PS3's now meeting demand (1 Viewer)

[Neil Joseph]

Done re: the title change. I thin at this time it is more appropriate.

 

[ppltd]

Carlo, I have no 'narrow' view on what the PS3, or for that matter, the 360 is. I neither said nor even remotely implied what you have stated. I have neither implied nor called, nor would I ever insult any purchaser of the PS3. The PS3 does make a fine BD player indeed. But to look at the PS3 as anything other than a game console first, and what it being purchased for as it's primary function is rather short sighted. Even Sony primary marketing focus of the PS3 is the gamming world. If it fails as a gamming system, it will not matter that it plays BD disks or not.

The buyers represented in this forum, an HT forum, are the smallest of the market for the PS3, and will continue to be for some time to come. For Sony's sake, it had better be. As much money as there is to be made by Sony in the BD technology, the gamming devision needs content sales (games, not movies) to cover the losses of the hardware.

If the only use, or for that matter, the primary use of the PS3's becomes a BD player, the likelyhood of fiscal recovery for Sony's investment in the PS3 gets pushed out.

By the way, I did get a Wii for my Grand daughter, and own a 360 myself. My XA2 and Samsung are my primary HD and BD content players. My HD Add-on for the 360 has been deligated down to a novelty item since I hooked up my Toshiba, even though I still use the Media Center extentions in the 360 to expand my media server funtionality.

 

[Carlo_M]

The beauty of the PS3 situation is it is not an either/or situation as you're trying to make it out to be.

The fact that it plays BD is helping to sell it now, while game support is very weak. So even though they're losing money on hardware, they're making some of it back in BD movie sales (and Sony's had those HD masters done for a while, they only need to press them onto BD discs).

So even w/ piss poor game support, the console still sells around a million. Pretty good, considering the price point, the supply problems, and the competition from a rejuvenated 360 and a new, half-the-cost-of-PS3 Wii.

So they're getting an installed base, which will make game makers take the platform more seriously. Then, in Q2-3 (when the second and third waves of games hits, and when consumers pocketbooks start recovering from holiday spending), they'll probably get a surge in player sales.

 

[RAF]

I, for one, purchased the PS3 as a Blu-ray device and in that regard I am extremely pleased how it performs. The combination of fast response (compared to my Toshiba XA1), HDMI 1.3 output, excellent decoding of the HD audio formats via HDMI and a very nice user interface for playing HD discs (even though I purchased the PS3 DVD remote I find myself using the controller more now that I'm used to it when playing DVDs) makes it a winner as far as I'm concerned.

Am I the typical PS3 buyer? Of course not. Did Sony make money on me? Of course so since I will buy a lot of BR titles (20 and counting). I also purchased the PS3 via a "forced" bundle (7 games) at EBGames, so I seriously doubt that any "loss leader" aspect of the PS3 console applies in my case. Had I known the floodgates would open right after the holidays I certainly would not have purchased the megabundle, but that's water under the bridge. (I probably wouldn't have discovered Dark Kingdom so it's not all bad.)

The fact that I also own an XBox360 and a Nintendo Wii puts me in a position to evaluate all of these devices in terms of gaming. To be quite honest - I use the XBox360 the most. I've had it since Day 1 and have over 30 titles, many of which I've played for hours on end. Oblivion is still my favorite and the upcoming expansion pack, The Shivering Isles, which will add about 30 more hours of gameplay (and ~25% to the map area) promises to draw me in even more. XBox Live and the achievement system are top notch and another great enhancement. Next in line is the Wii. It came out around the same time as the PS3 and my "forced" bundle purchase of five games has now been supplemented by 7 more for a total of twelve. I've also added some Virtual Console Classics to the mix and I'm using the Wii a lot more than I thought I would. (I still can't get two more units for the grandkids - a "coming soon" Xmas gift to them whereas I could purchase two PS3s on the spot.)

As to the PS3, it's getting a lot of use as a Blu-Ray player but as a gaming device - I've not even opened 4 of the seven included titles. Yes, I looked at Resistance a little but the most "gaming" I've done on this console involves Dark Kingdom (admittedly not Oblivion but with some majestic 7.1 sound!) and Go Suduko (downloaded from the Sony Online Store). Incidentally, Sony downloads take much longer than XBox Live even though they are sharing the same wireless pipeline (FIOS at 20mbps).

So to summarize: I'm not sorry I purchased a PS3 at all - but that's because it's my Blu-ray player (an excellent one) with gaming secondary to me. Based on what I know now, I might have even purchased it if it were only a HD player, but the gaming is a bonus in case the format fails (which I don't think it will.)

 

[Ryan-G]

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5721

The topic was never shortage, it was units sitting on shelves...

 

[Romar Armas]

If SONY marketed the PS3 as a Blu Ray player then they're in for a wake up call. Anyone who says that SONY will make money by people buying the PS3 as a Blu Ray player and not as a gaming system is definitely mistaken. The PS3 is being sold at a huge loss by SONY. This is typical of any gaming console and the money is made back through sales of the software. However, if people are buying it for the BR feature, they will not be buying games for $50 each. Instead they will be buying BR movies in which SONY is one of the companies releasing titles. However, I highly doubt people will only purchase SONY movies. Therefore, they will see very little profit coming back.

So unless they start releasing AAA games and selling them out, they will continue to lose money. They are basically shooting themselves in the foot by releasing a BR player that is currently more advanced than the stand alone units for half the price. They are cutting into the profits of the stand alone units while generating a huge loss on the PS3 sales.

I myself bought a PS3 unit but as a Blu Ray player. I have no plans to purchase any games in the future as nothing appeals to me.

 

[ppltd]

Sony's movie division is an entirely different 'company' for the gamming segment. The profits of the BD movie sales of Sony's Movie division will not directly effect their gamming division. The PS3 will be marketed to ensure profitability of the gamming division first.

 

[Carlo_M]

Revenue for the company is revenue, regardless of division. When their hi-fi hardware sales flagged (greatly) in the 90s, Playstation sales kept their company afloat, by a great margin. Read their own Annual Reports which contained info from both companies, and emphasized PS's success to offset poor performance by other divisions and placate shareholders. I did (the place I used to work at was a business library that got annual reports from most major companies).

 

[Romar Armas]

At least they can always count on Japan for sales right? Well, maybe not.

http://www.betanews.com/article/PS3_...pan/1169225070

 

[Richard Kim]

You're right, these people were the ones planning to sell the PS3s on Ebay.

 

[Austan]

Wasn't there a thread a few months ago where Amazon numbers had HD DVD software sales at a 7:1 or 13:1 advantage over BD???

and now Hmmm... so did the PS3 make an impact???

 

[ppltd]

At a 10 - 1 BD to HD harware ratio, the increase in BD sales shows that the PS3 is not being used across the board as a BD player, and while it certainly will have an impact, it is not looking like a big one. If it were, the numbers should be much greater. And this during an almost 6 week dry spell of high end HD-DVD releases. When we are talking about as few sales of content currently exist, the 58 to 42 rate has no consequence.

Now I know it is still too early to make any real assessment on these numbers, in wither direction. In another quarter, this topic will be mote.

I do not hide the fact that I felt that a gamming console would not do much to help the HD market place, and looking at the numbers, I believe I am still right. But this is my opinion.

 

[ppltd]

 

[Jason Seaver]

Well, duh. Someone who just played the included Talledega Nights might say, yeah, I'm using it to play BDs, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. If I'd just bought a PS3 and someone asked if I were going to watch BDs on it, I'd answer "sure, why not", even if I didn't right away.

As to the PS3 being their primary Blu-ray player... Well, of course it is. They just dropped $500 (at least) on it, and I imagine only the hardest-core anti-multi-function people are going to drop at least $800 to get a separate machine that does something the thing they just bought can do.

 

[Carlo_M]

Did you come into this thread late? Because quite a few of the posts in this thread state just this...

 

[ppltd]

I can fully agree with you, as stated in my previous posts, that all is speculation until at least the end on the current quarter, by which time we should see solid trends.

 

[Carlo_M]

As of now, that isn't too surprising as the new releases for BD have far outpaced the HD-DVD discs in the last few round-ups.

I guess what I should have said is that HD-DVD, at the time when PS3 was released, had 2-3X more appealing titles than BD did. Because most of what I want is available (still to this day) on HD rather than BD. Titles like:

12 Monkeys
Animal House
Caddyshack
Batman Begins
Casino
Casablanca
Cinderella Man
Constantine
Deer Hunter
Dazed and Confused
Enter the Dragon
Excalibur
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Happy Gilmore
Fearless
King Kong
The Mummy
The Mummy Returns
Out of Sight
The Perfect Storm
Ray
Red Dragon
The Sting
Terminator 3
The Thing
Traffic
V for Vendetta

I realize that a lot of the WB titles will come out sooner or later, but Universal has a pretty appealing slate of movies and they aren't coming to BD anytime soon. Meanwhile, the BD-only studios have had only a weak slate of releases (and that's being kind).

I know the playing field will soon be leveled (or if you believe the BD side, tipped in their favor) but as it stands right now, there's probably 40-50 HD movies I'd buy and again, around 20 for BD. If the titles available were reversed, I think the attach rate would be higher.

 

[jervis961]

O.K. I can't resist any longer.

The reason that BD sales soared in Q4 is the fact that 1,000,000 PS3 units in the USA had a BD movie bundled into it. http://news.com.com/Sonys+brave+Sir+...tml?tag=st.num
Wouldn't each one of them count as a sale? I know that MS included king kong with the HD-DVD drive but that only sold 92,000 copies in 2006.http://www.dvd-recordable.org/Article3174.phtml This would still leave BD over a 900,000 movie bump (if it sold the whole million like you suggest Carlo)that it wouldn't have had otherwise.

 

[PeterTHX]

No.

 

[ppltd]

Peter is right of course. The sales numbers are for retail sales. This would not include 'movies' bundled by the Manufacturer with their hardware, and will not include the giveaway offers from Toshiba.

In addition, if I am not mistaken, the movie bundled with the PS3 was not the retail version. (Can someone confirm this?)