Sony Holiday Sales – PS3 Bottoms Out the List of Gaming Goodness

1. chris on January 7, 2008 4:35 pm

   Dan I completly agree. Sony focused to much on Blu-ray and in the beginning forgot that people wanna actually play games. The thing Sony got away with on the ps2 like no good games at launch were not gonna work on the ps3. I’m glad however to see that Kaz is in the process of trying to get that confidence back for gamers; however Howard Stringer, Jack Tetton, and Peter Dille can eat worms. Question is how long can the ps2 can keep the playstation brand afloat?

2. HC on January 7, 2008 4:42 pm

   Nice! So Blu Ray is winning because a bunch of people have a built in BD player with their PS3. Not because BD is the better format and that it is out selling the same movies on HD DVD by almost 3 times(300).

   Also, in the next line you “contemplate” how many of the PS3s are being purchased as BD players.

   But you didn’t think that maybe, some of the 8.5 mil people who have bought PS3’s bought them because they like the games on them. Make up your mind, will ya? Just a thought.

   Now, to leave the brain farts behind and coming to fact land. The PS3 has sold about 8.5 mil consoles. Its also 4 times as expensive as the PS2 and 2 times as expensive as the PSP. Hmmm, I wonder why BMW sells less cars than ford.

3. Krispy Demon on January 7, 2008 6:39 pm

   I love how people compare PS3 sales to PS2 sales. I mean, I guess it’s all Sony, but yeah, like you said, it’s like comparing BMW to Ford. The problem with the PS3 sales and their numbers is that, as a now current gen console, it’s numbers just aren’t there compared to the compitition. Even if only a small percentage of people purchase a PS3 for the ability to play Blu Ray it’s pretty significant for their video game sales. I guess it’s great if you really care about video formats that will end up being completely pointless by the time they become “standard” but for PS3 gamers it’s just bad.

   Even if PS3 sales continue to climb, if they don’t get VIDEO GAME SALES, publishers and developers will not make games for that console. It’s a numbers game, pure and simple. The cost of developing a game are just too great for them to release a game on a system if they’re not going to make money off of it.

   If you just want to watch movies on your PS3, that’s great as there will be plenty of blu ray movies to watch, but by the time everyone makes blu ray standard, I’ll be downloading my movies. Hell, I can already do it on the 360 and on Netflix as well as a few other places and the system is already somewhat in place with In-Demand and DVR systems and the like. So you enjoy your movies on the PS3 if that’s what you want, because I just haven’t been that happy with my PS3 for GAMING as I have been with my 360.

4. HC on January 7, 2008 6:55 pm

   The only problem with your logic is that you assume what is true for you is true for everyone. I bought the PS3 specifically for gaming. I had a 360 but it broke and MS wanted $160 to fix it. I had already invested about $600 in my XBox and I wasn’t ready to dump some more cash into it. The way I see it, I get built in WI-Fi, free online play, no battery chargers or anything, a free bluetooth headset, an HD player for $500. A comparable XBox would be about $600.
   I own pretty much every game on the PS3 (except EA stuff). And *I think*, the quality of games is just not there on the XBOx games. Just the amount of stuff going on at any given time onscreen is insane. 32 player multi-player. Technically, the PS3 is amazing. But then again, it all comes down to personal preferences. I did not play Halo 3 on my XBox but I did play GOW and Bioshock. I think those 2 games are the only ones I miss. On the PS3, I have looged in about 125 hours just on Warhawk. Not to mention R&C, Uncharted, HS, those are just my favorites.

   My point is that, I don’t think the logic that people are buying PS3’s for the BD player holds merit player. Most people buy a console for the games. Do you think the average person goes, hmmm, I need a HD player. So, let me buy a gaming console. As far as sales are concerned, PS3 is selling more consoles than the XBox did in its first year. Just after Black Friday, it has sold 1.2 mil. But I don’t want to talk about all that stuff. To me, the games on the PS3 are something that is just not available on the XBox. Its mostly FPS, that too, with Mass Effect, we saw the limitations of the XBox.
   Buy a PS3 for the games, play some and tell me if you want to go back.

5. HC on January 7, 2008 7:04 pm

   I would like to post something here just for some historical reference.
   A link from Salon.com : http://archive.salon.com/tech/log/2000/10/27/playstation_rant/index.html

   Please go through it, replace PS2 with PS3 and DVD with Blu-Ray and have some fun. Expensive, people don’t want DVD, no games etc. its all there.

6. HC on January 7, 2008 8:26 pm

   I would like to point out this one thing for some historical perspective.

   http://archive.salon.com/tech/log/2000/10/27/playstation_rant/index.html

   Replace PS2 with PS3 and DVD with Blu-Ray. Funny, isn’t it?

7. Krispy Demon on January 7, 2008 9:59 pm

   I don’t think any of it matters at all, really. You like your PS3, I’m happy for you. I don’t like mine. I haven’t had anything on the PS3 that impressed me. I don’t care about Blu Ray or HDDVD because I don’t think it will matter. I don’t think that the HD video is that much better than traditional DVDs. Personally, I think it’s going to get skipped entirely for downloadable movies, the same way music is still using CDs to a certain extent, but really, everyone is using IPods and their cell phones and whatnot to listen to DIGITAL music they downloaded. There are already systems in place for this on the XBL marketplace as well as places like NetFlix. Cable/satellite companies have “In-Demand” services and more than a few people record TV shows with DVRs like TiVo and the like. It’s not that much of a stretch to start downloading movies like people download music.

   My whole thing is that Sony, and thus the PS3, are relying on either the PS3 to push BD, or BD to help push the PS3… depending on how you want to look at it. I, personally, don’t think it’s good for gamers at all for company to get a console system mixed in with this sort of thing. There were plenty of people who purchased a PS2 for the DVD player back in the day, and it’s one of many things that helped the system to gain dominance. It was THE cheapest DVD player a person could get and it helped to push systems out the retailers door into people’s homes. To deny the same thing about the PS3 is just naive. I’m not saying it’s a large number because I don’t know but to say that no one is buying them for that specific reason… like I said, naive. I mean, look at a parent buying a game for their child for the holidays. They could get a Wii for cheaper, sure, but Dad could get his family a PS3 and also get a BD player for his home entertainment system at the same time. Sure, it’s to get games for the kids, but the Dad got it for the specific reason of the Blu Ray. I’m sure kids that want a PS3 were sure to point this out to their parents as a plus to getting the system also. Any kid worth their salt knows how to turn things like that to their advantage.

   As far as me changing my mind about what games I like, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I’ve played games that were passable on the PS3, but in general the games I like are our the 360. I’m glad you like the games on the PS3. I’m happy for you. I don’t like them. They don’t offer the same breadth of genres that I like and the few games I actually was looking forward to on the PS3 turned out to be crap.

   As far as the limitations of the Xbox vs. the PS3, what did Mass Effect prove one way or another? If you want to use one game to prove a systems limitations against another systems, I don’t think Mass Effect is a good choice, at least for me, since it was pretty friggin’ awesome. Maybe you’d like to use games that are on both systems that point to one system over the other as far as being a technically superior system. Oblivion comes to mind, since it was better on the PS3. Of course, there is pretty much every cross platform game that’s come out since then that points to the 360 being better. Orange Box comes to mind. I don’t know for sure, since I don’t have the money to buy the same game on two systems, so I generally get them on the 360 if I have a choice. I just never play my PS3 anymore because I’ve been nothing but disappointed with the games and services. I would like to know what game I should play that will just totally change my mind about the PS3, though. That’s something I’m almost as curious about as what Mass Effect did so horribly.

8. Dan Landis on January 7, 2008 10:07 pm

   Very good points, Krispy Demon. Perhaps you should check out my recent article about why both hi-def formats will lose. A lot of what you’re saying is mentioned in that article, and you’ve also expounded upon a lot of my points (in addition to giving some very good ones that I didn’t mention).

9. HC on January 7, 2008 11:15 pm

   I don’t think digital downloads will replace physical media. People like to wax poetic about one day, in the future, we will be downloading everything. But its not going to happen for quite a few years at least, if ever.
   1. People like to own physical media. I do not want to sit around and wait for a download if I want to something.
   2. The internet will never be universally that fast to enable downloads for everything. Maybe it is fast enough in Osaka, Japan, but here in Sun Prairie, WI, I don’t see internet speeds getting that fast ever. A DVD uses about 8GB of space, give and take. A HD movie takes about 20GB. Say an avg person watches about 2 movies a month, that’s 40 GB. Multiply that by the people who watch movies, say 100 mil just to be conservative. We are looking at 40 X 100,000,000, that’s about 4 EXAbytes i.e. 48 EXABytes per year, just in North America.

   48 EXABytes are 48 million terabytes. You see the problem with extrapolation of a good idea. It rarely works. I don’t think even Google has that kind of data and you are expecting it to be streamed, I say, not gonna happen.

   3. OK, so I will bite. I will pay $30 for something I don’t own. And I buy maybe 1 movie a month, or 1 movie every 2 months, fair enough? That means I am about $200 every year for something I don’t have ownership, not only physical, but also in the form of DRM. Over my lifetime, I don’t think anyone is going to pay thousands of dollars by way of subscription services. At least I am not.

   Here’s what I think. Blu Ray will take off once the DRM on it is broken. Once people can start ripping movies, music, enjoying stuff they paid for in their own way, then HD is really going to take off. It will be streamed, but witin the confines of your own personal media server.

10. Dan Landis on January 8, 2008 2:27 am

    I don’t get it… how are people ripping movies? Wouldn’t they either need a copy of what they’re ripping or a place to download it from the Internet? How exactly is that any different than ripping straight to just a hard drive and NOT putting it on a disc that is just going to cost more money? A hard drive, after all, is just one gigantic storage disc already. Why do you need to add to that? Plus, if you consider a disc to be physical media, why is a hard drive not physical media? A removable hard drive is essentially a mini-library of movies, just as portable as a DVD. I don’t see how or why you would prefer individual discs over that in the first place.

11. Krispy Demon on January 8, 2008 2:58 am

    To your previous comment, HC. You can talk about DVD and Blu Ray all you want, but DVD was already the defacto standard when the PS2 came out, which was after Sony and Phillips dropped MultiMedia Compact Disks. If anything, this is more like if the PS2 used MMCDs as their format before that format was was over. So I don’t think your comparison with that article is accurate.

    As far as digital media, I wonder how many people purchased DAT (another failed Sony format) or MiniDisks thought that pure digital media was never going to catch on? I don’t have numbers in front of me and I’m too tired to go looking, but judging from the disconserting lack of music stores in my local malls, I think digital distribution of music has caught on pretty good even though nobody gets to keep a actual physical disc to carry around. Maybe all the kids I see running around with MP3 players built into their phones or the joggers listening to music on their IPlod are just a phase or something. That kind of thing will never catch on.

    As far as your breakdown of the bandwidth costs of downloading movies, I don’t really have an argument there. Your knowledge of that field has dumbfounded me. Though… I do seem to recall some people saying that 56k was the fastest speeds anyone was ever going to get on the internet, or that famous Bill Gates quote “640K ought to be enough for anybody.”

    I can tell you with absolute certainty that the one HD movie I downloaded did not take up 20 GB of space. The SD movies I download regularly (because, like most normal people I can’t tell the difference between the two so I’m not paying extra for HD) take about about a gig and a half, on average. It also takes about five minutes, if that, for it to be “spooled” up enough to watch, maybe 10 for the HD movie. After that, it continues to download as I’m watching it. That’s less time than it takes for me to go to the mailbox and back for things like Blockbuster Online.

12. HC on January 8, 2008 4:43 am

    @Dan
    The difference is that you cannot really rip streams. Or even DRM’ed movies (in the HD DVD or BD format anyways). I expect and hope somone would break that soon. But I don’t think an average person is going to muck around with codecs and rippers and all of that. Its only people who are more technically minded. Right now, you can’t even stream to non-approved players. The thing about the HDD is that its not portable. Today Sony announced you can just play your BD movies on your PSP without ripping or anything. You just insert your BD movie in your PS3, and transfer it to your PSP. Just thought I would mention that. Its really hard to break current DRM schemes. That was my point when I said that BD would take off when the DRM is completely broken just like on DVD’s now.

    @Krispy
    I think you are wrong. The DVD was NOT the defacto standard when the PS3 came out. Just read that Salon link. In fact, the PS2 was the first DVD player for many people. But yes, Sony has put out a number of failed formats. DAT as you mentioned, UMD, memory stick movies. I absolutely hate proprietary formats. And I am glad that they failed. Because to me, if I have a movie on a DVD, I shouldn’t have to buy it again on a UMD or whatever. But BD is different. I think it is going to replace the DVD ina few years. Digital TV (not HD) adoption is already at 50% here in the US. HDTV adoption is over 30%. Given a couple of holiday seasons, I would put that number well above 50%.

    BTW, that 640K quote by Bill G. is just a myth :-) He has said time and again that he never said that. I also stream movies off of Netflix. And it takes about 30 sec. for the movie to buffer up and start playing. But 2 points there.

    1. We are talking about HD, not SD.
    2. Even if it is streaming, the numbers I put there were for actual data streamed in total. I am saying that our existing network will not be able to handle that kind of bandwidth. At least not in the lesser populated areas, of which there are a lot here.

13. Patrick Steen on January 8, 2008 7:01 am

    Krispy: I myself own an “mp3 player”. Never have I bought a digital download. Instead I buy physical CD’s and rip them. That is the way most people do this in the UK.

    Digital downloads are for that odd song in the charts. Not a whole album. Radiohead tried to change this with “Rainbows”, and it may be taking off.

    Physical media is going to be around for much much longer. 5 years is all it needs. You expect people to buy Hard Drives? You expect people to understand that they need internet? Not everyone has it, and not everyone has fast internet.

    You may be lucky in the US – but in the UK broadband is slower – and if it’s fast, it’s expensive. Broadband in Aus is only just taking off. All of this means that a 20GB movie (the average size is around 30GB) takes far too long to download.

    Physical media will continue to flourish for the next five years until things improve. But that’s all they need, as that’s the amount of time a format sticks around.

    Why people buying a console because it’s a Blu-ray player is a bad thing I don’t understand.

    Why it’s “doing nothing for gamers” also confuses me. They can buy it too you know, they will get support from one of the most profficient and largest game producers in the world. The more systems sold, whether for gamers or AV fanatics the cheaper the box will become. That’s doing something for gamers as far as I’m concerned.

    Furthermore, unless you do market research you’re not going to discover how many of these people only bought it for Blu-ray.

    I suggest you give Ratchet and Clank and Uncharted a go.

14. David on January 8, 2008 10:18 am

    that was a great read. And I really enjoyed the comment made bye HC, Krispy Demon and Dan Landis… Its just great to be able to read a intelligent argument without the usual war of word from the idiot fanboy crowd. I will be checking out Ripten for more articles.

    PS. I own a PS3 and I bought it:
    1 for games
    2 internet and multimedia
    3 Blu-ray (at the time I was not impressed with this format)

15. David on January 8, 2008 10:20 am

    sorry 4 the spelling in the above post… English is my 2nd language

16. Patrick Steen on January 8, 2008 10:22 am

    PS. Further research shows that these are US only numbers, and that they are sold to retailers. Meaning we can’t actually say whether the PS2 sold more in the US or not at this moment in time.

17. Krispy Demon on January 8, 2008 1:39 pm

    Perhaps you are right about the limitations of movie downloads. I don’t have a networking degree nor have I ever stayed a prolonged period of time in the UK so I can’t really argue any of those points. I, personally and without any facts to back them up, don’t think that downloading movies would be nearly as hard as you seem to make it sound, but hey, what can I do, right? I still don’t think that an HD format is going to catch on with mass audiences. My point with using SD movies above is that there isn’t that big of a difference in an upscaled DVD and a HD movie, so what’s the point? Why pay more money for the same thing? Of course, consumers are a bunch of idiot suckers, so I’m sure some stupid bonus features will wow them over to the other side, even though most people don’t watch the majority of that stuff.

    Going back to music, and again, I can’t speak for the UK or AU or anything here, but MP3s are not as good of a quality as a CD most of the time, depending on the bitrate and whatnot. I, personally, do not hear the difference most of the time and I guess I’m not alone. If sound quality were the main points of consumers, something better than CDs would have caught on; but ask any Betamax owner and they’ll tell you that consumers don’t always go for the “better” option. As far as I know, even in places where their internet is slower or not as available, people haven’t jumped on some new audio format besides MP3s. They still buy CDs, and like Patrick said, probably burn them to MP3s for their mp3 players.

    I guess we can just agree to disagree on the downloadable movie issue, because I don’t see anyone’s opinion being changed. I can tell you for 100% certainty though that I personally do not see a difference between upscaled DVD, HD, or downloaded movies and will simply not bother getting a new player unless DVD goes the way of eight track tapes. Even if that were to happen, I’m already downloading my movies more and more often and I’m perfectly happy with the quality that I get.

    As far as why people buying PS3s isn’t necessarily good for the PS3, that comes down to actual game sales. If the PS3 does not sell games, publishers will not have games made for the system. A great example of this can be found right in front of you, your PC. The PC is in more homes probably than any of the console systems and has been there for years, yet it’s getting less and less gaming attention every year because people are not buying games for it like they are for consoles. That, and it’s somewhat of a pain to develop for because they have to consider different operating systems, video drivers, memory, cpu, etc. Not moving games and a potential pain to develop for… sound familiar? I mean, think about it. Games that come out on the PC get almost no attention these days, yet if they make the leap to consoles they suddenly become a big deal. With the exception of WoW, I can’t recall a PC game commercial on TV… ever really. So yeah, while every PS3 sold is a good thing to an extent, I don’t think it’s enough if people aren’t buying the games. Some of this might just have to do with a lack of good games, but it’s one of those downward spiral kind of things.

    I’ll check out Uncharted, but as far as Ratchet and Clank… if I wanted to play platform games I would still have my N64. What you like is fine and great as long as you enjoy it, but I can’t really recall any platformy type games (Jax & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, Banjo Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot, etc) that I’ve enjoyed at all with the exception of Mario 64 (which still hasn’t been topped, in my humblest opinion) and Conker’s Bad Fur day. The latter of which I think I may have only enjoyed because it was a pretty raunchy game for it’s time, even more so on the N64.

18. Patrick Steen on January 8, 2008 1:56 pm

    Krispy Demon: You say this “Why pay more money for the same thing?”. I say that the price difference is minimal with a newly released film.

    You’ll also see that when all the studios put their strength behind one format, that they will push it as hard as they can, starting to support DVD’s less. This means the prices will be dropped significantly and deals will start to come out (as they already have).

    The ability to upscale DVD’s only comes with a Blu-ray/HD-DVD player – so if these consumers have the player, and the price of a DVD and Blu-ray is the same/similar (with more features – internet, interactivity, PiP) you’ll see people go “Oh hell I’ll just get the Blu-ray for a few more pounds”.

    What will make one of these formats win is the support it gets and the reduction in price. It also depends on HDTV buyers. If you can afford to buy an HDTV then you’re going to buy a blu-ray/HD-DVD player…and you’re going to buy the discs they’re made for as long as the price is comparable to buying it on DVD.

    Another thing to mention is the coating on Blu-ray discs – they said DVD’s were indestructible but they get scratched horribly. Blu-ray’s don’t suffer this problem. If this gets out – people will see more value in these discs.

    You’re missing out if you think upscaled DVD’s look anywhere near as good as a Blu-ray/HD-DVD. They don’t. By a long shot. Owning Casino Royale, the picture quality is immense – and the quality is improving. If you want to see the difference then you’ll want to buy Pirates or Blue Planet. It’s very easy to see and it does blow you away.

    Digital Download is the future – but sadly not everyone lives in cities, or has fast internet. Also it’s not user friendly – unless you know what you’re doing you’re not going to understand how it works.

    If you’re not a fan of platformers then I can’t recommend Ratchet to you. But check out our review. We gave it 9.8/10 – only matched by COD4 last year.

19. Dan Landis on January 8, 2008 3:01 pm

    “Why pay more money for the same thing”. HC was talking about ripping movies. To rip a movie, you need to actually have that movie first, whether you “borrow” it from the Internet, download it from a pay site, get a friend’s copy, rent it, or actually buy it. If you get it from the Internet, or if you have burning software that requires you to copy data to your hard drive first, then you basically have a copy of the movie right there on your hard drive. You have the movie. You own a physical copy. It’s right there. Why then pay the EXTRA money to buy a burnable disc to copy it to? It’s redundant. It’s also significantly more expensive to burn discs if you get the movie for free (borrowed from a friend) or for cheap (renting it). Of course, those options require you to have a drive capable of reading the discs in the first place, so that really makes it a moot point. In this case, I’ll agree with Krispy Demon in saying HD doesn’t look that good to me anyways, ha ha ha.

    As far as what you said about upscaling, that’s not entirely correct. You don’t need a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray drive to upscale DVDs. The 360 does it with its regular old DVD drive. It even upscales movies streamed from your PC.

20. chris on January 8, 2008 4:34 pm

    I think Krispy Demon and HC have summed it up. It all comes down to prefrence on the gaming front, I also prefer the 360 over the ps3 at the moment. But to say digital distribution is not the future as Krispy put it is naive. For example Patrick where u buy physical cd’s and rip them to your ipod where I’m from people do the exact opposite. Most folks I know download a complete LP onto their pc and rip to a cd-r. The masses are moving on to the digital age. Ipod, zunes, and mp3 players are becoming the norm on the music side.
    When it comes to the movie side I don’t know what will happen but with the technology of storage space steadily expanding who knows. I don’t think neither storage space nor bandwith will be a problem in the future. Where I work; time warner cable we have already moved on to Terabyte HD’s in our cable plants and I’m not sure how much bandwith were using now, but if Microsoft can compress a movie like 300 down to 3gb in 720p I’m sure 1080p movies can be compressed as well. The physical media will not go anywhere as people like me will continue to buy movies as collectible items etc,. but I think movies will follow music in terms of common use most people will be digital or stick with dvd on the movie side like they stick with cd on the music side…..

21. Patrick Steen on January 8, 2008 5:06 pm

    Chris:

    “But to say digital distribution is not the future as Krispy put it is naive.”

    I don’t think anybody said it wasn’t. The question is, how far into the future. And even, is there room for both?

    “But if Microsoft can compress a movie like 300 down to 3gb in 720p” You’re not watching HD with that much compression. The whole point of HD is to avoid compression as much as possible.

    It’s hard to predict the time line of this, but in my eyes this digital distribution is not going to happen for a few more years. All in all, it’s predictions we can all make. I think we’ll find out pretty soon. Very interesting topic and thanks for creating an interesting discussion.

22. Dennis on January 8, 2008 11:43 pm

    Holy crap, hate to change the subject and stuff, but if Sony wants me to purchase a PS3, they had better come up with something cool and different. A PS2 on Steroids isn’t going to cut it.

    I pwned(LOL, i’m ROTF right now!!) a PS and a PS2 and loved them. BUT…Microsoft did something special that worked and was/is awesome.

    So far, Xbox 4 life! Of course, until something better comes along.

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