So? Microsoft loses money on every XBox they sell as well. But Sony certainly makes money off of winning the HDDVD v. Bluray war, which the PS3 enabled them to do.
But without bluray, there would be no PS3 - it’s what runs the console. What they should have done at the beginning is cut out the backwards compatibility, which jacked up their price $100 and told everyone, “Sorry - it’s just not cost-beneficial to keep that in right now, so hold on to your PS2 consoles”.
I was in a Best Buy last week and they were stacking up about 100 Wii consoles - so I think that there’s going to be solid supply for this Christmas. Regarding accessories, I don’t have a ton of games, but it looks like most accessories that you need come with the game. For instance, when I got Mario Kart, it comes with a steering wheel, and there wasn’t an increase in price (extra wheels are like $10 - but you don’t NEED a wheel for extra players). Some games are merely a vehicle for an extra accessory (like “Link’s Crossbow Training” which packages with a gun attachment).
I think you nailed it with your 360 comment - look for the titles you are most interested in, and get the console that supports them.
Microsoft does not lose money on every 360 any more and their Games and Entertainment division has begun consistently turning a profit. It hasn’t erased the Xbox 1 losses yet, but the 360 is definitely in the black.
On the other hand, Sony has lost more money on the PS3 than they made in profits on the PS2.
So the two are really in the same place.
Blu-Ray is a medium, nothing more, nothing less. It offers more disk space but slower read times. The PS3 would be in much better shape without it for the sole reason that the price would be lower and thus the install base would be higher.
There’s a difference between the 360 hardware NOW costing microsoft less than what it sells it for (Although I doubt this is true across all models), and making up for the millions it sold BEFORE this was the case.
Also, this blueray mem I keep hearing, is the PS3 still the best deal for a stand alone one? I have an HTPC and my blueray player/DVD burner cost me $100. How much do stand along blueray players cost now a days?
There have been cheaper bluray players for at least a year. While I don’t have direct experience with bluray on a PS3 I have to point out that despite the fact that many gamers claimed the PS2 was a fine DVD player when it was in fact a terrible one. I wouldn’t expect hardware built for playing games to be a decent movie player.
@Arjee: I agree that, in all honesty, a PS2 would be the best bang for your buck. I love my x360, but the ps2 is easily one of my favorite game consoles of all time, there’s just no denying it’s great library and the huge amount of great games that came out for the system. As for the Wii accessories, you really only need wii remotes and nunchucks to play most every game, though to be honest I haven’t touched my wii in over 4 months (except when a friend came over and wanted to play Mario Kart, but one of my wii remotes had dead batteries so we ended up using gamecube controllers anyway)
Recently the x360 has been outselling the ps3 and, some months, even the Wii, in Japan. This is mainly because Square Enix has thrown support behind the system, making games like Last Remnant and Infinite Undiscovery as x360 exclusives, and taking the Final Fantasy series away from being exclusively for ps3. Ps3 is losing exclusives left and right, whereas x360 is gaining them (plus Hironobu Sakaguchi, the guy who created the Final Fantasy series, now runs Mistwalker studios with most of the old Squaresoft employees. Mistwalker is partially owned by Microsoft, so other than DS titles like ARC, they make x360 exclusives). Now I’m far from saying Sony is doomed, but they’ve lost this console war by a LONG shot. They’ll definitely make a ps4, though, and one would hope they’ll learn from their mistakes. Microsoft certainly did (I was not a fan of the original Xbox, but I love my x360). The RRoD certainly proves MS is a software company, as much as PSN proves Sony is a Hardware company
XBL is better than PSN in just about every way. It’s exactly what you’d expect for paying $50 a year as opposed to it being free. You can chat with people who are playing different games, you can invite people into games. You can easily control who you can talk to and who you want to mute (cause they’re morons or just sore losers. Or, in my friends case, cause you happen to be a female gamer who wipes the floor with everyone she comes in contact with and they get pissed) You also get access to downloadable arcade games, free demos, game patches, movies and tv shows, and a lot more. The system is brilliantly designed and the whole console is integrated into it, it’s very well done. PSN is good, but XBL is MUCH better. You get what you pay for. By comparison to both networks, though, Nintendo Wifi is total crap
I remember hearing lots of criticism of the PS2’s DVD playback from the very beginning. Have you heard any complaints about the PS3’s bluray playback at all? Honestly, from the comments I’ve read in the various threads here on the SDMB it seems like a lot of people are using it primarily as a bluray/media player and only secondarily as a game console.
Stick to real complaints about the PS3. There are enough out there that it can be given credit where it actually does something well.
With the PS2 I heard complaints from people who tried to watch movies using it; I also heard a lot of people claim it was great because it wasn’t just a game console but a DVD player as well.
I haven’t heard anything one way or the other on the PS3’s bluray playing other than the still repeated idea that it’s the “cheapest bluray player” and that it’s a benefit since it plays games and movies. Even if it dumps the video properly it’ll have the same interface and set up problems that would keep any videophile away from it.
You’re right, though, bluray is a sideshow to this.
Yeah, Sony has already completely lost this gen - the price point combined with the arrogance (isn’t “good things cost good money” an actual quote from a Sony exec on the matter?) is what did it. The system was quite simply overpriced in the eyes of consumers from the get-go, regardless of whether it was actually “worth” the $500 or not by the time all of the features were added up.
Also:
Blu-ray didn’t and will continue to not drive sales in the same way that the DVD player in the PS2 did, as Blu-Ray is merely an incremental step up in quality over DVD and is something that only appeals to a small subset of consumers.
Eliminating backwards compatibility early on was a direct middle-finger to people with enormous libraries of PS1 and PS2 games, which comprise most gamers out there as each system was the clear victor of its generation.
“No games” in general, no notable exclusives or system-sellers, and by most accounts games available on both systems somehow tend to look and perform worse on the PS3 in spite of it being technically more powerful. By the time MGS4 is out on 360 - and believe me, it will be by the time this generation is done, and probably with exclusive content - it’ll probably look and perform identically or better.
I’d love to see Sony do a major hardware overhaul, possibly with the smaller chips, no bundled hard drive, a major slimming of the case/package, and (most importantly) a significant price drop by the time all is said and done. More realistically, the PS4 should aim for reasonable price, prioritize function as a game platform first and foremost rather than trying to be some sort of “media hub,” and full backwards compatibility through PS’s 3, 2, and 1.
No, the PS3 has been the best Blu-Ray on the market, because it was the only one that supported all the enhanced features of Blu-Ray. It also loads and plays Blu-ray disks much faster than the last generation of players. I know hardcore videophiles who use the PS3 for Blu-ray.
From Ars Technica:
So if you want a super-duper Blu-ray player, it needs to have some really expensive hardware, AND it needs to be connected full-time to the internet. Most of the cheap Blu-ray players out there are still profile 1.1. The Profile 2.0 players are still more expensive than the PS3. So there you go.
There is a new flood of Profile 2.0 players hitting the market, though. It will be interesting to see if they cause the PS3 sales to plummet. That will tell us how many people are buying them primarily as Blu-ray players.
I always like to jump in and defend the underdog (which I can solidly say, in this case, is the PS3), but this is probably both true and untrue.
I have a friend who manages a Blockbuster, and they were recently charged with getting a Bluray setup for marketing purposes. They looked at plenty of models, but it turns out the cheapest full-featured BRD player on the market is the PS3 - probably something to do with the selling-at-loss thing. So her store and plenty of others are using it for that.
It’s fairly similar to how Sony did so well with the PS2 - pack in a cheap DVD player, and people who need cheap DVD players will flock to it, then maybe get hooked on PS2 games. Problem being, as you said, that the price becomes too steep to make it an easy investment for any market. There were plenty of hardcore Sony fans at the beginning of this console gen who would’ve loved to have stayed that way until they faced a $400-600 price tag, depending on model.
And there are still some solid franchises in Sony’s park, tho they’re mostly in-house. Ratchet & Clank, Team ICO’s stuff, God of War, Wipeout - maybe even Uncharted and Heavenly Sword, depending. It’s getting a bit too late for them in securing studios and exclusives at the rate of Microsoft, and there are enough devs (among them Valve and Aksys recently) who find programming for the PS3 too obtuse to be worth it, while MS is eager to get their engineers involved and making it easier.
As for the OP question - I’d say Sony definitely has some catching up to do, but I don’t think it makes any sense to compare software numbers in a hardware discussion without accounting for install bases. PS3 games do sell - and consistently - but seeing the same game sell ~4 million on one system and ~6 million on another makes a lot more sense when you consider that the numbers of buyers with access to those systems are pretty similarly proportioned.
And the idea that a long-awaited game can sell over 3 million copies and still be faulted for “crashing and burning” because it can’t compare to the monthly sales of Wii Play just gives me a bit of :dubious: pause.
It’s only happened in the past two or three months, but I think this is finally becoming true. Our store has had its WII IN STOCK sign up for three weeks straight and is not close to selling out. I think people are finally able to stop hunting and start finding them.
However, the point about the extra accessories is still a harsh one - a full (remote + nunchuk) set of controllers in $60 each, so loading up for many 4-player games can jack the price up pretty easily. But there are plenty of games that just use the remote.
You should come visit the easy Doper gamertag thread! Once you’ve added “aaa SDMB” to your list, you can browse that account’s friends to find other folks to play with~
I don’t have a whole lot of active friends, either, but it’s nice to have the extra messaging features when you want them.
Actually, there likely are, depending on what you want. For persistent MMO worlds, you have Phantasy Star Universe and Final Fantasy XI, tho neither of those are really as newbie-friendly as WoW is. Going offline ,you also have loot-heavy games like the Baldur’s Gate or Gauntlet series’ and character-driven RPGs with MMO stylings, like Final Fantasy XII.
It all depends on what you like. 
I may end up buying a PS2.
I used to have a roommate with one, but we moved to different places. I’m borrowing his for now, but at some point he’ll want it back. At that point, I’ll have games that I can’t play any more. I had been considering a PS3, what with the new games and the Blu-Ray part of it, but apparently, they don’t make 'em with backwards compatibility any more.
Oh yes, it should be noted that while Sony did remove PS2 backward compatability from the newer PS3 models (which was a mistake, imo. Anyone know their reasoning behind it?) they did remove region coding which I think was a great move. I hate region coding, I think it’s crap and it needs to go away (and not just because I have US systems (NTSC-U) and live in Japan (NTSC-J). Even when I lived in America I enjoyed the odd import or two, especially considering there are games that simply never make it to other regions).
The guy at GameStop told me I could buy one with backwards capability for another 100 bucks. (499.00).
I don’t think so!
Q
Big games sell in proportion, but the PS3’s problem is that the rest of the system’s games don’t. After you move away from the Call of Duty 4/Grand Theft Auto IV/Assassin’s Creed trio, PS3 multiplatform games sell for shit.
And I realize MGS4 has sold a bunch of copies, but about 2.5 million of those 3 million in sales came in the first couple of weeks. That’s terrible for a supposed “system seller.” And it looks like LittleBigPlanet will do the same thing, with much smaller numbers.
Contrast that with Halo 3, which put up 4 million in it’s first few weeks and added another 4 in the ensuing months.
By all reports I’ve seen, however, PS3 sales in the U.S. about doubled the month MGS4 released. They tapered off a few months after, of course, but I’d definitely call it one of the higher-demand titles in the PS3’s history. Not that that’s a difficult mark to reach, so far.
And Halo 3 is an… interesting case, in itself. Don’t forget it was the “biggest entertainment day in history!” It is a solid game, and especially loved on these boards, but plenty of gamers (and possibly some bitter Bungie employees) would be of the opinion that it was hyped way out of proportion to its actual ground-breakingosity. To evidence that - I haven’t been to or heard of a single Gamestop store that doesn’t have somewhere between 25-75 used copies of Halo taking up space, and it’s taken almost this whole year for the market price of CoD4 to drop to the same as a used Halo 3. It had legs, sure, but it also had plenty of gamers expecting more out of it.
Currently, what I’m most curious about is how something like FFXIII will fare on both platforms. 
I think the existence of backwards compatibility in the PS3 has been vastly undercounted in the failure of the platform. I’d say a large quantity of those people who are still buying PS2 would probably be buying PS3’s if they were compatible and correct price point. I’d say thats why the PS2 succeeded over the Xbox and Cube, it already had a library of cheap games, even if you didn’t buy any of them. The Wii has this now too with the cube games and I think that helped its sales at least a little (or didn’t hard them the way PS3 backwards compatibility did).
I personally buy a system for the games. The cube defined my last generation despite owning all 3 of the consoles. I only bought the PS2 for GTA3 etc, but what made it better in my view over the xbox in period was the quirky games like Katamaris, God of War, Frequency/Amplitude, Ico, Shadow of the Collossus. If this stuff was on the PS3 it would sell to me, but it tends to go with the top selling console of the time.
The PS3 is still relying on franchises I never cared for to sell its console, Grand Tourismo, Metal Gear and until something “great” appears on it, I won’t be bothering to pick one up…
One thing to note is the perceived failure of consoles they aren’t that far behind. The gamecube was actually 2nd place over the xbox for a long time worldwide because it sold well in europe and japan, but was deemed a failure in the US and the UK (I’d probably have to go back a long way to provide a cite for this, but I remember reading it at the time). The PS3 has sold better in mainland europe because of its blue ray support, and obviously always sells better than the 360 in Japan. Of course it not being 1st or 2nd means that the PS4 will likely be sooner rather than later…
Please allow me (to introduce myself…;)) to step out of character for a moment and let you know how much I appreciate open dialague such as here on this website.
If you will give it some thought (as I have) you may come to realize that asking questons here might have saved you from making a mistake - both financially and otherwise.
Yes, one does need a “bull-shit sifter”, but at least one does have the option of doing that, rather than being bombarded by a one-sided version driven by money.
I may not have stated this the way someone like jayjay or Euty or so many others have, but the feeling is here, in my heart, anyway.
Thank you for this site and for saving me from making a lot of mistakes.
Bill
You do know that “You also get access to downloadable arcade games, free demos, game patches, movies and tv shows, and a lot more” equally applies to both PSN and XBL right? It’s really only the enhanced buddy list/chat feature that makes XBL any better. And that benefit scales with how important multiplaying with friends is to that particular gamer. Me? I’d rather use the $50 to buy another game and shoot strangers.
One bonus that XBL has over PSN is that Microsoft requires developers to create demos of their downlaodable arcade games, a huge plus in my opinion.
Granted, this is part of the free part of XBL, but it’s another important piece of how Microsoft “gets it” just a bit more than Sony does.