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[Mooreberg]

I'm not stating that Sony has lost grip in terms of users share... well they have

yeah that certainly explains why PS2 has a larger marketshare than PSOne did, even with it being harder to develop for and a more powerful system coming out later.

 

[HokieJoe]

How do you figure? Considering the fact that the PS2's installed base dwarves that of the Xbox and Gamecube combined, I'd say this is very clearly Sony's race to lose. I'm sure Microsoft will have a nice system (and Nintendo too), but you honestly think Sony won't completely dominate sales once again? I mean, really?

I think they will still own the market, but their position won't be SO dominant when the PS4 and Xbox whatever are debuting. I wouldn't be suprised to see MS cut into Sony's marketshare by 10-15 points by the end of the next generation.

 

[sonycowboy]

Microsoft dropped to $249, Sony didn't budge off of $299. They then moved down the price to $199 when Microsoft did, because of tension. It's a flash price change. Sony then moved the price from $199 to $179 a day earlier than Microsoft when they learned of Microsofts intent.

That one was definately a flash price change as retailers had no POP materials for the PS2 change but had them for the Xbox price change. They didn't want Microsoft to lead the price change war. If Xbox wasn't around, you'd probably bet the PS2 would be priced still fairly high. It's not on their own timetables. All their price changes were based on Xbox's because of the market tension.

Dopey, you're even more completely wrong here.

$249 was NEVER a pricepoint in the US. The $199 is complete bullshit. Microsoft didn't lead with that price point. The Xbox had only been out for six months and it pissed ALOT of people off, but because they had to react to Sony it wasn't as bad.

 

[DopeyFish]

looks like i have 20 cents now yay, reading xbox news everyday totally messes up some of my memory

anyways, ok it wasn't the $199 one that was forced but Sony went down to the 179 point and 149 prices after both were screwed by leaking info from MS. That's what I meant by how it made MS look like "me too!" when the last 2 drops were actually their move stolen from them.


Bah *needs sleep*

 

[hukasmokincaterpillar]

I'm more implying that Sony has lost a bunch of support from developers in the sense that they aren't treated top notch.

Where is this coming from? So what if Sony doesn't give them the proverbial free donuts with their development tools. If the platform is going to make the developers and publishers lots of money (and it will) than all this "being harder to develop for" talk goes out the window.

 

[kaching]

Okay, so in your own words, what exactly is it doing that seperates it from meerly being a parser? at the end of the day, it's still dealing with conversions and wrapping (in an XML format). Sure a runtime is going to speed things up and definitely does have a time advantages...

Sure, at the heart of it is 'just' an XML schema. I could throw together DCharlie v. 0.1 Schema tonight, give it a namespace and throw it out to the 'net at large and say, have at it. That'd be just like Collada, right? The other aspects of the Collada initiative - the effort to secure support of companies industrywide across disciplines to transform it into a standardized, open format that is supported for interchange in all relevant tool chains, the plan to create an API to further facilitate integration into applications and provide database support for better asset management, and so on - that's just fluff, right?

Might as well just cut to the chase and say all dev tools ultimately just produce a bunch of binary data, so none of them are particularly special.

- but my contention is that it seemed you were implying (from me not liking the name) that this was in someway on a similar scale to XNA.

My initial remark was a little too indirect but I think I explained myself better in my second post. You expressly single out one tool of three mentioned to make a general statement about hoping they have better tools than that. You essentially imply OpenGL and Cg are lesser tools by omission. So here you are, giving a vote of no confidence for three tools that are, certainly by most actual developer accounts, at least decent, and I have no clue how you, a non-developer, arrived at such a conclusion. I just found myself asking, what more does the guy want? Sexier names? Snappier acronyms? That certain X-factor?... and then it dawned on me.

 

[DCharlie]

nope - you are reading too much into it - i was pulling out Collada. I understand what it's doing, i just don't see it as something extraordinary. How much time is it really going to save? Most houses have already decided on a set number of tools and have communication services set up between them (or use packages that are interoperable already). Great, so with Collada you can now hire Max Studio works who can work indirectly in Maya etc etc.

again, your inventing arguments that i'm not presenting from a 2-3 line comment. It's great that they are going to the trouble of getting the makers of top packages on board, but as mentioned - most teams already have the tools.

 

[JayFro]

Dopey, you're even more completely wrong here.

$249 was NEVER a pricepoint in the US. The $199 is complete bullshit. Microsoft didn't lead with that price point. The Xbox had only been out for six months and it pissed ALOT of people off, but because they had to react to Sony it wasn't as bad.

I have to call you on this. With the intial pricepoint MS was set to drop to $199 first with info being sent out and such, once Sony got wind of this they immediately announced a drop to $199 which made it look like Sony was the leader and not the follower. When in all actuality Sony didn't plan to drop, but when the news leaked that MS was about to drop Sony did it first to look like the leader and not the follower.

The news services ran wild with the "Sony drops price MS follows" stories and of course people remember it that way. In reality Sony undercut them only in a fit of panic, had MS been able to keep the cut under wraps better Sony would have been looked at as the follower instead.

 

[Fafalada]

again, your inventing arguments that i'm not presenting from a 2-3 line comment. It's great that they are going to the trouble of getting the makers of top packages on board, but as mentioned - most teams already have the tools.

It's not just about conversion tools (although something like Collada monumentally simplifies
maintanance of converters) - it's having a unified asset storage format that also happens to be industry standard (or at least backed by enough major players to become one).

By your logic XNA is pretty unimportant too, because - well, most teams already have the tools.

 

[DCharlie]

"By your logic XNA is pretty unimportant too, because - well, most teams already have the tools."

hold on though - that IS your arguement in relationship to XNA!

so i assume you feel the same about Collada right?

 

[Fafalada]

Well not entirely - when I rip into XNA it's in relation to abundance of retarded PR asociated with it, not the initiative itself.

Collada has been mostly BS free thus far, so I didn't feel I needed to do it yet


Anyway, XNA promises many nice things (let's wait before we start calling on whether any of these initiatives deliver), but in the end it's still under proprietary umbrella(and from what I understand of MSs intentions, with good reasons), like well, anything software that MS ever made.
It's interesting because people always rip into Sony for their "fondness" of proprietary stuff, and yet here we have them embracing the exact opposite and somehow that's scoffed at while MS gets hallmarked for being more proprietary.

 

[Rhindle]

It's interesting because people always rip into Sony for their "fondness" of proprietary stuff, and yet here we have them embracing the exact opposite and somehow that's scoffed at while MS gets hallmarked for being more proprietary.

Well, it's not exactly out of the kindness of their hearts or some sudden embrace of open standards. It's because they are way behind the curve in terms of having any worthwhile development tools to offer.

At the same time, while you could call DirectX and all the rest of it "proprietary," they are open standards for all functional purposes. It sounds like they are also going to offer the new XNA Studio collaboration and asset and workflow management tools for free as well.

 

[kaching]

nope - you are reading too much into it - i was pulling out Collada. I understand what it's doing, i just don't see it as something extraordinary.

And I'm questioning the point of the exercise...Nobody tried to present Collada as extraordinary or suggested that it would be the most significant boon to developers, by itself. It was presented as part of a larger set of solutions that are meant to work together, so why single it out?

How much time is it really going to save? Most houses have already decided on a set number of tools and have communication services set up between them (or use packages that are interoperable already). Great, so with Collada you can now hire Max Studio works who can work indirectly in Maya etc etc.

Right, because these houses will never change or extend their tool chains beyond what they have now or collaborate with other dev/pub houses with different suites of tools.

 

[Ronin_7]

I'm from the future.

It won't be easy.