Playstation 3, is it hopeless?
Author
I know this has been debated hundreds of thousands of times but with the electronic entertainment expo going on it seems fitting to ask. Why is (according to Microsoft and many other people) the Playstation 3 failing so badly. What factors lead to many people and developers to choose the Xbox 360 over the Playstation 3. Being the midlife of the current gaming generation what could be done to fix the large problem that many people see the PS3 as?
Some problems were:
The starting price.
Difficulty to develop games for.
Xbox 360 being released a full year earlier.
Please be courteous even though this topic is very old and add to this list and feel free to state your own opinions.
I have no affiliation with sony whatsoever.
Simple. It costs too much. It also costs a lot to run. As much as 5 fridges, and isn't any better in standby mode. That's the reason I don't have one.
They also keep revising the machine and making it worse. No more x-in-1 card reader, no more EmotionEngine, etc...
As much as I want one, I'm not going to drop near a grand to play the same stuff I'm playing now on my low powered machine with only marginally better graphics.
They also keep revising the machine and making it worse. No more x-in-1 card reader, no more EmotionEngine, etc...
As much as I want one, I'm not going to drop near a grand to play the same stuff I'm playing now on my low powered machine with only marginally better graphics.
Author
They are not so expensive now. well compared to what they used to be. who am I to talk though I don't own one either. I only have a wii. As far as revisions go that can be anoying.
Hey I just bought a ps3... one day later... new modle comes out and you find out you payed $120 more than you had to. doh
Hey I just bought a ps3... one day later... new modle comes out and you find out you payed $120 more than you had to. doh
Quote:Original post by steveworks
Why is (according to Microsoft and many other people) the Playstation 3 failing so badly.
A) Because the thing costs like a billion fucking dollars
B) It has very few decent games
C) The games it has, like super ultra exclusive Final Fantasy 13, are going to the 360 as of today anyway and in the case of EA, run better on the 360.
That being said, I hate all console this generation equally. Wii is a great idea, shit games. The 360 is great console with a huge catalogue of AAA games, but sucks up any money you have lying about whenever you turn your back with insanely priced hard drives, wifi dongles and internet fees. I mean seriously, $90 for a 20GB hard drive?! I can buy a 500GB hard drive for that much.
Is the Playstation 3 doing that badly? I've been out of touch on the latest stats on this generation, but I thought it was slowly picking up steam. I knew it wasn't anywhere as popular as the Playstation 2 (which is still going strong), but I didn't think it was "failing" per se. But I don't know the figures, so my impression could be wrong.
In any case, my personal answers to why I haven't got a Playstation 3 are similar to boolean's. I was seriously considering getting a Playstation 3 in the early stages of the hype up to the release of this next generation as I don't have a Playstation 2 and so it'd be nice to catch up with the back catalog of games I've missed. But then Sony started doing everything in their power to make their shiny new console less attractive to me. I'm now thinking of getting an Xbox 360 next year instead to join my Wii (I'm a big fan of Nintendo's games so the Wii was obviously the first console for me to purchase).
In any case, my personal answers to why I haven't got a Playstation 3 are similar to boolean's. I was seriously considering getting a Playstation 3 in the early stages of the hype up to the release of this next generation as I don't have a Playstation 2 and so it'd be nice to catch up with the back catalog of games I've missed. But then Sony started doing everything in their power to make their shiny new console less attractive to me. I'm now thinking of getting an Xbox 360 next year instead to join my Wii (I'm a big fan of Nintendo's games so the Wii was obviously the first console for me to purchase).
The problem with the PS3 is it introduced a computing paradigm that the game industry isn't ready to handle. We're still barely getting a grip on n-core systems and learning how to develop effectively on them; something like stream processing on the Cell is just too different from the way things have always been done in the business.
This means that games for the PS3 are usually lower quality than their equivalents on the 360 - because the 360 is a much more standard and familiar paradigm. In turn, the lack of high-quality games keeps the hardware price high and consumer demand down. This creates something of a vicious cycle, where Sony has to scramble to reduce the production cost and ameliorate their R&D expenditures - hence all the hardware revisions.
In the end, we're left with a fairly lackluster console with a pitiful selection of good games; and that's close enough to failure for competitors to jump in and start screaming that the PS3 is a walking corpse. Of course, the competitors aren't exactly objective, since they have hardware of their own to sell, but still.
This means that games for the PS3 are usually lower quality than their equivalents on the 360 - because the 360 is a much more standard and familiar paradigm. In turn, the lack of high-quality games keeps the hardware price high and consumer demand down. This creates something of a vicious cycle, where Sony has to scramble to reduce the production cost and ameliorate their R&D expenditures - hence all the hardware revisions.
In the end, we're left with a fairly lackluster console with a pitiful selection of good games; and that's close enough to failure for competitors to jump in and start screaming that the PS3 is a walking corpse. Of course, the competitors aren't exactly objective, since they have hardware of their own to sell, but still.
The PS3 actually looks to be doing quite well, if sales are anything to go by at least. It's trend seems to be following that off the PS2 quite closely, which was anything but a failure.
Up until January 2007 I was exclusively a Sony owner, my brother had an N64 as well.
Why did I get the 360? Simple answer was I didn't want the Wii, plus the PS3 was hopelessly delayed in Europe due to a Blu-Ray diode shortage. PS3 dropped in NA and Japan in November 2006 and didn't reach Europe until March 2007.
Not only was it delayed too long, it also had a ludicrous price tag. £425 for just a console?? No games, no extra controller bundled in? Fuck off, that is absolutely scandalous. I remember the only people who didn't have any qualms about it initially were fanboys and those with more money than sense, but the launch lines for the PS3 console were virtually non-existent anywhere, it was really quite bizarre to see a console bombing so badly on its first day in Europe.
I got my 360 with any two games of my choice and WiFi adapter (which itself is ludicrously overpriced) for £370, my multiplayer gaming is near exclusively Xbox Live based so I didn't buy a second controller until much later. Nowadays Sony've got the right idea and I could get a bundle with two games and an extra controller thrown in for £310 which is infinitely more reasonable, but browsing the shelves of any local game shop I visit I just see the same box art and the same names; some of them appear in green DVD cases and some of them appear in weird see-through small boxy things. My point is, of course, the endless swathes of cross-platform games, most of which allegedly perform much better on the 360 in any case. I get a feeling of déja vu for half of the stuff on the PS3 shelf, and the exclusives don't interest me.
It leads me to ask why bother? MGS4? Hate MGS, not buying a system for that. Motorstorm? Meh, a tech demo with horrific loading times, I'll take two![grin] Gran Turismo 5? Last time I played Gran Turismo I went round to my neighbour's house and asked if I could sit in his kitchen while the decorator was in so I could watch the paint drying... it was much more fun than playing "The Real Driving Simulator" which featured rigid AI and no vehicle damage whatsoever. Little Big Planet? Okay, it does look kind of cool actually but I'm not buying a console just for that. In the UK PS3 games definitely started life more expensive than their 360 counterparts due to the added expense in the bizarre packaging and Blu Ray discs ain't exactly cheap either. I'd see Game X on 360 for £39.99 and Game X on PS3 for £44.99 in the same shop, although granted that situation has improved over the past year.
Sony now have all these models on the market with feature X in one and feature Y missing from another... and the Sony fanboys have the cheek to say that the 360 has too many SKUs. The 360 SKUs all have identical hardware (apart from simple manufacturing revisions like changing the heatsink on the GPU) - it's the peripherals that are different, it's not as if the Premium has one less USB port than the Elite and the Arcade doesn't support the WiFi adapter. The hardware in the 40GB PS3 is chalk and cheese to the 20, 60 and 80GB models; it has a 45nm chip and doesn't have any PS2 hardware on board, it's also missing some of the card reader options. It's confusing, you see the model you want but it's missing one feature you might want, the other model is hard to find and the other one has some other limitation. Sony really screwed that up, all PS3s should have had the same hardware on board, seeing as the HDD's swappable they should have released one PS3 with, say, an 80GB HDD to get people started. As others have said, the PS3 really sends your electricity meter into a flat spin, my friend literally added £2 per quarter to his electricity bill just by playing his PS3 for three hours a day, keep up the trend and that's £24 a year. To be fair, though, he's got a launch 80GB model and not a more modern and economical 40GB.
Another friend has had his Xbox 360 since April 2006 and still runs great, his 40GB PS3 stopped reading discs one day recently and had to be sent off. My 360 has been running since January 2007 and has absolutely zero problems apart from a very small number of game related freezes which I can count on one hand... I don't buy the PS3 is more reliable argument.
Add to that the PS3's sub-par online system with limited options to properly keep in touch with friends and other gamers which the Xbox 360 offered out of the box from day one, the endlessly delayed Home system (I think Sony and 3D Realms have bet each other to see whether Home or DNF ships first) and the whole lack of games are hitting it hard. The devkits also seem too expensive still, IIRC the 360 one is half the price of a PS3 one, why would a developer want to pay more for a half-assed devkit (I went to the Game in Scotland event in Dundee and senior figures from the industry openly blammed the PS3 devkits and SDK in public, the quote was "... Sony have dumped on us ..." and this was coming from hardened industry professionals) for a system which is harder to program for? They really need to impress at this year's E3 in order to keep going IMO, and as somebody on Digg said if Square Enix jumped ship then who's next? Other big developers might break exclusivity too, you know; you can't rule it out.
As a former Sony fanboy I can honestly say I'm appalled; Sony have swaggered around promising the world but ended up delivering a bomb damaged Kabul suburb. Their empty promises and branding their shortcomings as the way things should be done is just mind boggling (seriously, rumble is "last gen" just because you don't have it? GTFO idiots), I am honestly surprised they have the fanbase left that they do. If you look on the official European Playstation forums it's full of complaints and doom and gloom for Sony, but the North America one is full of rainbows, sunshine and flowers due to the ridiculous censorship. It's really quite sad what some of the fanboys are saying.
So, to sum up:
I'll reserve judgment until Sony's conference at E3 but I'm really not convinced that the future looks all that bright.
Why did I get the 360? Simple answer was I didn't want the Wii, plus the PS3 was hopelessly delayed in Europe due to a Blu-Ray diode shortage. PS3 dropped in NA and Japan in November 2006 and didn't reach Europe until March 2007.
Not only was it delayed too long, it also had a ludicrous price tag. £425 for just a console?? No games, no extra controller bundled in? Fuck off, that is absolutely scandalous. I remember the only people who didn't have any qualms about it initially were fanboys and those with more money than sense, but the launch lines for the PS3 console were virtually non-existent anywhere, it was really quite bizarre to see a console bombing so badly on its first day in Europe.
I got my 360 with any two games of my choice and WiFi adapter (which itself is ludicrously overpriced) for £370, my multiplayer gaming is near exclusively Xbox Live based so I didn't buy a second controller until much later. Nowadays Sony've got the right idea and I could get a bundle with two games and an extra controller thrown in for £310 which is infinitely more reasonable, but browsing the shelves of any local game shop I visit I just see the same box art and the same names; some of them appear in green DVD cases and some of them appear in weird see-through small boxy things. My point is, of course, the endless swathes of cross-platform games, most of which allegedly perform much better on the 360 in any case. I get a feeling of déja vu for half of the stuff on the PS3 shelf, and the exclusives don't interest me.
It leads me to ask why bother? MGS4? Hate MGS, not buying a system for that. Motorstorm? Meh, a tech demo with horrific loading times, I'll take two![grin] Gran Turismo 5? Last time I played Gran Turismo I went round to my neighbour's house and asked if I could sit in his kitchen while the decorator was in so I could watch the paint drying... it was much more fun than playing "The Real Driving Simulator" which featured rigid AI and no vehicle damage whatsoever. Little Big Planet? Okay, it does look kind of cool actually but I'm not buying a console just for that. In the UK PS3 games definitely started life more expensive than their 360 counterparts due to the added expense in the bizarre packaging and Blu Ray discs ain't exactly cheap either. I'd see Game X on 360 for £39.99 and Game X on PS3 for £44.99 in the same shop, although granted that situation has improved over the past year.
Sony now have all these models on the market with feature X in one and feature Y missing from another... and the Sony fanboys have the cheek to say that the 360 has too many SKUs. The 360 SKUs all have identical hardware (apart from simple manufacturing revisions like changing the heatsink on the GPU) - it's the peripherals that are different, it's not as if the Premium has one less USB port than the Elite and the Arcade doesn't support the WiFi adapter. The hardware in the 40GB PS3 is chalk and cheese to the 20, 60 and 80GB models; it has a 45nm chip and doesn't have any PS2 hardware on board, it's also missing some of the card reader options. It's confusing, you see the model you want but it's missing one feature you might want, the other model is hard to find and the other one has some other limitation. Sony really screwed that up, all PS3s should have had the same hardware on board, seeing as the HDD's swappable they should have released one PS3 with, say, an 80GB HDD to get people started. As others have said, the PS3 really sends your electricity meter into a flat spin, my friend literally added £2 per quarter to his electricity bill just by playing his PS3 for three hours a day, keep up the trend and that's £24 a year. To be fair, though, he's got a launch 80GB model and not a more modern and economical 40GB.
Another friend has had his Xbox 360 since April 2006 and still runs great, his 40GB PS3 stopped reading discs one day recently and had to be sent off. My 360 has been running since January 2007 and has absolutely zero problems apart from a very small number of game related freezes which I can count on one hand... I don't buy the PS3 is more reliable argument.
Add to that the PS3's sub-par online system with limited options to properly keep in touch with friends and other gamers which the Xbox 360 offered out of the box from day one, the endlessly delayed Home system (I think Sony and 3D Realms have bet each other to see whether Home or DNF ships first) and the whole lack of games are hitting it hard. The devkits also seem too expensive still, IIRC the 360 one is half the price of a PS3 one, why would a developer want to pay more for a half-assed devkit (I went to the Game in Scotland event in Dundee and senior figures from the industry openly blammed the PS3 devkits and SDK in public, the quote was "... Sony have dumped on us ..." and this was coming from hardened industry professionals) for a system which is harder to program for? They really need to impress at this year's E3 in order to keep going IMO, and as somebody on Digg said if Square Enix jumped ship then who's next? Other big developers might break exclusivity too, you know; you can't rule it out.
As a former Sony fanboy I can honestly say I'm appalled; Sony have swaggered around promising the world but ended up delivering a bomb damaged Kabul suburb. Their empty promises and branding their shortcomings as the way things should be done is just mind boggling (seriously, rumble is "last gen" just because you don't have it? GTFO idiots), I am honestly surprised they have the fanbase left that they do. If you look on the official European Playstation forums it's full of complaints and doom and gloom for Sony, but the North America one is full of rainbows, sunshine and flowers due to the ridiculous censorship. It's really quite sad what some of the fanboys are saying.
So, to sum up:
- Sony's disgusting arrogance
- Limited, delayed exclusives
- Overpriced at launch, putting people off
- Cross-platform titles are 99.9% of the time better on the 360
- Crap devkits
- Big companies starting to jump ship
I'll reserve judgment until Sony's conference at E3 but I'm really not convinced that the future looks all that bright.
I wish it was, maybe then I would had been able to secure a MGS4 80GB PS3 pack, instead it is out of stock online everywhere, and no sign of it becoming an easy find. [bawling]
Eventually, it will get the games, just like the PSP.
Eventually, it will get the games, just like the PSP.
Quote:Original post by LuctusThey are third place.
The PS3 actually looks to be doing quite well, if sales are anything to go by at least. It's trend seems to be following that off the PS2 quite closely, which was anything but a failure.
Wii is king.
XBox360 is second.
PS3 is third.
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