By DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI
TOKYO -- For most of this year, Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 videogame console seemed finally to be taking off after a slow start. The PS3, trailing Nintendo Co.'s Wii and Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 consoles, was closing in on the No. 2 Xbox 360, with new games and quarterly sales growth at twice the speed of last year.


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Sony CEO Howard Stringe, seen in June, committed to making the games division profitable after a heavy investment in the PlayStation3.
But early results from this holiday season aren't promising. U.S. sales of the PS3 fell 19% last month from a year earlier, while sales doubled for the Wii console and rose 8% for the Xbox 360, according to research firm NPD. Analysts say they expect PS3 sales for this month to be flat or lower than last year, while sales for its rivals are likely to rise. And Sony may not reach its goal of selling 10 million PS3 consoles in the fiscal year through March, analysts say.

The sales decline is a heavy blow to Sony, which was banking on the videogame division to provide a bright spot as its core electronics business is hit by the global economic downturn. Sony in May forecast that its games division would turn a profit this fiscal year after two years of losses since launching the PS3 in 2006. Meanwhile, poor sales of television sets and digital cameras are forcing the company to lay off thousands of staff and close factories.

Sony's strategy of selling a pricey game machine with advanced features and cutting-edge components appears to be backfiring as a deepening recession has U.S. consumers more price sensitive than ever.

If Sony doesn't close the gap with its rivals, it could risk making the PS3 an afterthought to game publishers, who focus most of their resources on the machines with the most users. At the end of September, the Wii had a wide lead with nearly 35 million units sold since its launch in 2006 compared with about 22 million Xbox 360 consoles and 17 million PS3 machines. Nintendo last month sold 2 million Wii machines in the U.S., while Microsoft sold 836,000 Xbox 360s and Sony sold 378,000 PS3s, according to NPD.

Sony said earlier this month that it was happy with the "strong momentum" of the PS3 and focused on the machine's 60% rise in the year-to-date sales. A spokesman at Sony's game division declined to comment further, saying it is working hard to close the quarter strong.

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Discuss: Is it too late for the PS3?A key factor behind the decline in sales may be the PS3's high price. At $399, the entry-level PS3 model costs at least $150 more than the Wii or the least expensive Xbox 360. Sony emphasizes that the PS3 comes with a Blu-ray high-definition video player and an 80-gigabyte hard drive, features not available with the Wii or Xbox 360.

Microsoft cut Xbox 360 prices in early September and started bundling games with the most basic console for $199. Nintendo has maintained the Wii's initial $249 price, but sales are rising now that it has overcome an early supply shortage.

Part of Sony's strategy hinged on selling the PS3 as a relatively inexpensive Blu-ray player. But prices of Blu-ray players have fallen so sharply recently -- new players are available for less than $200 -- that it's possible to buy a Blu-ray player and an Xbox 360 for less than a PS3. Meanwhile, the economic downturn has cooled sales of flat-screen TV sets and Blu-ray players this holiday season.

Industry watchers say they were surprised Sony didn't cut PS3 prices to boost sales before the holidays. One reason may be Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer's commitment to making the games division profitable after heavy investment in the PS3 machine. Console makers hope to eventually recoup development investment with game sales and production cost reductions. Sony is still losing money on every PS3 it sells at $399, so a price cut could push the games division back into the red, analysts say.

"With Stringer saying, 'We will be profitable,' you can't cut price," says Michael Pachter, a research analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles. He expects Sony to cut prices at the start of its new fiscal year in April, which could help boost sales.

Sony also is suffering from a lack of attractive titles that are exclusive to the PS3. Microsoft has hit the jackpot with two action-adventure game franchises, Halo and Gears of War, which are available only on the Xbox 360. Most of Nintendo's top games are made in house and playable only on the Wii.

Sony used to have a stable of exclusive games. But in recent years, Microsoft has persuaded most game publishers to release highly anticipated games to it and Sony at the same time.

Last month, four of the five best-selling U.S. games were exclusive to either the Wii or Xbox 360, according to NPD. Sony's best-selling game during the month was an action shooter game, Call of Duty: World at War from Activision Blizzard Inc. But twice as many people bought the Xbox 360 version.
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Sorry for the length, and I know some of this info has been put out here before anyway, but this seemed a quick read when I skimmed through it. at least I helped ps3's cause this year. The only game I asked anyone for for christmas was littlebigplanet (which has been relatively dissappointing btw). that should count for something.

FREE CHAI VANG!

YOU'VE READ MY FILE NIGGA (c) Jack 'Mufuckin' Bauer



www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

you should see these nerds on n4g.com..lol

FREE CHAI VANG!

YOU'VE READ MY FILE NIGGA (c) Jack 'Mufuckin' Bauer



www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

FOH

Had my little groundskeeper job when I was 16. Took 2 paychecks to pay for it. But dammit I was Samurai Showdown'n and Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo'n it up lol

I had no idea then that they costed so much.

I mean the games were like $200 a piece.

My brother and I are in our backyard....and he finds like this thick nugget of gold in the dirt. He shows it to me and Im screaming(im like 7-8 at the time) 'we are gonna get a Neo-Geo!!'........turns out that shit was fools gold that he had planted. Fucker lol.

nm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlcqWQVVuU

--
heterodox

--------------------------------

92.1 FM -- THE GOOD WORD //
Pittsburgh PA - Sat 7 to 9PM

www.thegoodwordradioshow.com



xbox live: Bwilkz

That kids reaction is fucking awesome though.

"Part of Sony's strategy hinged on selling the PS3 as a relatively inexpensive Blu-ray player. But prices of Blu-ray players have fallen so sharply recently -- new players are available for less than $200 -- that it's possible to buy a Blu-ray player and an Xbox 360 for less than a PS3."

is what eliminated the ps3 from contention for a lot of folks i know this xmas.

which might be a reason why the PS3 sucks at selling games - a sizeable portion of its owners aren't even really checking for games.

I think Blu Ray was a huge mistake for the PS3.

i think adopting Blu-Ray at the COST that they probably did was a dumb move.

I mean, all media players start out waaaay overpriced and then gradually work their way down. They should've expected that Blu-rays were gonna get cheaper, thus kinda eliminating the advantage of having it built into their systems

and it did that, it put blu-ray in a million homes overnight.

that move had costs, for blu-ray and for the ps3 as a game console, and it's clear a lot of the benefits they were touting originally aren't as great as they said, but, that's the way it is

FREE CHAI VANG!

YOU'VE READ MY FILE NIGGA (c) Jack 'Mufuckin' Bauer



www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c57NnbBgxaU

ain't it?

Well, yeah, it makes sense if that's the case

>which might be a reason why the PS3 sucks at selling games -
>a sizeable portion of its owners aren't even really checking
>for games.
>
>I think Blu Ray was a huge mistake for the PS3.

You're comment would've made since if PS3's games were made on DVD's or CD, but they're made on blu-ray discs; therefore the need of a blu-ray player.

Think before posting............


_____________________________________________________________________________________________

PSN= e_dub_
G.A.P. Memeber 2003

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance & conscientious stupidity. (Dr. Martin Luther King)

FREE CHAI VANG!

YOU'VE READ MY FILE NIGGA (c) Jack 'Mufuckin' Bauer



www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

The low priced blu ray players seem to be hurting Sony. When PS2 dropped, its price kinda coincided with the price of dvd players at the time and seemed to move with them. PS3 is still selling for over $400 and $500 after over two years from release. That's a problem.

The problem is the system should have started at $400 instead of $600.

$400 being the cheapest model is just too much right now for Sony. It's like the gap between PS3s and some cheap stand alone blu ray players is widening too far right now. I didn't think I'd see blu ray players under $200 so soon.

I love the PS3 hardware, but it seems like they should have waited until all the components were cheaper (then again, Blu-Ray probably would have lost the war in that case).

I guess things would have been different if there was never a format war. MS was really genius for backing HD-DVD despite knowing it couldn't win if only to fuck up Sony's PS3 strategy and force them to move earlier than they would have wanted. I'd say that was easily their smartest move since entering the market, and one of the better strategic industry moves in general.

__________
I don't like the beat anymore because its just a loop. ALC didn't FLIP IT ENOUGH!

Flip it enough? Flip these. Flip off. Go flip some f*cking burgers. (c) Kno

people would actually use it more.

all this shit about PSN this PSN that. there aint no online community. Yea, they have Home now, but there is no connection with home and the video games u own. i understand this is a beta, but i dont think they know how theyre gonna connect Home to the online gaming community.

they can only blame themselves. They wanted developers to build their own communities and even those are failing.

I know many people bought 360s due to the strong online community. Theres separate communities in each game, but theyre all part of one big ass one. plus the servers actually fucking work 99% of the time (except for last holiday season).

I think the real selling point is...if ur gonna have the same games as 360, u have to give the customer a reason to purchase it for ur system. A lot of games emphasize online play nowadays for replay value.

If it means i have to pay $50 a year for a newly designed/rethought PSN, ill do it. Just give me a reason.

Although PS2s still sell. they shouldve killed it off a year ago, maybe more. M$ killed xbox immediately, eliminating another one of their products interfering with sales (although xboxes werent selling as much as PS2s)

all these things add up and i think Sony needs to realize that they really fucked up. Theyre in slow motion while M$ and Nintendo are at full speed.

Before I post, TL;DR summary:

-XMB doesn't mean what you think it means.
-The latest company press releases have both platforms with 14m online users.
-This idea of community is mostly in your head.
-Killing the PS2 would have been retarded.
-PS3 is selling better year over year compared to 360. They're hardly in slo mo, and neither should be compared to the Wii.


>people would actually use it more.

First of all, the XMB is just the user interface for the menus. All it refers to is the fact that it uses icons and horizontal/vertical scrolling to select things (as opposed to a cursor or something like that). The 360's user interface, now that they've gotten rid of the blades, is pretty much the same in the sense that things scroll vertically and horizontally. The only big difference between the interfaces are the options available, the ads in the 360 interface and the fact that things that scroll vertically on the PS3 tend to scroll horizontally on the 360.

It's hard to argue the interface is the problem when it's so similar to the 360's now (unless you just really need an effeminate acting avatar bouncing around and waving while you scroll past various advertisements), so on to the next point...

>all this shit about PSN this PSN that. there aint no online
>community. Yea, they have Home now, but there is no connection
>with home and the video games u own. i understand this is a
>beta, but i dont think they know how theyre gonna connect Home
>to the online gaming community.

A community is what you make of it. For me, there ain't much of an online community for 360 outside of the folks on OKP that I know have 360s...pretty much the same thing as my PSN friends list. Other than having some sort of shared experience outside of games like OKP, Neogaf, Shoryuken or what have you, there isn't going to be much of a community formed within the service as a whole; it's generally going to boil down to certain players playing certain games. Even in XBL, you tend to get different types of gamers in different games. L4D players tend to be nicer than Halo players, who tend to be a lot nicer than Gears players, etc. etc. Since communication is done on a small scale on the actual systems (chats are generally one on one; parties only allow for 8 people), its practically impossible to foster any sense of community without an outside resource like a message board.

Really, Home is about the closest thing to recreating a sort of online community feel within the limitations of the system. Although the second life-ish interface isn't my thing, the stuff that they're promising could in theory replace organizational tasks that typically occur outside of the system. Right now it isn't much of anything, but it has potential and it's something different. i applaud their effort at the very least.

>they can only blame themselves. They wanted developers to
>build their own communities and even those are failing.
>I know many people bought 360s due to the strong online
>community. Theres separate communities in each game, but
>theyre all part of one big ass one. plus the servers actually
>fucking work 99% of the time (except for last holiday
>season).

Outside of a few instances like LBP, the servers for PS3 games have been great in my experience. Furthermore, a lot of PS3 games use dedicated servers as opposed to peer to peer stuff. Even when you have shortcomings like LBP, there tends to be an equivalent screw up on XBL. Gears 2 has you waiting 5 minutes for a laggy connection half the time...is that what you're paying $50 a month for?

>I think the real selling point is...if ur gonna have the same
>games as 360, u have to give the customer a reason to purchase
>it for ur system. A lot of games emphasize online play
>nowadays for replay value.

>If it means i have to pay $50 a year for a newly
>designed/rethought PSN, ill do it. Just give me a reason.

That's nice for you and those who care, but to a lot of people online isn't that big of a deal where they feel the need to pay for it. Also, despite the huge emphasis on online, there are just as many PSN users as there are XBL users:

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3171383

Honestly, if it wasn't for Netflix, I would probably just let my Live subscription lapse this year. I don't play nearly enough games online for it to be worth it, and the ones I do play frequently (SF2HDR as of late) work just fine on PS3.

>Although PS2s still sell. they shouldve killed it off a year
>ago, maybe more. M$ killed xbox immediately, eliminating
>another one of their products interfering with sales (although
>xboxes werent selling as much as PS2s)

Why would they kill a product that's pure profit to possibly create less comp for a product that is costing them money with each unit sold? MS killed the original Xbox because it was losing them tons of money and barely outselling the Gamecube (the difference between Big N and MS last gen was that Ninty was actually making money). That's not the case with the PS2, and it would make no sense from a business standpoint to kill the device prematurely.

>all these things add up and i think Sony needs to realize that
>they really fucked up. Theyre in slow motion while M$ and
>Nintendo are at full speed.

Funny thing, they're actually outselling Microsoft worldwide per year (8.4m per yr vs 8.3), so they aren't really in slow motion at all. MS has a pretty good foothold in the US compared to Sony, which is impressive...but if Sony is losing the battle here, it's a massacre over in Japan. Comparing either to Nintendo's pace is retarded; they're outselling both MS and Sony combined in just about every territory.

If you're referring to standing still in terms of what each console has added to gaming, you're wrong there too. I think where MS has made strides in software and GUI, Sony has made strides in hardware and open standards. Off the shelf hard drives, flash memory, usb headsets, bluetooth headsets, USB controllers (a godsend for fighting game fans), printers, etc. work with the system...hell, you can even install Linux on the thing without voiding your warranty. Nintendo obviously innovated in motion controls, although Sony bit their steez there.

FREE CHAI VANG!

YOU'VE READ MY FILE NIGGA (c) Jack 'Mufuckin' Bauer



www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

like...about the whole lack of community on xbox thing?

The toolset for linking up with people is more robust and well implemented on 360, but there isn't that sort of community feel you get from going to a website like OKP, Neogaf, shoryuken, 1up, or any other message board where you're more likely to meet people of similar mindsets.

For instance, I like playing with people who genuinely want to play the game for fun; not to be achievement whores or ultra competitive. Outside of getting a lot of people on my friends list who feel the same way, there isn't really anyway to play against people who just feel that way about the games, and the best way to compile that type of friends list is by linking up with people away from the console. Trying to organize times to play, what games the group will be getting next, ect. across a number of people is next to impossible from the actual service.

Once you realize that, it pretty much comes down to how many people in whatever community you're a part of own which system and what games do you want to play online.

I'd love to see MS and Sony do things to change this. There should be a group feature within the services that let you become a member of a group of gamers and have them automatically be added to your friends list. Halo 2 did this wonderfully with their clans, but something like this needs to be incorporated into the actual service and not just on a game to game basis. Some sort of built in message boards and scheduling programs (set a time to play a certain game, get an in system reminder when that time comes) would be great, too. Home could possibly facilitate these things, but they're really taking their sweet time.

I'm definitely saying that MS is doing a somewhat better job at that than Sony right now, but neither have really made anything that feels like a community imo.

having the unique experience of being betamaxed in the past, i guess the company had winning blu ray vs. hddvd as a higher priority than immediately beasting in the next gen consoles.

so they were operating at a disadvantage from a purely console perspective. and a lot of the choices they made (pushing the envelope on h/w specs) were clearly geared toward a long term strategy.

there were a LOT of gambles involved.

anybody know the relative revenue at stake from blu ray adoption vs. what they get from being 1st, 2nd or 3rd in consoles?





peace & blessings,

x.

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** i move away from the mic to breathe in