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[StateofMajora]

This is something I’ve thought about recently, and as we all know the ps3 ended up doing extremely well but had a horrible start. My thinking is the ps2 was still selling highly, and they still had a few big games like god of war 2 in 2007.

I just view the ps3 as somewhat of a missed opportunity ; blu ray for large game capacity, powerful CPU but weak graphics (relatively) and hampered by low ram / no edram. Developers had very poor results initially and complained the entire generation. First party developers did amazingly, but you have to wonder what could have been.

Launching in 2007 with a better gpu and a bit more memory (say 768mb at least) with a much better games lineup could have justified a higher price and had much better results in consumer mindshare early on. No bayonetta/the darkness/30fps ea sports woes.

Do you think it would have been a good idea, or even more expensive for Sony with not much market benefit? The other thing is, I wonder if MS would launch a 360 successor sooner or if they’d want to keep recouping costs as well.

Thoughts?

 

[Kenpachii]

Problem PS3 faced was expensive, and hard to develop for.

Everybody i knew where hyped for the PS3 until they realized they needed a second job ot afford one at the time and with no real juggernaut ip's they bailed on it harder then light innitionally to come back towards it later on.

They should have ditched the blu-ray player and stick with dvd and slammed in that box a bit more common architecture that people knew about + drop the price and release it a year early as parts are readily available why not and it probably would have been a juggernaut.

 

[StateofMajora]

Problem PS3 faced was expensive, and hard to develop for.

Everybody i knew where hyped for the PS3 until they realized they needed a second job ot afford one at the time and with no real juggernaut ip's they bailed on it harder then light innitionally to come back towards it later on.

They should have ditched the blu-ray player and stick with dvd and slammed in that box a bit more common architecture that people knew about + drop the price and release it a year early as parts are readily available why not and it probably would have been a juggernaut.

It was hard to develop for because of cell, but also because of an inferior gpu and less usable/split memory. Slap a better gpu / memory in their and at least all games would beat 360 on the graphics side. Exclusives would look insane.

But yeah, best thing would be an x86 chip plus newer gpu and save costs. But this is assuming this is 2005, and Sony knows they need to delay but chose 2007 instead of 2006 and don’t get saddled with a dated nvidia chip.

I also think they need blu ray, for games capacity as well as for the format war.

 

[Captain Toad]

We still act like the PS3 was a complete bust? It's still the 6th best selling home console (behind Wii, Switch and the other 3 PlayStations).

Sure, by Sony standards, it was lower. But, it's not like it sold under 25 million like the GameCube, Xbox, Wii U, Saturn and Dreamcast all did.

 

[StateofMajora]

We still act like the PS3 was a complete bust? It's still the 6th best selling home console (behind Wii, Switch and the other 3 PlayStations).

Sure, by Sony standards, it was lower. But, it's not like it sold under 25 million like the GameCube, Xbox, Wii U, Saturn and Dreamcast all did.

It was a big success; I’m just thinking of how much better it could have been.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

No. IMO it would've been a lot worst for them if it launched in 2007. The 1P content would've still be in its first generation and not much better off than it was in 2006 (usually a team will learn new tech and ideas that can't be implemented in a current project but could be in their next one, so best to get that current project done sooner), meaning they likely wouldn't of gotten games like Uncharted and Infamous going until 2008, by which point 360 1P would already be in its 3rd generation of maturity, and even more Western 3P devs would've probably stuck with it exclusively or prioritized PS3 even less than they did (keep in mind entire IP like Mass Effect never got PS3 ports that gen).

On the other hand, 2007 would've worked out better for them in BOM and assembly/production/distribution costs for PS3, which in theory would've meant less losses. I say "in theory" because it's entirely possible even more of the potential PS3 audience would've not bothered to pick one up, so they would be losing more money on hardware not being sold, even if the costs to produce that hardware would be cheaper. Which in turn would mean less to recoup on things like Blu-Ray and Cell R&D costs.

Speaking of Blu-Ray, 2007 for PS3 would've 100% killed Blu-Ray's chances as a media format against HD-DVD. Giving a rival format roughly two years of mass market saturation is never a good idea, as even if Blu-Ray would've came out on top, it'd of been a pyrrhic victory at absolute best, with no clear future for film media formats established as there'd be no clear winner. And if that were to have happened, lowered PS3 sales combined with failure of Blu-Ray and Cell, I honestly don't think Sony'd of survived well enough past then to justify a PS4.

So no matter how you look at it, 2006 for PS3 was a necessity by that point. 2007 for a PS3 release would've probably meant the death of PlayStation.

 

[rofif]

They would let hddvd win and xbox to gain even more customers.

 

[nightmare-slain]

it did come out in 2007…here at least.

only a few months between US an EU. don’t think it’d make much a difference. 360 had a head start and kicked ass. Simple.

 

[nightmare-slain]

We still act like the PS3 was a complete bust? It's still the 6th best selling home console (behind Wii, Switch and the other 3 PlayStations).

Sure, by Sony standards, it was lower. But, it's not like it sold under 25 million like the GameCube, Xbox, Wii U, Saturn and Dreamcast all did.

It’s the worst Playstation console (Assuming PS5 is actually gonna be good)

 

[Bonfires Down]

If it means they would scrap the whole PS3 hardware and do something like the 360 instead? Mayyybe. It did lose them a lot of money.

But would still be very risky letting MS get two whole years for themselves.

 

[Drew1440]

Delaying it for an extra year would give them time to use NVidia's 8800 series of GPU's, which would have made a big difference between it and the 360's graphics.
But the 360 would have had a 2 year headstart by that point.

 

[StateofMajora]

No. IMO it would've been a lot worst for them if it launched in 2007. The 1P content would've still be in its first generation and not much better off than it was in 2006 (usually a team will learn new tech and ideas that can't be implemented in a current project but could be in their next one, so best to get that current project done sooner), meaning they likely wouldn't of gotten games like Uncharted and Infamous going until 2008, by which point 360 1P would already be in its 3rd generation of maturity, and even more Western 3P devs would've probably stuck with it exclusively or prioritized PS3 even less than they did (keep in mind entire IP like Mass Effect never got PS3 ports that gen).

On the other hand, 2007 would've worked out better for them in BOM and assembly/production/distribution costs for PS3, which in theory would've meant less losses. I say "in theory" because it's entirely possible even more of the potential PS3 audience would've not bothered to pick one up, so they would be losing more money on hardware not being sold, even if the costs to produce that hardware would be cheaper. Which in turn would mean less to recoup on things like Blu-Ray and Cell R&D costs.

Speaking of Blu-Ray, 2007 for PS3 would've 100% killed Blu-Ray's chances as a media format against HD-DVD. Giving a rival format roughly two years of mass market saturation is never a good idea, as even if Blu-Ray would've came out on top, it'd of been a pyrrhic victory at absolute best, with no clear future for film media formats established as there'd be no clear winner. And if that were to have happened, lowered PS3 sales combined with failure of Blu-Ray and Cell, I honestly don't think Sony'd of survived well enough past then to justify a PS4.

So no matter how you look at it, 2006 for PS3 was a necessity by that point. 2007 for a PS3 release would've probably meant the death of PlayStation.

No. IMO it would've been a lot worst for them if it launched in 2007. The 1P content would've still be in its first generation and not much better off than it was in 2006 (usually a team will learn new tech and ideas that can't be implemented in a current project but could be in their next one, so best to get that current project done sooner), meaning they likely wouldn't of gotten games like Uncharted and Infamous going until 2008, by which point 360 1P would already be in its 3rd generation of maturity, and even more Western 3P devs would've probably stuck with it exclusively or prioritized PS3 even less than they did (keep in mind entire IP like Mass Effect never got PS3 ports that gen).

On the other hand, 2007 would've worked out better for them in BOM and assembly/production/distribution costs for PS3, which in theory would've meant less losses. I say "in theory" because it's entirely possible even more of the potential PS3 audience would've not bothered to pick one up, so they would be losing more money on hardware not being sold, even if the costs to produce that hardware would be cheaper. Which in turn would mean less to recoup on things like Blu-Ray and Cell R&D costs.

Speaking of Blu-Ray, 2007 for PS3 would've 100% killed Blu-Ray's chances as a media format against HD-DVD. Giving a rival format roughly two years of mass market saturation is never a good idea, as even if Blu-Ray would've came out on top, it'd of been a pyrrhic victory at absolute best, with no clear future for film media formats established as there'd be no clear winner. And if that were to have happened, lowered PS3 sales combined with failure of Blu-Ray and Cell, I honestly don't think Sony'd of survived well enough past then to justify a PS4.

So no matter how you look at it, 2006 for PS3 was a necessity by that point. 2007 for a PS3 release would've probably meant the death of PlayStation.

I can’t seem to find sales numbers for hddvd vs blu ray for 2006. Only that by early 2007 blu ray started to flatten hddvd.

But yeah it would have been a hell of a lot harder for Sony to win the war.

I know that developers would have taken extra time to develop software with a delay, but if they got the dev kits out around the same time Sony finalized the dev kits with the nvidia 7800x, but with a better processor it could have made a big difference in the launch lineup.

 

[StateofMajora]

Delaying it for an extra year would give them time to use NVidia's 8800 series of GPU's, which would have made a big difference between it and the 360's graphics.
But the 360 would have had a 2 year headstart by that point.

I don’t think it would have been as bad as people think giving MS that headstart. They had a lot of woes with rrod, and Sony launching with superior versions of games would have been noted.

I mean the ps3 had cod 3 at 30fps ; the technical difference in the beginning can not be understated and was a huge problem for ps3.

So yeah, imagine an 8600gts or newer ati chip combined with cell ; would have fixed the ps3 rsx inferiority and gave a crazy high ceiling for developers.

 

[Captain Toad]

It’s the worst Playstation console (Assuming PS5 is actually gonna be good)

Yes, but worst PlayStation is still 87 million. That's still relatively consistent.

It's not like Nintendo which jumps around from 22 million (GameCube) to 110 million (Wii) to 13 million (Wii U).

 

[Pachi72]

Ev

It was a big success; I’m just thinking of how much better it could have been.

Even if it would of been better it wouldnt have sold any better.

 

[StateofMajora]

Ev

Even if it would of been better it wouldnt have sold any better.

Maybe, but at least a few millions chose 360 over ps3 because it had better multiplatform games.

 

[Mokus]

I doubt that they could have changed a lot. If they wanted they could have launched the console with 512 MB RAM in 2006, since the development kits came with that amount. I really wished that they could have make it because it was obvious there was a big limitations with only 256 MB of RAM. In the early years about 110 MB of RAM was reserved for the OS. That was just fucking huge. Later through optimization the they reduced this to 70 MB and finally 56 MB.

For the rest of the hardware, most things were finalized so they could not change much about it. If anything, Sony was going with a Toshiba GPU in the early hardware development but something happened and they had to switch late in development to Nvidia's GPU. Nvidia didn't had the time to develop something more specialized for consoles so the went with a "from the shelf" GeForce 7800. I wonder if Toshiba's GPU solution could have been finished as planned, how much more powerful would have been than Nvidia's GPU.

 

[Zathalus]

It would have worked out better if it launched in 2005 for $499 for the top model.

 

[Mokus]

It would have worked out better if it launched in 2005 for $499 for the top model.

Or just release the "top model" a year later. No one would have complained about it.

 

[StateofMajora]

I doubt that they could have changed a lot. If they wanted they could have launched the console with 512 MB RAM in 2006, since the development kits came with that amount. I really wished that they could have make it because it was obvious there was a big limitations with only 256 MB of RAM. In the early years about 110 MB of RAM was reserved for the OS. That was just fucking huge. Later through optimization the they reduced this to 70 MB and finally 56 MB.

For the rest of the hardware, most things were finalized so they could not change much about it. If anything, Sony was going with a Toshiba GPU in the early hardware development but something happened and they had to switch late in development to Nvidia's GPU. Nvidia didn't had the time to develop something more specialized for consoles so the went with a "from the shelf" GeForce 7800. I wonder if Toshiba's GPU solution could have been finished as planned, how much more powerful would have been than Nvidia's GPU.

It had 512mb, just split between vram and ram. VRAM was the bigger limitation. A single pool of 768mb gddr3 on a 196 bit bus would have been amazing. Assuming the new gpu had edram.

Initially, the OS used 128mb (!) and finally 50mb later on.

2 things happened with Toshiba ; the first is that Sony’s ICE team begged Sony for a traditional gpu and the second being the format war.

 

[Mokus]

It had 512mb, just split between vram and ram. VRAM was the bigger limitation. A single pool of 768mb gddr3 on a 196 bit bus would have been amazing. Assuming the new gpu had edram.

Initially, the OS used 128mb (!) and finally 50mb later on.

2 things happened with Toshiba ; the first is that Sony’s ICE team begged Sony for a traditional gpu and the second being the format war.

I was talking about the RAM only, I'm well aware about that it was a total 512 memory combined with VRAM. But the development kits came with 512 MB of RAM and 256 VRAM. This means that they could have delivered this on launch since they didn't had to modify the circuit board for extra RAM. But they decided to give us only 256 MB RAM version.

And believe me, I know about the Sony vs Toshiba problem. But it costed Sony a weak GPU in the PS3.

 

[StateofMajora]

I was talking about the RAM only, I'm well aware about that it was a total 512 memory combined with VRAM. But the development kits came with 512 MB of RAM and 256 VRAM. This means that they could have delivered this on launch since they didn't had to modify the circuit board for extra RAM. But they decided to give us only 256 MB RAM version.

And believe me, I know about the Sony vs Toshiba problem. But it costed Sony a weak GPU in the PS3.

The Toshiba processor would have been quite insane when 100% maxed out... the problem being it would have been a HUGE mistake in terms of multiplatform support as even the first party team was bitching about how complicated it was. Sony's issue was buying into Nvidia's old crap when they could have had an ATI processor like Xenos, or perhaps negotiated better with Nvidia to get an 8xxx series chip. I'm guessing Nvidia wouldn't budge and it'd need to be 2007 to get those graphics options.

Even if they launched in 2006, they still could have went with ATI and been far better off. EDIT: assuming Sony would have had the option to purchase a Xenos chip or something with unified architecture, and that it wasn't kept from them due to MS's partnership with ATI.

But yeah, the 512mb/256mb split would have been a huge jump (Esp. since the 512mb of XDR would be 256 bit bus) but better memory solutions than that could have been had. A single, fast pool would have been ideal.

 

[German Hops]

Sony had to push Blu-ray, asap.

 

[LordOfChaos]

I don't think letting the 360 get another years lead would have gone well.

I mostly wish we could have seen the universe where the PS3's GPU wasn't underdeveloped in comparison to the CPU, so that by the end of the generation where developers did know how to use Cell, they weren't just using it to try to get RSX to keep up. What would the peak 7th gen have looked like with Cell paired with something like Xenos and unified memory+eDRAM for the bandwidth gap, I always wonder. The lack of unified shaders especially meant RSX was always leaving something on the table unless a scene hit the perfect ratio.

 

[cireza]

It was launched in 2007 in Europe.

 

[Kokoloko85]

Still sold more than Any Xbox and Nintendo home Console not called the Wii. Yes it’s Sony’s worst selling console but it ended up fine and they took their 1st party games to the next level, a good direction for Playstation all together.
Studios like Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch and Guerilla really shined that generation

What Playstation wasnt prepared for was:

1. 360 having a way better online gaming infrastructure and store.
2. The 360 Releasing a year earier than the PS3 at a cheaper price.
3. 360 having a bunch of Playstation centric titles like Tekken, Final Fantasy, DMC etc. It was the first time these games werent exclusive to Playstation since Playstation 1.
4. 360 being easier for 3rd party development and most the time having the better versions of the games

The Wii was also a commercial hit, even my grandma played it. And it was at least a 3rd of the cost of PS3 and 360 etc. The wii being Nintendo’s best selling console and being much cheaper only sold like 2-3 million more than the PS3 in Japan.

The PS3 might not have sold like the rest of the Playstation but it did well and had a great comeback

 

[StreetsofBeige]

We still act like the PS3 was a complete bust? It's still the 6th best selling home console (behind Wii, Switch and the other 3 PlayStations).

Sure, by Sony standards, it was lower. But, it's not like it sold under 25 million like the GameCube, Xbox, Wii U, Saturn and Dreamcast all did.

Yes, but worst PlayStation is still 87 million. That's still relatively consistent.

It's not like Nintendo which jumps around from 22 million (GameCube) to 110 million (Wii) to 13 million (Wii U).

Nintendo. GC 25M --> Wii 100M
MS. Xbox OG 25M --> 360 85-90M
Sony. PS2 150M --> PS3 85-90M

You're telling me PS3 was a success? Also, Sony lost money during that gaming era, while making good money during PS1 and PS2.

 

[StateofMajora]

I don't think letting the 360 get another years lead would have gone well.

I mostly wish we could have seen the universe where the PS3's GPU wasn't underdeveloped in comparison to the CPU, so that by the end of the generation where developers did know how to use Cell, they weren't just using it to try to get RSX to keep up. What would the peak 7th gen have looked like with Cell paired with something like Xenos and unified memory+eDRAM for the bandwidth gap, I always wonder. The lack of unified shaders especially meant RSX was always leaving something on the table unless a scene hit the perfect ratio.

I can't even imagine what killzone 2 would look like with a Xenos chip, edram and 196/256 bit unified memory system. So many great looking games would look that much better. Again though, not sure if Sony had access to Xenos.

In terms of bandwidth ps3 actually had more for things like texture filtering where 360 edram wouldn't help, but over all 360's solution was superior. It's worth noting that a ps3 + Xenos would need more bandwidth (and ram for that matter hence the 768mb gddr3 plus xenos combo would have been killer) than 360's 128 bit bus due to the extra potential of the Cell vs Xenon cpu.

 

[wvnative]

Unless the cell had been killed off way earlier, like 2003, there was no saving the PS3.

 

[LordOfChaos]

I can't even imagine what killzone 2 would look like with a Xenos chip, edram and 196/256 bit unified memory system. So many great looking games would look that much better. Again though, not sure if Sony had access to Xenos.

In terms of bandwidth ps3 actually had more for things like texture filtering where 360 edram wouldn't help, but over all 360's solution was superior. It's worth noting that a ps3 + Xenos would need more bandwidth (and ram for that matter hence the 768mb gddr3 plus xenos combo would have been killer) than 360's 128 bit bus due to the extra potential of the Cell vs Xenon cpu.

Not even Xenos specifically, but like, Nvidia launched the 8800 like a month after the PS3 and that was a pretty vast step up in technology. If it was at least unified shader like Xenos but built on top of the existing RSX layout, much like Xenos itself was like an early unified shader model but a lot like the X1000 series otherwise, maybe that would have bridged a lot of the gap in real world results, since where you weren't doing that 24:8 ratio between pixel and vertex operations you were invariably leaving some of its theoretical performance on the table, where on Xenos all 48 pipelines could do anything.

The RSX seemed like a result of putting too much emphasis into Cell, they had originally planned a Sony/Toshiba GPU for the PS3 (contrary to popular opinion the dual Cell/all Cell GPU thing was abandoned pretty early and they had been developing an actual GPU, but apparently it didn't perform well enough), but where that fell through and ATI was tapped they kind of shoehorned in the RSX as a last resort.

With a little better planning the PS3 probably could have been even more stunning by the end and won in visuals overall, but in the end the best looking games on PS3 ended up using a lot of the Cell's SPE power to preprocess and postprocess things around the RSX to let it do a bit more, and only by the end of the generation were most third part games just even between the HD twins.

I just wonder how it could have gone in a world where the RSX natively matched the output of the Xenos without help, and anything the Cell could do was just extra over that or it could focus more on doing CPU things.

 

[StateofMajora]

Unless the cell had been killed off way earlier, like 2003, there was no saving the PS3.

Cell was really a great chip though. If they launched in 2007, they might have been able to have all 8 spe's enabled instead of 7. It's the combination of the cell's complexity with a weaker graphics chip that wasn't great.

 

[sublimit]

Nope they were already late,especially in Europe.

 

[StateofMajora]

Not even Xenos specifically, but like, Nvidia launched the 8800 like a month after the PS3 and that was a pretty vast step up in technology. If it was at least unified shader like Xenos but built on top of the existing RSX layout, much like Xenos itself was like an early unified shader model but a lot like the X1000 series otherwise, maybe that would have bridged a lot of the gap in real world results, since where you weren't doing that 24:8 ratio between pixel and vertex operations you were invariably leaving some of its theoretical performance on the table, where on Xenos all 48 pipelines could do anything.

The RSX seemed like a result of putting too much emphasis into Cell, they had originally planned a Sony/Toshiba GPU for the PS3 (contrary to popular opinion the dual Cell/all Cell GPU thing was abandoned pretty early and they had been developing an actual GPU, but apparently it didn't perform well enough), but where that fell through and ATI was tapped they kind of shoehorned in the RSX as a last resort.

With a little better planning the PS3 probably could have been even more stunning by the end and won in visuals overall, but in the end the best looking games on PS3 ended up using a lot of the Cell's SPE power to preprocess and postprocess things around the RSX to let it do a bit more, and only by the end of the generation were most third part games just even between the HD twins.

I just wonder how it could have gone in a world where the RSX natively matched the output of the Xenos without help, and anything the Cell could do was just extra over that or it could focus more on doing CPU things.

From Nvidia, the 8600gts would have beat xenos easily. The 8800gt was a beast but too power hungry for console. Nvidia Were lazy with ps3, they weren't going to redesign rsx/7800gtx for Sony. But to have enough 8600 chips for launch, 2007 would be necessary.

 

[German Hops]

Cell was really a great chip though.

Cell was pretty horrid, actually.

 

[StateofMajora]

Cell was pretty horrid, actually.

A pain but powerful. Look at the physics developers were able to pull off like motorstorm apocalypse.

If the rest of the system was easy and more powerful than 360 developers would have gotten over it. Well, gotten over it even faster.

For example, the darkness ps3 at 540p, no aa and worse textures/shadows vs 360 720p, 4xmsaa was the fault of ps3 graphics chip and ram.

 

[Azelover]

They would let hddvd win and xbox to gain even more customers.

Exactly. That little inertia at the beginning was a necessary sacrifice.

 

[MatrixReloaded101]

Sony still outsold the 360 so I don't get why you would revise that scenario.

Its funny when you think about it because IMO MS revolutionized console gaming with the 360 from Xbox live, to shipping every console with a headset, to creating a decent store interface and they still loss to Sony in the end, which is why they are now pushing Game pass because they realize they will never beat Sony when it comes to the number of consoles sold.

 

[InverseAgonist]

Cell was pretty horrid, actually.

Not really. If the Graphics subsystems were on par, Cell would have been free to really shine. Remember, this is a 90nm CPU that was more powerful than the next generations CPUs that really hit a sweet-spot of devoting transistors to parallelism and moving data around efficiently.

 

[FStubbs]

We still act like the PS3 was a complete bust? It's still the 6th best selling home console (behind Wii, Switch and the other 3 PlayStations).

Sure, by Sony standards, it was lower. But, it's not like it sold under 25 million like the GameCube, Xbox, Wii U, Saturn and Dreamcast all did.

I bet internally Sony doesn't consider it successful considering the massive amount of money that they lost on it. Probably why Ken Kutaragi was replaced by Mark Cerny.

 

[StateofMajora]

Not really. If the Graphics subsystems were on par, Cell would have been free to really shine. Remember, this is a 90nm CPU that was more powerful than the next generations CPUs that really hit a sweet-spot of devoting transistors to parallelism and moving data around efficiently.

In terms of floating point, cell was better than any cpu for the whole generation on the PC side. Not that pc CPU’s were designed for graphics like cell of course, but hey.

Cell was kind of the last time an architecture focused on cpu over gpu, because afterwards gpu became more important in the PC space, or even with Xbox 360 before.

 

[StateofMajora]

I bet internally Sony doesn't consider it successful considering the massive amount of money that they lost on it. Probably why Ken Kutaragi was replaced by Mark Cerny.

Mark Cerny has done a great job overall but Kutaragi was undeniably genius… just a bit over eccentric.

 

[IFireflyl]

Nintendo. GC 25M --> Wii 100M
MS. Xbox OG 25M --> 360 85-90M
Sony. PS2 150M --> PS3 85-90M

You're telling me PS3 was a success? Also, Sony lost money during that gaming era, while making good money during PS1 and PS2.

The Xbox 360 compared to the Playstation 3 in the same way that the Xbox One compared to the Playstation 4.

Xbox 360 - $84M --> Xbox One - $51M || 40% decrease in sales
Playstation 3 - $87.4M --> Playstation 4 - $116.4M || 25% increase in sales.

The Playstation 3 had more total sales compared to the Xbox 360, and Sony obviously did enough right that sales grew from the Playstation 3 to the Playstation 4 (unlike the Xbox 360 to the Xbox One).

The Playstation 3 had a lot of faults, sure. But it was not a failure by any stretch of the imagination. If the console itself was a failure then then Xbox One should have creamed the Playstation 4. Sure, you'll have a sect of fanboys that refuse to buy the opposing console. But that goes for both consoles, and those fanboys are a minority.

I favor Playstation over Xbox, but I have owned every single Playstation and Xbox console aside from the the Playstation TV and the Xbox Series X. (To be clear, I haven't owned every iteration of every console. For example, I never owned the Playstation 4 Pro. But I have had every type of console other than the two I mentioned.)

I thought the Xbox 360 was better in some ways that the Playstation 3, but I didn't think the Playstation 3 was bad. The next generation was kind of a tie, but Playstation 4 came out on top because I had a gaming PC, and Xbox games were finally coming out on PC... so why would I buy a game on Xbox? With this new generation, I have no idea. I own a Playstation 5, but I have had no reason to get the Xbox Series X (and I don't have anything beckoning me to play the Playstation 5 right now, either).

TL;DR - The Playstation 3 was a success, even if it wasn't a financial success. They took a risk with architecture, and I wasn't cost-effective. But that console still sold, meaning the games sold. Also, it helped Blu-Ray to become victorious, and we have no way of knowing how many people bought Blu-Rays (meaning more money for Sony outside of gaming) because they had a Blu-Ray player in their gaming console. I know I bought several. If the Playstation 3 had been a failure to the masses then the Playstation 4 would have suffered during launch. It did not. At all.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

I can’t seem to find sales numbers for hddvd vs blu ray for 2006. Only that by early 2007 blu ray started to flatten hddvd.

But yeah it would have been a hell of a lot harder for Sony to win the war.

I know that developers would have taken extra time to develop software with a delay, but if they got the dev kits out around the same time Sony finalized the dev kits with the nvidia 7800x, but with a better processor it could have made a big difference in the launch lineup.

IIRC the only reason they went with the Nvidia GPU option was because Cell wasn't up to task to handle graphics processing the way they wanted it to be. An extra year in dev time maybe would've gotten then a better GPU, but the issue was still WRT Cell's difficulty and the split memory.

With that in mind, the better option with that extra year would've been to ride out Cell costs maybe dropping a bit (I doubt Blu-Ray costs would've came down too much, since the PS3 itself was a big reason those costs eventually came down and an extra year off the market meant an extra year of those costs staying higher), and ensure Cell's SDK was better from the jump.

Then, work on a unified memory design; if that would've meant throwing a 2nd Cell in there for graphics in place of the Nvidia GPU, provided they could get the SDK up to par by a 2007 release, that might've been a better option. However, the Blu-Ray drive would've still added costs and unless some other products with Cell came to market in 2006 or early 2007 to help drive costs down, that'd be the same cost as it already was, only now multiplied by a factor of 2.

I don't think the costs for the Cell or Blu-Ray drive would've gone down much with a 2007 release, but RAM prices might've been a bit lower, and IIRC the Cell itself wasn't prohibitively expensive, tho a bit more than the 360's CPU. Can't recall if it was more than the Nvidia GPU the PS3 used however. What I'm getting at is, even with best-case for a 2007 release, Sony'd of still been losing money on each PS3 manufactured. It's just they maybe would have lost a bit less money by that point.

Another option would've probably been to release two versions: one with a Blu-Ray drive and the other with a DVD drive, while mandating HDD installs in both cases, shipping the lower-end model with 20 GB and the higher-end one with 60 GB. Keep the Nvidia GPU or don't, but if they did, increase its pool of RAM to make up for the fact you'd still have split memory pools. Maybe give the Cell CPU an upclock while ensuring the tools were more mature/stable by '07 because, by that point you have more or less ceded the 3P market to Microsoft and to a lesser extent Nintendo, so it would be falling on the 1P anyway to draw in the larger market, and if Cell is going to be the ticket, make it even more impressive with an upclock.

They probably could've upclocked the same Nvidia GPU used in the actual PS3 rather than swapping to a more expensive design, but that along with more memory would've made a difference and helped with 3P ports to the system.

 

[LordOfChaos]

Then, work on a unified memory design; if that would've meant throwing a 2nd Cell in there for graphics in place of the Nvidia GPU, provided they could get the SDK up to par by a 2007 release, that might've been a better option. However, the Blu-Ray drive would've still added costs and unless some other products with Cell came to market in 2006 or early 2007 to help drive costs down, that'd be the same cost as it already was, only now multiplied by a factor of 2.

They dropped the dual Cell/Cell graphics only idea very early in the whiteboard phase, they had been developing an actual GPU with Toshiba but it wasn't up to snuff so RSX was dropped in.

The problem with Cell-only graphics would have mirrored the problems with Larrabee. Going with the many CPU core approach leaves you lacking on many of the things that make GPUs fast for graphics, like Render Output Units, Texture Mapping Units, things that are dedicated to outputting a graphics pipeline. By nearer to the end of Larrabee's life and being reworked as Xeon Phi, they were playing with adding things like ROPs back into it, but ultimately a GPU-ey CPU just wasn't as good at graphics as a GPU.

Could have done unified memory with a third party GPU, no reason preventing that, but the main thing that was lacking was planning out the GPU as early and making it as important a citizen as the CPU. In the end what we got was Cell making up for the RSX's shortcomings in the games that used it best, but it wasn't like it was a second equal GPU in its own right.

As far as upclocking the RSX PS3 was already really pushing the power and weight and size for the era, though the PS5 is decently larger now (lighter though), and that probably would have also pushed down yields. Just should have planned out the GPU as an equal citizen to the CPU was ultimately it, even RSX with unified shaders would have gone a long way.

 

[Happosai]

This is something I’ve thought about recently, and as we all know the ps3 ended up doing extremely well but had a horrible start. My thinking is the ps2 was still selling highly, and they still had a few big games like god of war 2 in 2007.

I just view the ps3 as somewhat of a missed opportunity ; blu ray for large game capacity, powerful CPU but weak graphics (relatively) and hampered by low ram / no edram. Developers had very poor results initially and complained the entire generation. First party developers did amazingly, but you have to wonder what could have been.

Launching in 2007 with a better gpu and a bit more memory (say 768mb at least) with a much better games lineup could have justified a higher price and had much better results in consumer mindshare early on. No bayonetta/the darkness/30fps ea sports woes.

Do you think it would have been a good idea, or even more expensive for Sony with not much market benefit? The other thing is, I wonder if MS would launch a 360 successor sooner or if they’d want to keep recouping costs as well.

Thoughts?

I used to have a list of price costing put into every individual part for the PS3 back 2008. Basically, it launched super high so Sony wasn't losing profit vs. all of the production expenses. However, many wrote bad reviews on the high into price which pushed Sony into adjusting the price like twice in barely 11-months after launch. It did get to the point by 2007 in which they weren't earning enough for all the units sent out. I'm not sure tactics for launch price/marketing would have really changed much between 2006 & 2007. The console was ready as it ever could be in 2006. Delaying further may have put a strain on competition as the 360 was release in 2005 and had a nice set of games coming out not long after launch. Retrospectively, both are still great consoles to me. I loved the 7th gen.

 

[StateofMajora]

Sony still outsold the 360 so I don't get why you would revise that scenario.

Its funny when you think about it because IMO MS revolutionized console gaming with the 360 from Xbox live, to shipping every console with a headset, to creating a decent store interface and they still loss to Sony in the end, which is why they are now pushing Game pass because they realize they will never beat Sony when it comes to the number of consoles sold.

I used to have a list of price costing put into every individual part for the PS3 back 2008. Basically, it launched super high so Sony wasn't losing profit vs. all of the production expenses. However, many wrote bad reviews on the high into price which pushed Sony into adjusting the price like twice in barely 11-months after launch. It did get to the point by 2007 in which they weren't earning enough for all the units sent out. I'm not sure tactics for launch price/marketing would have really changed much between 2006 & 2007. The console was ready as it ever could be in 2006. Delaying further may have put a strain on competition as the 360 was release in 2005 and had a nice set of games coming out not long after launch. Retrospectively, both are still great consoles to me. I loved the 7th gen.

Actually Sony lost over 200 dollars per unit at launch. More on the cheaper 20gb model.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

The Xbox 360 compared to the Playstation 3 in the same way that the Xbox One compared to the Playstation 4.

Xbox 360 - $84M --> Xbox One - $51M || 40% decrease in sales
Playstation 3 - $87.4M --> Playstation 4 - $116.4M || 25% increase in sales.

The Playstation 3 had more total sales compared to the Xbox 360, and Sony obviously did enough right that sales grew from the Playstation 3 to the Playstation 4 (unlike the Xbox 360 to the Xbox One).

The Playstation 3 had a lot of faults, sure. But it was not a failure by any stretch of the imagination. If the console itself was a failure then then Xbox One should have creamed the Playstation 4. Sure, you'll have a sect of fanboys that refuse to buy the opposing console. But that goes for both consoles, and those fanboys are a minority.

I favor Playstation over Xbox, but I have owned every single Playstation and Xbox console aside from the the Playstation TV and the Xbox Series X. (To be clear, I haven't owned every iteration of every console. For example, I never owned the Playstation 4 Pro. But I have had every type of console other than the two I mentioned.)

I thought the Xbox 360 was better in some ways that the Playstation 3, but I didn't think the Playstation 3 was bad. The next generation was kind of a tie, but Playstation 4 came out on top because I had a gaming PC, and Xbox games were finally coming out on PC... so why would I buy a game on Xbox? With this new generation, I have no idea. I own a Playstation 5, but I have had no reason to get the Xbox Series X (and I don't have anything beckoning me to play the Playstation 5 right now, either).

TL;DR - The Playstation 3 was a success, even if it wasn't a financial success. They took a risk with architecture, and I wasn't cost-effective. But that console still sold, meaning the games sold. Also, it helped Blu-Ray to become victorious, and we have no way of knowing how many people bought Blu-Rays (meaning more money for Sony outside of gaming) because they had a Blu-Ray player in their gaming console. I know I bought several. If the Playstation 3 had been a failure to the masses then the Playstation 4 would have suffered during launch. It did not. At all.

This thread is about PS3 not PS4.

 

[Dream-Knife]

Microsoft purposely kept the DVD-HD vs Blueray war on to keep it from establishing itself hoping streaming would prevent a new physical media.

They were right. I know one person with a blueray collection.

 

[AJUMP23]

The price was too high at launch.

 

[IFireflyl]

This thread is about PS3 not PS4.

You should really read the post prior to replying to it.