Since the PS3’s HDD will be sold seperately, it’s competing against the $299 core system price isn’t it? Anything more than $500 would be insane in the US…and it’s not like people in Japan will flock to it if it’s priced well outside their affordability range either, despite what people might think.
Speaking of which, the 360 should be hitting their 1st million units sold in the US sometime this month (It was around 850k by the end of Jan)…I wonder if they’ll announce it with great fanfare or not. :D
I imagine that if they do, they’ll piggyback it on the big announcement of the 360 finally having more than 5 games.
And let’s not forget that with Sony, we’re talking about a company that’s cut a whole hell of a lot of corners with the hardware before to get it out and undercut whoever. Other than that, they’ll probably wait and see how much Microsoft can shoot themselves in the foot before pulling out the big guns and taking aim at their own. The Japanese like to one-up things like that.
Well, for the 360 a lot of the inital shipment was earmarked for the the Europe/Japan launches that were weeks within each other…so I think it was more like 650k or so total.
Yeah, quantities for launch day were great. In fact, they didn’t even do “midnight madness” events at my local game stores, and they had leftover units on the 2nd and 3rd day after launch for people to just walk in and buy.
Resupply sucked, though. Both the US and especially the UK ran into supply problems coming out of the summer and into the fall.
The 360 had not quite a million units overall for the “worldwide” launch (estimates are like 850K or something like that), but of course their problem was that it was split between several territories.
I think there’s no doubt that the PS3 will be hard to produce in really mass quantities. Sony has a lot of CE experience but not a lot of “let’s make a super big and complex chip” experience, and this time they’re relying on a lot more outside sources than usual (two sources for two kinds of RAM, CPU outsourced, GPU outsourced, wifi/ethernet outsourced, etc). I don’t know how much of a shortage we’ll see for launch day, but resupply will be tough for the first 4-6 months or so.
Y’know, I don’t care how amazing the PS3 looks at E3 (and whether or not it’s “real playable” or “smoke and mirrors”). If they do this, I think they’re going to hand MS the “win” globally. Whatever “winning” the console war means. Usually more units shipped by the end of the 3rd year or so.
I don’t think a slip to 07 in North America is even a remote chance. PS3 is too important for Blu-ray to go that long without getting the silver bullet to market. I think Sony’s just playing things really close to the chest, which they’ve always done, and that’s breeding a lot of unfounded doubt. Part of that’s just how much more pervasive the internet is this time around. People don’t believe anything they can’t find a link to back up. And people have really short memories, because cost naysaying was happening just the same 5 years ago, and the timeframe between the PS2’s first public, playable demonstration and product launch was remarkably short. I mean, just cause you can show something doesn’t mean you should. The first 360 playable stuff was really underwhelming. Given the choice between an ugly demonstration that won’t be representative of the final product or no showing at all, I think holding off is the better choice. I mean, Sony takes flack for showing trailers, but those trailers at E3 at least lived up to next gen expectations and MS got totally blown away because their demos were running like crap on G5s, or just as prerendered, but unremarkable in ambition.
Sony Computer Entertainment spokesperson Kei Sakaguchi has officially denied reports from financial analysts at Merrill Lynch that the PS3 could be delayed by several months, reiterating that the console will launch this spring.
If Sony manages “spring” in the US, in any definition of the word, I’ll be extremely surprised. It will basically mean they’ll hit market with little to no actual marketing. They may think they don’t need it, after all, they’ve got plenty enough mindshare as is. A legion of sonyzombies to line up and buy it, and then they can worry about little things like ‘games’ later.
But considering developers still don’t have final hardware… it seems unlikely. There aren’t debug kits, there aren’t final consoles to test on. For a may date, games for the system would have to start entering in to final testing very soon. As a developer, you cannot convince me that this can realistically happen without final kits in place. For a July date, games will have to be pretty much final at E3. This would mean that what you see at E3 would have to be the ready-to-ship launch titles, and those will make or break the system.
I still find it unlikely, despite sony’s posturing, of a launch before fall. It just doesn’t add up. There’s too many unknowns, and too much quietness.
On top of that, it’s not like companies don’t refute truth till the very last minute just for whatever reasons (hello redesigned DS).
If Sony manages “spring” in the US, in any definition of the word, I’ll be extremely surprised.
Who said anything about the US? They’ve launched every single one of their consoles in Japan first so I can’t see why people would assume that the PS3 would be an exception.
You are correct. And in re-reading my statements, I realize that the “in the US” part is completely unnecessary - everything applies the same for japan.
