stupid words... And you know what? Transistor was released, At first i've paid 20 bucks for Steam version via SG Games website. What i've got? Jaggy framerate (only god knows why), Steam went crazy about saves and deleted the entire game (rare bugs, but still bugs) along with saves with 2h of gameplay, DualShock 3 via DS3Tool somehow crashing Win7 into the bluescreen... And so on. I'm not saying that it cannot be fixed. It could, and after an hour MAYBE my game will work as i desire. But hell, it's an hour of my free time, that cots very much, actually because of my highly sensitive executive job.
And guess what? I've paid another 20 bucks for PS4 version of Transistor, completed game in 5 hours with gamepad, without FPS-drop and other BSOD-like shit and Steam-related miracles.
People don't buy teraflopses or shader model version. The buy... well, the experience, And the truth is more fast, responsive and easy-to-use gaming experience is anywhere (WiiU, Xbone, PS4, past-gen), but my beloved powerful PC.
Anecdotal, not everyone has perfect experiences with consoles either. As I said before on this topic, I love that the PS4 is going well, but nothing is always flowers in the console space. Case in point? This past months I've had more problem with my most used handheld console than with my PC.
What I just said is anecdotal too, by the way.
test_account
XP-39C²
Golden screws brings up the price hehe
I wouldnt call it outdated, but they went with a $400 pricetag, and that is what they got. I dont see whats hilarious with using an architecture that will make it easier for developers.
Just 200 mil? Well I hope they make more money down the road but that is small profit.
Microsoft spent 400 mil just for nfl deal. Damn.
ShaiKhulud
Banned
Oh, consoles is not perfect either. Patches, security breaches, PSN/XBL offline sessions due to, well, reasons... But it's lesser of two evils principle for most customers, i think.
Maintenance
Member
Yes, I understand, they are a lot easier. Nothing better than just pick a game, sit on my hammock and just play.
RedHotChimiChanga
Banned
RAM prices have skyrocketed (/hyperbole) recently.
Various memory manufacturers got flood or bankrupt. RAM is pretty expensive nowadays.
They certainly saved a few pennies on materials/build I imagine. Mine has struck me as cheaply made from the start. That 5 hour controller battery must have saved a couple of pounds too
Aside from that battery though (and the iffy hdmi connection), it's all fine by me. I don't really care if the console "feels" cheap as I dont plan on touching it very often. They spent money where they needed too, and saved where they didn't. Kudos.
Aside from that battery though (and the iffy hdmi connection), it's all fine by me. I don't really care if the console "feels" cheap as I dont plan on touching it very often. They spent money where they needed too, and saved where they didn't. Kudos.
Yep, I have an awesome 1200$ / High-End PC and nearly don't play anything on it.PS4 is profitable? Wow. Just wow.
Now a few words for PC maniacs. Guys, i have very capable PC (for video and other multimedia work apparently) right now. i5 3570, GTX670, 12gb ram and all this stupid words... And you know what? Transistor was released, At first i've paid 20 bucks for Steam version via SG Games website. What i've got? Jaggy framerate (only god knows why), Steam went crazy about saves and deleted the entire game (rare bugs, but still bugs) along with saves with 2h of gameplay, DualShock 3 via DS3Tool somehow crashing Win7 into the bluescreen... And so on. I'm not saying that it cannot be fixed. It could, and after an hour MAYBE my game will work as i desire. But hell, it's an hour of my free time, that cots very much, actually because of my highly sensitive executive job.
And guess what? I've paid another 20 bucks for PS4 version of Transistor, completed game in 5 hours with gamepad, without FPS-drops and other BSOD-like shit and Steam-related miracles.
People don't buy teraflopses or shader model version. The buy... well, the experience, And the truth is more fast, responsive and easy-to-use gaming experience is anywhere (WiiU, Xbone, PS4, past-gen), but my beloved powerful PC.
I'm a console gamer and I will remain a console gamer.
Sorry, it's the way it is. It's the same with my friends.