So because I refuse to lap up what you spew, I'm not allowed to post in this thread?
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PSM: PS4 specs more powerful than Xbox 720
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So because I refuse to lap up what you spew, I'm not allowed to post in this thread?
I still remember queueing at midnight for my launch PS3 in the UK and I still remember driving home, connecting it up and playing the godfather and wondering that this looks just like the 360 version and the PS3 cost so much much and arrived over 12 months late.
That disappointment still stands today but one satisfaction the 360 has never given me and still doesn't with the slim is the quality and amazement of unwrapping the 60GB PS3, that thing was heavy, quality and beautiful.
Please do this again Sony with PS4 because I am positive xboxnext will still look like a cheap knock off.
That disappointment still stands today but one satisfaction the 360 has never given me and still doesn't with the slim is the quality and amazement of unwrapping the 60GB PS3, that thing was heavy, quality and beautiful.
Please do this again Sony with PS4 because I am positive xboxnext will still look like a cheap knock off.
You're right, the overall BOM would have still been more than that of the 360. However when you consider estimates of the blu-ray drive was $350 IIRC, cutting that out should have given them enough room to match the 360's price and still not lose quite as much per unit. Again without the BD, they probably wouldn't have had a standard HDD either, which further reduces the cost.
I would be surprised if we didn't hear something by the end of the year. Would be nice to get a better idea what we should expect, I'm more interested to see what Sony does than the other two companies.
Shin Johnpv
Member
It wouldn't have been that much cheaper. Sony would have still been taking a loss on the hardware at the price it was released at. BD didn't account for half the cost of making a PS3. We've had this broken down before. The XDR ram Sony used was also expensive, as was Cell and the RSX. The PS3 wasn't going to be a 299.99 - 399.99 launch system with out a bluray drive, it was still going to be expensive.
*edit* Sorry didn't see this was already touched on.
Strange that I will be going nextbox and wiiU next-gen but it's the PS4 specs I am more interested in.
Although probably because I don't think they will go all out next-gen due to the financial state of the world and the company. But if they do, I could see myself dropping nextbox.
Edit: I wish they would do a limited run of the old PS3 60GB for the tech people. That thing looked so amazing sitting under my TV, even though I hate the look of the slim, the vita has re-invigorated my feelings that PS4 will look fantastic.
Although probably because I don't think they will go all out next-gen due to the financial state of the world and the company. But if they do, I could see myself dropping nextbox.
Edit: I wish they would do a limited run of the old PS3 60GB for the tech people. That thing looked so amazing sitting under my TV, even though I hate the look of the slim, the vita has re-invigorated my feelings that PS4 will look fantastic.
Sorry, but BD at launch cost whopping 350$, thats, tree hundred and fifty dollars. Cell, memory and RSX combined. That means, BD did take big chunk of production cost, and most important, it also cost them a year of delay.
You are absolutely right here, but argument like those tends to get lost into oversimplifications for purposes of *winning* some particular debate.
Exactly on the same line with famous "Betamax was a fail for Sony".
Looking at things in broader context was never a popular thing in community-wars, I wonder why.
So...they have been breaking even with PS3 hardware for about 2 years, but before that they were loosing ~300$ on piece. But, since they finally started to make some money on it, they won? I'm sure thats not how company wants to win things...
H_Prestige
Banned
Even if that's true, would that shave off $350 from the retail price? Because that would a result in a cheaper system than the 360 and something equal to the Wii, which doesn't make any sense. I still stand by my statement that such a system would be sold for a significant loss and at a higher retail price than the 360. That scenario doesn't sound like a first place finish to me. It sounds like a complete loss of market share with a multi billion dollar loss.
And from what I remember the original planned launch was Spring 2006. They launched November that year so it wasn't a year delay.
I'm sorry but where are you getting this year delay from?
Who said anything about cutting off $350 from the retail price? Cutting out that $350 cost should have allowed them to match the 360's price (while still losing money per unit obviously).
Overall BOM was ~$800, cut out the BD and that would have brought it close to the $525 BOM of the 360 (assuming I'm remembering the estimates correctly =P).
Not the point I was talking about.
I was talking about proper point of view presented by Gofreak regarding overall perspective of the division on the highlighted example. Not broad terms of *winning*, *loosing* or *whatever* but about need to take much more things into perspective when debating over some issue.
I have no damn idea about actual *losses* or *gains* for any of those companies because there is no way on Earth anyone here can have it on exact basis except for maybe some stealth-CEO member who is having a laugh.
But oversimplifying things is wrong way to guide discussions like this because I think all of us can agree how this particular gaming/entertainment/media/online/network/hardware/R&D/future-tech/history-revenue/etc,etc business is too damn complicated to be summarized through basic lens such as those that can be seen here.
Same as Betamax was a fail for Sony mantra - as I said in my original post - which still remains my all-time-favorite.
I remember reading that Sony had problems with production of BD, and that they would come out earlier(everything else was ready in 05). Production of lasers for BD was cause of delay here in Europe.
PS3 at launch cost ~900$ to make, shave of 350$ and you are close to breaking even(599$ retail). To lose 400$ on every console is financial disaster which could only be softened by trumping the competition like they did with PS2. They counted on that, but that didn't happen. Sorry, it was year late in Europe than.
Melchiah
Member
No longer innovating? What would you call games, like LittleBigPlanet, Flower, Journey, Heavy Rain, Valkyria Chronicles, Folklore, Demon's Souls, Siren: Blood Curse, PixelJunk games, Noby Noby Boy, LocoRoco Cocoreccho, Shatter... if not innovating, or at least out of the norm?
Silent Hill 2, Shadow of the Colossus, Final Fantasy X, Shadow of Memories, Okami... Naturally, it's a highly subjective matter how everyone took them. For me personally, SH2 was a heavily emotional experience.
Killzone 2 was arguably the best looking console game of 2009. It wasn't quite as good looking as the infamous E305 trailer, but it still made many jaws hit the floor.
Somewhat dubious tech demos aren't unfamiliar to Microsoft (Xbox - Raven) and Nintendo (Wii U - Bird) either.
In the end he still has a point, and besides, tech demos are useless no matter which way you slice it.
Merrill Lynch estimated PS3's launch BOM cost to be $800, not $900. They made a summation error in their table.
They also estimated BR to cost $100 in 2009 (after 3 years).
But in year 2 (1 year after HDM war ended), SonyNEC Optiarc was already talking about sub $100 BR drive + DVD writer, +$50 for slim notebook drive in 2008. They mentioned that they wanted to keep their price higher than competition to prevent pre-mature price war. So they should be able to go lower if they are using it internally:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Blu-ray-BD-ROM,5591.html
patsu said:
BOM means next to nothing. There is more cost to a console than BOM teardowns, which are usually wrong regardless.
Correct. In that light, anyone who says the word "Samaritan" should be promptly banned. After this post of course. *grin*
Gah... BOM cost is very important to hardware manufacturers because it scales. The other costs are sometimes expressed as a percentage of the BOM cost too.
For consumers, we usually just look at the price and value. Not many people care about how their boxes are made.
iamshadowlark
Banned
Well we don't know how limited the supposed budget is or what Sony is willing to launch. Either way, wasting transistors on compute cores for a gpu is not a smart way to go. Give devs the raw ALUs and pixel shaders they actually need and call it a day.
charlequin
Banned
Well, if we take that estimate as accurate, and have Sony drop the BRD, shave $200 off the retail price, and pocket the extra $150 -- that would've made a huge difference in the division's profitability, even if the price difference didn't net them a single extra sale.
Sony's a publicly-traded company. We have access to a great deal of information about their finances. It's not some big eternal mystery how the PS3 performed, we know quite concretely that it was a massive fiasco in financial terms.
I mean, I certainly agree that it's more complicated than pure black and white terms. Sony did two things with the PS3 launch price: they blew an enormous hole in their balance sheet and they scuppered their own brand. The former is a lost cause; the PS3 judged as a whole cannot conceivably get anywhere close to being in the black. But they have quite ably dealt with the latter, to a level that seemed implausible early on, completely reinventing their marketing strategy and transforming PS3 into a product that people actually wanted in a way that was extremely impressive. As a result they certainly have an excellent chance to reconsolidate in the coming generation. That's why looking at what went wrong with PS3 is so important, IMO -- Sony can do much better with the PS4, it's just going to involve avoiding the mistakes they made this last time around.
How would it be if Sony skipped a generation with the home console and concentrated entirely on Vita to recoup the earlier losses (provided Vita keeps on selling well)? The development cost of games for every developer would also go down given that there will be two active platforms and for one of them the architecture is a well known component and for the other the learning curve is not steep as it was for PS3.
Of course, I know it is not going to happen given Sony's fascination for driving tech. However, as someone in this thread mentioned from second hand information, people's expectations about the price they want to pay and the tech they expect get is absurd.
Of course, I know it is not going to happen given Sony's fascination for driving tech. However, as someone in this thread mentioned from second hand information, people's expectations about the price they want to pay and the tech they expect get is absurd.
Well, in the case of the bird demo, it pretty much confirmed the Wii U was not an over-clocked Wii. Perfectly useful.
yes the majority of the profit in the gaming business comes from the software sold not the actual hardware.
for example on the 2010 FY Sony sold this many software and hardware from the playstation family (the numbers are rounded):
software
playstation 3: 148 million unit sold.
PSP: 47 million unit sold.
Playstation 2 ((the king
): 17 million unit sold.Hardware
playstation 3: ~15 million sold.
PSP: 8 million sold.
Playstation 2 ((the king
): ~7 million sold.http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/viewer/11q2/
Now to close the subject on bluray and if they are profitable or not we get the numbers directly from Sony this time as Sony is the biggest player in NA bluray player market with 40% marketshare:
2010 FY report
bluray player/recorder sold in 2010 FY : ~6 million unit sold.
bluray player/recorder November forecast for 2011 FY : ~8 million unit sold.
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/viewer/11q2/
from 2009 FY presentation (old one)
Fiscal year 2009 marked a momentous advance in Sony’s Blu-ray Disc™ recorder and player business. Sales of Sony Blu-ray Disc players in the period amounted to ~6 million units, a year-on-year increase of 1.1 million units, earning Sony the top position in North America—the principal market for Blu-ray Disc players—with a market share of approximately 40%.
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/ar/8ido18000003dkyy-att/8ido18000003dl0u.pdf
PS: with an average price of 150 USD the revenue for the 2011 FY = ~ 1,2 billion USD
2010 FY report
bluray player/recorder sold in 2010 FY : ~6 million unit sold.
bluray player/recorder November forecast for 2011 FY : ~8 million unit sold.
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/viewer/11q2/
from 2009 FY presentation (old one)
Fiscal year 2009 marked a momentous advance in Sony’s Blu-ray Disc™ recorder and player business. Sales of Sony Blu-ray Disc players in the period amounted to ~6 million units, a year-on-year increase of 1.1 million units, earning Sony the top position in North America—the principal market for Blu-ray Disc players—with a market share of approximately 40%.
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/ar/8ido18000003dkyy-att/8ido18000003dl0u.pdf
PS: with an average price of 150 USD the revenue for the 2011 FY = ~ 1,2 billion USD
Wow, they could buy Apple, Microsoft, Nintendo and every major oil company with that sort of cash.
bigtroyjon
Member
Man, I can't think of the username but there was some other guy who would just dump meaningless info into threads about how well Sony was doing in an attempt to prop them up as doing better than they really are.
Units sold and even revenue don't tell us anything without knowing the profit. And your made up revenue number is a fraction of what they need to make up for the losses on the PS3 assuming 20-30% profit margin. (that profit margin estimate is probably on the high side considering the high competition in the blu ray player market)
Units sold and even revenue don't tell us anything without knowing the profit. And your made up revenue number is a fraction of what they need to make up for the losses on the PS3 assuming 20-30% profit margin. (that profit margin estimate is probably on the high side considering the high competition in the blu ray player market)
MidgarBlowedUp
Member
So, that would be around 204 GFLOPS assuming it comes fitted with 64GB of ram.
We know PS4 won't have all that, they will probably use whatever gets them the best yields at the cheapest manufacturing price.
Yes, if calculated by Cell 8i and Douple Flops, amount of ram wouldn't have anything to do with it.
For next gen machine raw processing power it does sound quite small, especially if they use CPU similar to Cell.
oh you you really annoy me it was a typo stop nitpicking
. no really i mean that they will recover the inital loss from the PS3 first years easily and thats just from bluray players sold as i didnt factor other revenue stream like discs sold (see above),royalities,rentals and so on.finally that was the purpose of my point not financial numbers only.but you gotta admit i think with those numbers i hit a home run against the other side excuse me but those are not made up numbers they are directly from Sony 2010 FY report rounded to the nearest integer for reading purposes check the links first.
jeff_rigby
Banned
I had an issue with the description also. From IBM they are talking each SPU being faster due to changes in the ring scheduling and cache. Newer Generation PPUs being 6 times faster etc.
PS3 SPUs can't do Floating point calculations accurately...a rounding algorithm has to be included in the PS3 OS because of this.
How can you say Gears 3 looks as good as Uncharted 3 with a straight face? Love gears of war (look at the avatar) but I respectfully disagree.
it was an indication just to show that they can and will cover the initial losses for using the bluray.i know that includes the material costs,R&D ...etc.thats why i didnt add royalities,discs sold,rentals and other revenues channels on purpose and that doesnt mean they wont get any revenue from them. some people just wont read :/
Did ... you read any of what charlequin wrote?
Uh, what? Yes they can. The rounding option is so they can match RSX calculations, since the RSX can't do accurate floating point. The SPUs are as accurate as any general purpose cpu, it's an important feature.
yup and i agree with the majority of his points. i said before that the PS3 situation will help Sony in their efforts for next generation as they are the most prepared for it in my opinion from production costs,1st party developers,great network services and OS (Vita).
my take on the bluray issue is that Sony knew that the playstation brand is so strong that it can help Sony pictures in their efforts to win the format war without damaging the brand significantly (its their ace and the most strong brand in the company in my opinion).next generation if the PS4 is priced the same as the nextbox i guarntee that it will beat it easily even in NA.Sony is not a heavy advertising company like MS but when the price of the PS3 went down people were all over it because they love the playstation consoles from PS1 to PS3.
Including the one where he basically said it damaged the brand significantly?
Allonym
There should be more tampons in gaming
Anyone think Sony will drop the Playstation brand in favor of a different name or can we expect to see the Playstation name continuing for the foreseeable future? I'd like to see a name change personally. I'm having a hard time finding a name that has the same ring and that easily rolls off the tongue like Sega Saturn. I've thought of the Sony Solaris, Sony Zenith, Sony Aurora. Of those I think the Solaris has a nice ring to it. Has anyone else let their creative juices flow and think what the "PS4" will be called?
Indeed you have.
Factor in 4player online co-op, and yes it does. Take another example, like RAGE vs KZ3. I'd say KZ3 has a slight edge, but RAGE runs at 60fps.
charlequin
Banned
Zero chance of dropping the brand, IMO.
Something people don't seem to notice is that all the companies whose only focus is games (Sega, Nintendo) name each system something new, while all the companies that are giant multi-product conglomerates (Sony, Microsoft) use iterations on the same name. In terms of brand awareness, "PlayStation" is the equivalent of "Nintendo" -- it tells you what kind of system you're getting.
If they were going to drop it, Vita would've been the place to do it. That they kept the PS branding but dropped the Portable definitely makes it clear that they want to stick with the brand equity of the PlayStation name.
not entirley the playstation brand is a strong brand equal to Nintendo in my opinion and thats why Sony used it as a trojan horse.they knew the brand can take the hit and recover which happened as we see now.just imagine the PS3 first years $599 USD,primitive online,no exclusives even in japan,shitty advertising,tough competition,inferior multiplats.and still people bought it and return to the brand again.if the same has happened with MS or Nintendo i am sure that they wont turn it around.
Nintendo stomped the competition with no online, no 3rd party, and competition that seemed lightyears ahead of them regarding the age we live in. Nonetheless, they won, comfortably.
They made money from first unit they sold, and after that it was just about how to spend it. Sony's strategy was a recipe for disaster that won't be repeated(unless they are mentally challenged) and only thing that saved them was PS2's success.
GoofsterStud
Member
Can we call the PS4 PS1080p.
Then Sony can market to the masses, get the full capabilities out of your 1080p, while still being able to play perfectly will on lower resolutions. Don't settle for a 720 box when you can get 1080p.
Can I have a cookie?
Then Sony can market to the masses, get the full capabilities out of your 1080p, while still being able to play perfectly will on lower resolutions. Don't settle for a 720 box when you can get 1080p.
Can I have a cookie?
yup Nintendo focus on the casuals was smart but the problem with this segment is they dont buy software that much which is the main revenue for a gaming console.they buy Wii sport,dance casual games and thats it.they will drop you in a heart beat if something new catch their eyes (iphone,kinect).and thats why Nintendo said they will want the hardcore next time who buy lots of games for your system.
bigtroyjon
Member
I'm looking forward to your posts when Sony reports their earnings in about 12 hours. Should be entertaining to say the least!
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