Shooting first: what it means for Sony to go first into next-gen
What does it mean for Sony to announce its next console before Microsoft? What does that bode for the PS4 and the next Xbox?
As many Star Wars fans know, shooting first is quite a big deal. Many believe that by releasing Xbox 360 a year before its competitors, Microsoft was able to thrust the brand from third place to second place, only behind Nintendo's massively successful Wii. PlayStation 2 also launched a year before the Gamecube and Xbox--outselling both of these consoles combined. One generation prior, PS1's year-long advantage had it outselling the late-coming N64 by more than a 3-to-1 margin. Given those numbers, it's no surprise that companies want to make sure they are not left behind in the console race. These transitions give every manufacturer a huge opportunity, as previous success does not guarantee future returns. The top execs at Sony are all very aware of this reality: it only took one console--PS3--for Sony's plummet from first place to last place. It only took one console--Wii--for Nintendo to nearly quadruple its footprint.
Sony's stock has plummeted over the past five years
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Shacknews
replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Shooting first: what it means for Sony to go first into next-gen.
What does it mean for Sony to announce its next console before Microsoft? What does that bode for the PS4 and the next Xbox?-
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we all do, son...
we all do. -
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I read that as Sega first instead of Sony and had to do a triple-take.
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regardless of who goes first, if they take out used games, I'm done with consoles. DONE
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I really doubt the publishers will go along with that. I think they'd need a huuuuge backlash before they'd consider enabling steam like sales on consoles.
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Will you bet me money you won't buy a Sony or MS console?
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Serious question. Since weve seen how similar the hardware between these 2 devices are. (Ps4 and xbox720). How much collusion is there? Has the competition officially stagnated this generation? Sony and microsoft are of course trying to expand their marketshare, but the risk involved in trying to push the envelope not going to be worth the reward?
Im simewhat scares these consoles will be duds. Not in terms of popularity, but in terms of advancing the genre farther. Any reading on what these things theoretically push? Any indication towards advanced controls beyond "controller" or kinect-type stuff? Maybe add keyboard mouse controls for fps?-
The similarity and parity of the two consoles should benefit the generation. Complex new architectures and new methods of control input don't help advance gaming and if anything stagnates it. That's because developers have the throw more resources into building new or and updating engines, then having specialized teams for each platform which costs money. Then you have the new control inputs which usually result in shitty content built around the controller.
Hopefully with X86 based machines that are very similar, these companies can focus on game content instead which is where real improvement will come from. -
I'm more concerned that their similarity could come back to haunt the two giants. Gabe Newell is convinced that Apple is going to redo Apple TV and it will push these two consoles out of the living room.
I think MS and Sony are concerned about Apple's entrance as well. Sony's addressing it by going early. MS has been addressing it by adding multimedia functionality and the Kinect feature suite. It'll be interesting to see if either of them can survive. Hopefully they can do enough to keep Apple from taking control of all aspects of media.-
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That would be fine for casual games, but that sounds worse than the WiiU controller for anything else.
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what's taking so long to get this strategy off the ground? The AppleTV has been a slow moving project for years now, what's the wait?
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but Siri came out like 2 years ago now right? There was/is a huge opening for an iOS device plus app store for your TV and that space is just filling up more and more while Apple continues to pretend AppleTV is a hobby. The lack of voice/gesture recognition is hardly a ship stopper (obviously, since AppleTV exists). The real problem is its not a big money maker at $99 with no contracts attached.
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We haven't really seen anything yet.
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AMD won out like gangbusters this gen, I'm sure that had something to do wtih it.
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Seems like they took the simple way out on these hardware designs. On the plus side that suggests at least that these consoles will be easy to develop for / standardized. On the downside, it's hard to call their consoles that groundbreaking when it's literally going to be a current low/mid range PC in a living room form factor.
Plus the PC side of things has absolutely exploded. Will there be humble bundle on consoles? hell no. steam sales? hell no. kickstarter? of course not. There might be moves to imitate or adopt but it's hard to deny the PC audience is seeing a support right now that's long been missing, and so the excitement does go that way to some degree.-
True, i just feel like things have stagnated. My perpetual cynicism seems to have arupted last 3 or 4 years. I dont see videos or screenshots that blow me away like i used to.
I want to look forward to killer games, features and non-gimmicky innovation. Its out there, just hard to fins. Lets hope these next couple years we see some cool stuff :) -
In the past, with mid-range PC hardware I would still expect the consoles to look better than PC's for a year or two simply because they don't have the OS overhead. Both of these consoles will now have their own light OSes in the XMB and Dashboard, so I'm not sure that this generation will be similar.
The most important PC thing that I think Sony/MS have to support is F2P. If they don't, and continue with their archaic, difficult to maintain, and expensive content production systems, I think that the PC makes them irrelevant within a few years. You can buy a good, mid-range PC in a nice living room form factor for $500, and they're going to have to compete against that with Valve's muscle behind it.-
I'm pretty sure the current console generation all have proper operating systems already. It sounds like you're implying that they don't.
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but consoles have non trivial multi purpose OSes already, and on 360 there's at least one F2P game today (Happy Wars)
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wait...what?
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Microsoft from third to second? Not quite. Xbox outsold the GameCube:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_(sixth_generation)#Worldwide_sales_standings
Just a little nitpick.
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Actually, Wikipedia tells me the PS3 has now outpaced the 360 in worldwide sales, so arguably MS is last now, though a clear second in the USA.
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Where are you seeing that? I am seeing the 360 ahead of total worldwide sales http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_%28seventh_generation%29#Sales_standings
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You're right, my mistake. I got the numbers flipped somehow.
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It's because the lists for all the other generations are in order of sales from most to least, but for some reason they have the PS3 listed above the 360 in that one.
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"only", yup, only the little ol' US, where we like maple syrup with our bacon
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and they're still behind worldwide...i know you desperately want to write off the US but as a market, there's 4.2 million PS3s, WIIs AND 360s in aus. and 80 million in the US.
your market doesn't matter. europe, japan, US. and in those three, while the PS3 is ahead in two, it's behind overall, so US obviously matters the most.
i have a PS3. i just don't think it's some noble thing.-
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How do I /desperately/ want to write off the US market? Oh shacknews (or should I say EvilDolemite to be honest)
The US Market represents only 1/3 of all the Xbox sales, regardless of the big win in the USA, the fact is Sony is doing quite well internationally and we're missing the big Christmas sale data for the PS3 to boot AND the 360 was far more notorious for breaking down, I'd be quite comfortable believing at least 2 or 3 million of the 360 sales were to replace old ones.
I'd say, all in all - Sony has done a bang up job of catching up from far behind.-
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True, never would've thought that Sony could pull that off.
They needed a reality check after their smug phase at the end of the ps2 era though.-
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Yup and they got spanked for it, but they've been pretty humble recently.
Obviously i'm predicting wildly here, but I think its interesting, I can't help but feel MS is going to fumble the traditional gaming market by focusing on Kinect and other non-traditional gaming features next time round. If so it will be interesting how nearly every new company to the industry goes through a period of over confidence that costs them the market.-
If Microsoft actually do have a 'micro projector' which projects half the game around my entire living room (and it has an incredibly short throw for my small apartment somehow) I'm at least quite interested.
Also I don't think they will actually fuck up the hardcore market.
Ultimately though, one thing people said years ago which I didn't get when I was new to consoles and too focused on specs and technology and gadgets, it's all about the games
Games games games games - Chad Warden was on the money - the 360 has almost nothing of interest to me, which is pretty fucking sad considering how popular it is. Whereas the PS3 has just such great unique games. I expect I'll likely be getting a PS4 and again, skipping the MS console.-
I can only see Forza and coop Halo keeping me interested in the next Xbox.
Not many PlayStation exclusives that excite me either though, mostly single player games I'd play for a weekend or two.
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Catching up or not, sales wise the PS3 still has to be viewed as an abject failure from Sony's previously overwhelmingly dominant spot on top of the previous 2 generations. There's a lot of good stuff on the PS3 that is more than worth the price of admission now and the increase in market share shows that.
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Well during the ps2 era there really wasn't a proper competitor. Dreamcast was already on its knees. The gamecube had almost zero 3rd party support. And the xbox wasn't really taken seriously at first by anyone apart from a small section of American gamers. The ps2 just stomped through and picked up the pieces.
Lets not forget this seems to happen a lot in this industry. Massive dominance in one generation rarely translates to guarantees for the next round.
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Its funny to see how defensive all the Americans got because you used the word "only" in the same sentence as America.
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Seemed like that to me, but of course i fully expect to be shack piled for even suggesting such a thing.
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You need a deeper, better definition of winning than hardware sales.
If for example 360 made more profit per piece of hardware, generated more revenue from games sales, and generated more revenue from digital sales (xbla vs psn, live gold vs psn plus) and sold only a few less pieces of hardware then it would be silly to say that PS3 is winning.
I don't know the answer to any of those questions. None of us do. I'd take a pretty decent educated guess that all of them are in 360's favor though.
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Ah, I see. I was just looking at units sold, but arguably the more meaningful statistic would be profit/loss.
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Where's the proof that the Wii was the least used?
If you're thinking of Nielsen, don't. They're pretty bad at this, but I do remember them saying that the Wii got less playtime than everyone else at one point and then the following day they said.. "oops. We were wrong."
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23143#.URnyDSoqZ8E -
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