Doublethink
Banned
Ashhong said:
2k only has a third party exclusivity agreement with MLB.
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2k only has a third party exclusivity agreement with MLB.
Manmademan
Member
Shepherd said:
Microsoft just HAD a price drop across all skus, Ate a billion dollars in repair costs, and is under pressure to turn a profit this fiscal year. Another price drop is a little unlikely.
Manmademan
Member
gkrykewy said:
Ps3 sales have been outpacing dedicated player sales for some time, price be damned. A $100 price drop in the PS3 most certainly WILL result in more units sold, and more units sold means a big spike in blu-ray movie sales, if history is any indicator.
If price of standalones were even an issue, HD-DVD would be winning by a large margin, but this hasn't happened ONCE (not even for a week!) since the Ps3 launch.
bundles aren't the same as price drops, but yeah- holiday bundles for Ps3/360/wii are inevitable.
S
Shepherd
Unconfirmed Member
Manmademan said:
Microsoft is fighting the Sony brand. Sony is the incumbent that had 70% marketshare last gen. MS has to stay cheaper.
Manmademan said:
It sounds like MS has been anticipating this, so I'm sure they have a plan ready to go. I'd be surprised not to see them drop again, to be honest.
Ashhong - it means first parties, like Sony, can use the license. But other third party publishers cannot.
Doublethink
Banned
Ashhong said:
It means Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and 2k can make MLB games.
Manmademan
Member
Shepherd said:
Microsoft was fighting sony last gen too and was never cheaper. the two spent most of the gen neck and neck pricewise until the Xbox was simply taken out of production.
There's a point where further price drops just aren't feasible if you're looking to turn a profit, you know.
Guy Legend
Member
gofreak said:
Well, they boasted that the 360 was the console that kept it's original price point without a drop longer than any other console before it. So seeing them drop again so quickly would be a bit odd....
Rather, I think they will be content with their added pack-in of Forza 2 and Marvel Alliance to boost the attractiveness of the hardware. Riding the Halo train and a number of other big games coming out this fall should prove to be enough reason to sell lots of consoles during the holidays. I would think they drop the price again sometime next year....perhaps in the spring.
Manmademan said:
Once dedicated players are noticeably cheaper than PS3s, though, people who only want a BR player will buy dedicated players. Your second and third points confuse software with hardware sales.
My point was simply that if the only benefit of dropping PS3's price would be to enhance BRD's position, this would not be a good result for Sony, as they would get most of those benefits anyway as a result of dedicated BRD player price drops, the costs of which are shared with other manufacturers.
MS will almost definitely drop again before Xmas in response to this. IIRC the original rumors on a 360 price drop (prior to the last one) anticipated an intermediary drop to $349 before Halo, followed by another drop to $299 in November. $299 was the real drop - $349 allowed them to better capitalize on Halo temporarily.
Manmademan
Member
Guy Legend said:
I'm with you here. Bundles and pack ins to add the illusion of value, and a true price drop somewhere next year. I would imagine Microsoft is looking at Halo3 to help shift units without eating more money in price drops.
tanod said:
I think they're more worried about Sony gaining momentum against them than Wii tbh. I think they know there isn't much they can do right now about Wii.
Excepting the 20GB's brief appearance, I just cannot see MS letting what was a $200 pricegap between the PS3 and the 20GB 360 narrowing to $50 in the space of less than a year. They could keep the arcade 360 at $250 and lower the 20GB to $300. (This is even more true in Europe).
Manmademan
Member
gkrykewy said:
your argument is a little flawed here. There's a much larger market for PS3's than there is for standalone devices. HD-DVD already IS substantially cheaper than the PS3 by several hundred dollars, yet HD-DVD disc sales are lagging.
No matter how low dedicated player sales drop, there's still going to be that audience that doesn't see the need to go out and buy a standalone device. But if the system they bought to play Metal Gear on happens to play those shiny new discs, those people just might check it out.
and again, looking at history this is exactly what's been happening. Casual PS3 owners picking up a disc or two have drastically shifted the format war in favor of sony. Price drops by HD-DVD have been basically irrelevant.
If dropping the PS3's price boosts BRD's position significantly it most certainly DOES favor sony, as:
1.) they get substantial royalties from DISC sales (more than they did from DVD by quite a bit)
2.) there are several studios whose exclusivity is hinging on how well this holiday season goes. Paramount and Universal being the two obvious ones. Either one shifting permanently into the Blu Ray camp will bury HD-DVD.
and FYI: I'm purely talking about Blu Ray software disc sales in terms of the PS3's impact. Standalone hardware sales don't really make much difference.
VanMardigan
has calmed down a bit.
Manmademan said:
Same goes for Sony, but I'd imagine they have less wiggle room than the MS leviathan. MS can easily (and should) continue to adjust their pricing if it means shutting Sony out.
edit:
Mammademan, it seems like you're very misinformed about the Blu Ray effect as it is now. Yes, more Ps3's out there mean more BR disc sales, but the ratios are still VERY low. The best selling BR disc will sell about 100k (only 2 or so have done that so far). Compare that to software sales and then figure out which is the bigger market right now. BR/HD DVD is a niche market, and even after the surge this holiday season, it'll be inconsequential to Sony. So it's definitely more in Sony's interests to concern themselves with game software sales, which is basically what Kaz said at TGS. The BR market may be a bigger deal long term, but that can't be a determining factor for them right now in dropping the price.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
gofreak said:
My humble opinion is that nVIDIA's famous second contract with SCE was about shrinking RSX down to a 65 nm process and add circuitry to help GS's software emulation in the right places.
A lot of the problems due to GS's very high bandwidth can be mitigated by 1.) the fact that RSX has still VERY fast GDDR3 available and that modern GPU's have a lot of small caches "for every occasion"
, some still remain... some problems like very little performance hit for frequent mid-frame state changes can be alleviated by dynamic re-compilation of display lists while maybe problems like the very low performance hit caused by even frequent flushing of buffers would bring to the GS are the kind of problems that are not really easy to solve.nVIDIA, working together with SCE's groups that are writing the software emulator for the GS, could help make some tweaks to the RSX while it shrinks it from 90 nm tech to 65 nm tech. Such tweaks, even though they might be relatively small, might help a lot the compatibility of future fully software PS2 emulators.
speculawyer said:
right now, what other choice do Sony have? One big price drop for Christmas 07 is essential to get any momentum in their sales. Time it with their first proper releases coming out afte rhte post launch drought.
Cut the price hard, but then probably hold that price for this and next christmas.
I wish them well. Nobody that makes hardware that good deserves to be doing so shitty right now.
Manmademan
Member
VanMardigan said:
considering that the division the Xbox is part of has NEVER turned a profit and is under pressure to do so, whereas the same cannot be said for Sony, I wouldn't be too sure of that.
Eventually at some point investors/stockholders are going to expect the division to turn a profit, or be canceled.
If "throwing money and reducing the price" were a viable strategy for microsoft, why didn't the Xbox ever undercut the PS2 or gamecube? Why wasn't the 360 simply $299 out of the gate, without this nonsense with the core?
the obvious answer here is that there is a limit to how much they're willing to take in terms of losses on hardware. As the gen moves on it will certainly be possible to reduce manufacturing costs and make the hardware cheaper, but no one is going to take $100-$150 losses or so just for the sake of "beating the competition."
Manmademan
Member
oo Kosma oo said:
I was thinking in terms of fiscal years, not quarters. But only being profitable one quarter since 2001 is still pretty terrible.
edit: Oh wow- Spiderman Blu-Ray is INCLUDED with this? Damn. That's more agressive than I expected.
VanMardigan
has calmed down a bit.
Manmademan said:
You can't be that dense, can you? Do you not see a difference between a 360 being $299 in November 2006 and $299 in November 2007? If you don't know why one is more viable than the other, then I'm afraid you've gone off the deep end. And if you think one division in MS is under more pressure than Sony's Ps3 by investors, you haven't been paying attention.
I don't see the point of dropping the GS chip, it only costs a few dollars per console, but SCE can release Blu Ray compliations of PS2 titles, (imagine MGS 1,2,3 on one Blu Ray / GoW 1,2 / Rachet series / Jak series) which would recoup costs for that chip at minimal expense.
Manmademan
Member
VanMardigan said:
I'm not sure exactly what you mean here, you'll have to be a bit more clear. It doesn't really seem to address my point: if losing money on the hardware isnt an issue for microsoft, why not simply eat the losses and undercut everyone? Why the games with multiple Sku's?
Sony's playstation unit has historically been a pillar for the company to lean on, when other sectors were struggling. The PS2 and PSP are both still profitable at the moment, and even though the PS3 is struggling, it's the ONLY reason why Blu-Ray is doing as well as it is. Thus, Sony and it's investors are willing to go out on a limb for it.
Microsoft's entertainment division is in an entirely different situation. It has never had a profitable fiscal year and so far has been nothing short of a money pit for microsoft.
The situations of the two divisions aren't comparable at ALL.
VanMardigan
has calmed down a bit.
I wonder how the media will cover this. On the one hand, it's awesome news for gamers. On the other, it's a price drop almost immediately following a price drop, all less than ONE year after release. Will the media play the "desperation" card? Will they rip the sku if BC isn't included?
At the end of the day, if this thing has BC, it'll be mine. Spiderman BR will be a nice HD showpiece too (even though the movie sucked).
At the end of the day, if this thing has BC, it'll be mine. Spiderman BR will be a nice HD showpiece too (even though the movie sucked).
Vaandaviii
Member
oo Kosma oo said:
impressive!! So they DID REALLY earn some money with halo 2? Absolutely incredible.Manmademan
Member
VanMardigan said:
I don't think the media will notice, really. last year the Ps3 launched at $599 and $499.
As of the end of October, the Ps3 will be $499 (I'm guessing here on the 80 gig) and $399-
it LOOKS like a $100 price drop across both sku's which isn't really newsworthy, unless you've been religiously following the various skus and price drops all year which joe consumer and the main stream media have not.
VanMardigan
has calmed down a bit.
Manmademan said:
It's like you get it, but then you don't get it. You just stated that the PS division has been a pillar for Sony, then gloss over the fact that their latest (expensive as heck R&D) project has gotten off to a painfully slow start. The pressure there is immense, and if you don't think its bigger than the pressure on the Xbox team, then maybe the multiple price drops and management reshuffling will drive the point home. That division can't afford to fail, while the Xbox division has (to a certain degree) already failed last gen and can realistically do so again if it meets their larger goal of minimizing Sony's impact in this space.
VanMardigan said:
The Iphone dropped $200 in Just 3 months and nobody is complaining so I don't see what's wrong with dropping the price of the PS3 that is significantly more expensive than its competition in a years time. Also, you are forgetting that Sony is a hardware company and its only natural for them to reduce the manufacturing cost of its product faster than both Nintendo and Microsoft.
VanMardigan
has calmed down a bit.
sakuragi said:
There was quite a hubbub about the iphone price drop and how that related to their sales performance. That was definitely not glossed over.
Again, the broader point is that, once again, competition has produced wonderful results. Two amazingly powerful videogame/media consumer electronic devices at firesale prices (relative to the tech within them). If all you care about is games on an SD tv, Nintendo's got you covered, but for those of us with the right setups, the entertainment value in these boxes is through the roof.
VanMardigan said:
MS didn't have serious competition in November 2006. They weren't forced to make any policy decisions then because they were selling consoles. Now the monster that is the Wii is dumping all over everything and Microsoft just busted their biggest weapon of the year. I'd say MS is very prepared for a price drop from Sony (I mean they did predict it earlier this year) but still, Id have to say that they are under more pressure from their investors because Sony still has the PS2 which sells very well and sold reallllly well "last gen" (thus giving them credit and shows they can do good business) while MS never really proved (with the original xbox) that they could produce good hardware (I mean the three year warenty now prolly didn't do wonders for the confidence in them) and make it sell. Now with the confirmation and R&C coming out soon, and all the ps3 november releases coming out it'll be interesting to see if there is another price cut coming or if they are going to try and ride the Halo 3 and Bioshock waves. My bets on a maybe 20 dollar price drop since the new falcon's are in the halo 360's and will prolly be soon in the elites.
edit: damn this thread moved fast but still, the new falcon chip might mean cheaper console!
Many people complained about that and in fact the news about the drop was usually built largely around the negative reaction of the people who had paid full price at launch. It wasn't that unusual a drop for a smart phone in that situation but the Apple fans who lined up to buy them were quite displeased at first. A big part of it is whether or not multiple or large price drops are common in that particular market, and for PS3 you could argue both ways.sakuragi said:
Manmademan
Member
VanMardigan said:
I get it, but we disgree. The PS3 is off to a slow start, agreed. however, the PS2 and PSP both continue to be profitable.
The PS3 is ALSO the reason why Blu-ray is succeeding, even with the slow start. So sony is willing to do what they have to do to make sure that the PS3 and blu-ray succeed.
Also, even if the PS3 utterly, totally, and completely gets obliterated by the Wii and 360, the phenomenal past success and the strength of the brand pretty much guarantee that we'll see a PS4 or Possibly a PS5 before Sony calls it quits on the Playstation.
On the other hand, If the 360 fails to be profitable AGAIN for microsoft vs. Sony and Nintendo, are you so certain we'll see an Xbox 3? I'm not so sure. True, Sony's "impact" in the space is smaller, but Nintendo has taken over where Sony dropped the ball. All signs point to Nintendo crushing Microsoft just as badly as Sony crushed them last gen.
Again, the situations of the two divisions aren't comparable. One is a successful division (over 10 straight years of success, mind you) hitting a rough patch, the other is a division that has perpetually struggled and never turned a profit.
VanMardigan
has calmed down a bit.
Manmademan said:
MS would very gladly accept Nintendo's console domination. In fact, if Nintendo had done this well previously, there may never have been an Xbox. MS' main drive is to minimize Sony's impact, because Sony's synergistic approach to the all-in-one entertainment hub is a threat to them, whereas Nintendo's simplistic and focused gaming console simply isn't.
Vanmardigan, if Nintendo survived the N64 AND the GC then Sony will sure as hell surivive the PS3 which will outsell both of those platforms and establish Blu Ray as the next media for movies.
I'm not suggesting Sony's Playstation brand is going to disappear. I'm simply arguing that the success of that brand is a bigger deal to Sony than Xbox to MS, and therefore there is far more pressure on that division to succeed than there is on the Xbox brand, which was mainly a preventative move to secure a space that Sony was moving into.
In the same way that Sony can gain from pushing Blu Ray, MS's strides in the digital distribution arena with the Xbox are noteworthy. If nothing else, their box has evolved into something far greater than a gaming machine, which is where they knew Sony was going. That is where Nintendo won't care to compete, which is fine by MS.
Manmademan
Member
oo Kosma oo said:
you summed it up better than I could- the N64 and GC are great examples.
calder said:
Really, the early adopter who rushed and lined up for the Iphone or any other electronic products and are now complaining about the price cut must be dump not to see the price reduction coming from a mile away, especially in a market full of competent competition as history has shown with almost all electronic consumer products, that their price will drop dramatically from what they first introduced into the market. You see this with HDTV, mobile, laptops, HD-DVD and so forth.