Playstation 3 Pricing Announced

unc2701

Also interesting, now that I look more carefully: Nintendo has always kept things fairly cheap and their console prices are actually decreasing over time.

Edit: Uhhh... like I said, it has nothing to do with xbox vs ps. It does show that people are totally willing to pay $400 or more for a console.

Demiurge

unc2701 wrote:

Also interesting, now that I look more carefully: Nintendo has always kept things fairly cheap and their console prices are actually decreasing over time.

Edit: Uhhh... like I said, it has nothing to do with xbox vs ps. It does show that people are totally willing to pay $400 or more for a console.

Oh, just asked because it didn't make sense, and you'll see why...

The graphics and wow factor are a big factor in people shelling out the money for these systems. I'd like to see their inflation data. I'm old enough to remember buying the Nintendo when it first came out, as well as my brother being 10 years old having a lot of the older systems and I never remember anyone gasping for air over the prices.

In any event Neo Geo and 3DO are some of the biggest flops in console history so sales figures would have been inmportant to include in the graph otherwise it's worthless. The most popular system are in the '$400' and under category, assuming their inflation data is accurate. Not to mention it doesn't account for the graphic achievements that would get people to spend more money and all of the other advances in gaming over the years.

jdhdiggs

It also looks to me that the PS3 will fail based on past trends. The cost is too high. When you look at the systems launched close to eachother, the first system ftom that generation under $350 seems to "win" and the ones over $500 never "win".

I wonder if my parents still have my turbo graphix 16?

unc2701

Ok, just spot checked a few using a CPI inflation calculator and they seem accurate.

Demiurge

Any response for the rest of it? No? Like I said, without sales figures the graph is useless. Althought I know 3DO and Neo Geo were huge flops and apparently expensive for the time. Puts PS3 in a dangerous territory.

unc2701

Agressive much? Seriously, I have no point, 'cept that the "good old days" really weren't that different. I just threw that out there since I saw it this morning.

tommyboy

Demiurge wrote:

Any response for the rest of it? No? Like I said, without sales figures the graph is useless. Althought I know 3DO and Neo Geo were huge flops and apparently expensive for the time. Puts PS3 in a dangerous territory.

but the 3DO and neo geo didn't have a predecessor that was the best selling console of all time. the ps3 will be fine, not as popular as the ps2 but will still sell a lot.

drew spelts

I see games all the time made by 3DO so I do not believe that even if playstation "dies" it will completely disapear. So I guess thats kinda good news??? However I am not sure if another company bought 3DO or what happened but there are probably 100 games that they have developed since the actual 3DO.

cheddar

I think the Atari 2600 was the runaway hit of its generation and it cost $659.41 in today's dollars. Wow. That's a testament to what screaming kids can accomplish. There weren't many over 18 gamers in 1977 . And this was for pong...

drew spelts

amazing how a good game of pong can make you sit down with a friend and play. Next thing you know, an hour has flown by.

cheddar

jdhdiggs wrote:

It also looks to me that the PS3 will fail based on past trends. The cost is too high. When you look at the systems launched close to eachother, the first system ftom that generation under $350 seems to "win" and the ones over $500 never "win".

I wonder if my parents still have my turbo graphix 16?

Actually, the NES was over $350, was more expensive than either the Atari 7800 before it or the Sega Genesis after it, and it still cleaned their clocks. The PS2 was also more expensive than the competition before or after, and we know what happened there . And the Atari 2600 was over $600 on the chart and it was a big winner.

And I know what drew means about pong. Same thing happens solo with block buster...or tetris...something zen in there .

jdhdiggs

You missed the point, but thanks for playing...

"About $350" What's with all the anal retentive skidmarks on the board now days.

The Atari 7800 was merely an update and not that much of an upgrade so the NES did wipe it out (It was a new generation). Look into the performance generations and you will see that the first one introduced, if reasonably priced, seems to win that generations war. The PS2 beat GC and XB because it was the first out and had a reasonable price, not because it was better. XB held on some because it was arguably the better product and sold at a similar price.

Unfortunately, the PS3 is not heads and shoulders above the 360 in an apreciable performance way for the standard consumer and has a much higher cost. If the trend the chart shows continues, this could be a huge loss to Sony. The alternative would be that it signifies a new age in gaming where the gaming center becomes an entertainment hub. Here the 360 has hope of winning, but the gap in cost an performance tips a bit towards PS3.

As for the 2600, it's only real competition came from the intellivision which came out over priced. The preceding systems had flaws, those after it were not an increase in performance or too $$$.

cheddar

No need to get hostile. Seems like you also tripped up with the Playstation as well. At $400 (don't get anal...) it was far more expensive than the N64 released just a year later at $250.

Sales figures:

Playstation 100,000,000
N64 32,930,000

krabby5

tommyboy wrote:

You are 100% correct about the dvd feature on the ps2, it sucked, bad. Even if the ps3 was 300 bucks, i still don't think I would buy it. When I bought a ps2 in 2001 for $300, it just sat on my stand collecting dust. The dvd player sucked and there wasn't the games were sub-par (in my opinion). I guess what Im trying to say is that when I buy a game system, I want to play games, not do all this extra **** that I can already do with my computer. The ps2 was the only system I have paid more than 200 dollars for it was by far the worst I owned. So i guess im afraid ps3 would be the same way.

The PS2 was easily the best system as far as quantity of great games...what sort of games do you like?

wow...I've never met ANYONE who bought a PS2 and hated it...especially after their crappy launch titles got out of the way..

You must not like consoles period..so, no, the PS3 wouldn't be for you

krabby5

Demiurge wrote:

The point is that Microsoft offers an alternative, not to mention neither of us have any idea what it would cost. The ball is in Microsofts court on that one because they could sell them for $100 and it wouldn't hurt them. It would still be cheaper than the PS-3, and it would be the more popular format (at least as it stands now, as it's the only format).

I'm just saying that people aren't buying their gaming systems for the DVD players, and that's all Sony offers extra from the 360, and it's an unproven technology. HD-DVD has had some great reviews lately and it's already in the marketplace. As far as the media hubs -- XBox 360 is already a media hub with XBox Live, movie trailers, music, and game demos.

You're catching on to my point about Sony too, they've laid all their chips on the table for this one. I'm not saying it can't work, but from a business perspective I see it as one hell of a risk, but then again they had nothing to lose. It's either do something risky and lose your business or do nothing at all and lose your business. The chance of them winning is what is up in the air -- and I just don't see it, but I hope they do. The more competition the better.

I'm just interested to see how far parents go, the Sony price point is a new high, and yes, XBox 360 was too, but this is $200 more! It'll be interesting, that's for sure.

It's amazing that in all this Nintendo isn't even considered a player anymore. That's too bad, but if you've watched all the E3 stuff even the experts say that Nintendo is small time and that the real battle is between Sony and Microsoft.

well..that and the fact that the PS3 will not be limited to 9 gigs of space for their games,....which could be huge

cheddar

I heard that DOA4 takes up 5GB already. While I think most games will still fit comfortably, you have to wonder what will not get made or cut out of later generation games to make them fit this older technology.

jdhdiggs

cheddar wrote:

No need to get hostile. Seems like you also tripped up with the Playstation as well. At $400 (don't get anal...) it was far more expensive than the N64 released just a year later at $250.

Sales figures:

Playstation 100,000,000
N64 32,930,000

Right, but IIRC, N64 advertiszed the hell out of the N64 and showed how much better it would be than the playstation (Basically, it would be next gen)

Sony is trying the same this this time. Only problem is that PS3 is not next gen over the 360. Even Sony's specs are collapsing down to the 360 level, added to BR troubles (only single sided disks, cost overruns, delays, ets..) and Sony's history of missing even the final published specs. I just don't see this ending well for Sony.

BR should do better, but right now it looks like a Betamax technology.

cheddar

Sami wrote:

$500 goes a long way in PC gaming. Sure you need lots of money invested to get all the advantages the newest games offer but $500 is enough to rival the gaming experience of consoles. I doubt I'll be in the console camp anytime soon.

And the 360 has been out for less than a year and you already have to shell out more dough for an hd-dvd, WIFI, maybe a larger HD at some point. And the box doesn't come with HDMI or 1080p, both upcoming standards for HDTV. Ability to update definitely has its advantages, but it seems to cost you on consoles too.

Demiurge

Cheddar, could you be any more biased? Please, just let me know.

cheddar

Demiurge wrote:

Cheddar, could you be any more biased? Please, just let me know.

Hey, truth be told, I am a happy xbox owner and play Halo 2 all the time. I have never owned a playstation of any kind and only got interested in it when I heard they would be selling a blu-ray player at a huge loss (along with a console attached). I will almost certainly be getting a 360 when Halo 3 comes out.

It's just that some of the information about the demise of the PS3 just doesn't ring true for me and there weren't many voices taking the other side, so I put in my two cents. If everybody was stacked up against the 360, I would probably not post so much.

cheddar

jdhdiggs wrote:

Right, but IIRC, N64 advertiszed the hell out of the N64 and showed how much better it would be than the playstation (Basically, it would be next gen)

Sony is trying the same this this time. Only problem is that PS3 is not next gen over the 360. Even Sony's specs are collapsing down to the 360 level, added to BR troubles (only single sided disks, cost overruns, delays, ets..) and Sony's history of missing even the final published specs. I just don't see this ending well for Sony.

BR should do better, but right now it looks like a Betamax technology.

So I guess your trend didn't hold up very well if the first console of its generation could come in at $250 and still got clobbered by the last generation. There seem to be a lot of exceptions to your rule.

All I'm saying is that price seems to only be part of the equation for how successful a console eventually becomes. And even the US market can only take a console so far. Flopping in Japan can have serious consequences. The Sega Genesis did very well against Nintendo in the US but ended up losing because it did miserably in Japan and the rest of the world.

Here are some interesting numbers from the generation hit parade...

Units sold:

Atari 2600 - 51,000,000
NES - 60,000,000
SNES - 49,000,000
Genesis - 35,000,000
Playstation - 102,000,000 (March 2005)
Playstation2 - 103,600,000
XBOX - 24,000,000
GC - 21,000,000

And the PS2 only has a 55% US marketshare. It's a sobering thought when you think that Genesis had 65% north american market share at one point. The XBOX won't make it if it continues to have problems internationally. Seems like part of the problem is brand perception in Japan, no matter what the specs.

jdhdiggs

cheddar wrote:

So I guess your trend didn't hold up very well if the first console of its generation could come in at $250 and still got clobbered by the last generation. There seem to be a lot of exceptions to your rule.

Units sold:

Atari 2600 - 51,000,000
NES - 60,000,000
SNES - 49,000,000
Genesis - 35,000,000
Playstation - 102,000,000 (March 2005)
Playstation2 - 103,600,000
XBOX - 24,000,000
GC - 21,000,000

Cool data, Can you add $/Mips or fillrate or processing? That might be more telling.

I don't see the first part of your comment. Enlighten me...

Don't get me wrong, I hope both 360 and PS3 make it, compition is good. The problem is it looks like Sony dropped the ball in a similar way to Nintendo in the last gen.

cheddar

Hmm,

Sales data is a lot easier to find than processor data, especially for the earlier consoles. Can't promise anything.

As to the first part, it seems that your main point was that the first in a generation, reasonably priced (below $350) and capable makes it. Demiurge and others think that the price of the ps3 and comparable cabability of the 360 means that millions of ps3s won't fly off the shelves this Christmas.

Nintendo improved their machines all the way up through the N64 while keeping prices pretty low. Yet they steadily lost market share as the N64 didn't even do as well as genesis with only 32 million. Sega, although not as pricey as the ps3, also had arguably the better machine when the genesis was launched. And although it did better than the xbox, which is also arguably better than the ps2, nintendo still beat it pretty soundly.

So, I'm just saying that price and capability are factors, sure, but those factors just aren't sufficient to explain the final sales numbers especially for Sony.

Sony's first playstation started out as the optical drive for nintendo. And when nintendo balked at the deal, sony hacked it together and sold it independently. Not cutting edge, but it was Sony building what looks to be a market of over 150,000,000 potential units sold over the lifetime of a generation. :eek:

Now the 360 hopes to sell 4-5 million units by June. Then people will settle in and wait for Christmas. So where's the other 145,000,000 units going? Granted, many of the buyers will wait for prices to come down, their current box to show its age, or the games to come out that they like. However a chunk of them just might come from those over 100 million world wide happy sony customers. There's certainly enough of a market out there to see millions of ps3s fly off the shelves at Christmas. And other comments to the contrary, it's Microsoft that needs to prove its marketing department can sell a console to an international market, not Sony. The xbox didn't even make genesis numbers in a much larger console market.

cheddar

Here's the CPU processor data for each system. Make of it what you will. They pretty much fall out along what I would expect. Price/whatever is going to go down because of the great leaps in processing power between each generation without the corresponding rise in inflation adjusted prices.

Hey! I finally made Polkster !

2600

MOS Technology 6507, a cut-down version of the 6502, running at 1.19 MHz
No separate graphics processor. 128 bytes of RAM. 4kROM cartidges.
2 bitmapped sprites

NES

CPU: Nintendo 2AO3 8 bit processor running at 1.79MHz
Main Ram: 2 KB
Palette: 48 colors and 5 grays in base palette; red, green, and blue
Sprite sizes: 8x8 and 8x16 pixels
Maximum onscreen sprites: 64

Genesis

CPU: 16-bit Motorola 68000 running at 7.61 MHz
Ram: 64 KB
Resolution: Most games used 320x224 pixels.
Palette: 512 Colors
Vram: 64 KB
Optional optical drive add-on (Japan, did this ever get to the US?)

SNES

CPU: WDC 65C816 16 bit processor running at 3.58 MHz, with 16 KB of RAM
Resolution: Most games used 256x224 pixels.
Palette: 32,768 Colors
Maximum onscreen sprites: 128

Playstation

CPU: 32-bit R3000A RISC running at 33.9 MHz
Ram: 16 Mbits
Vram: 8 Mbits
Palette: 16.7 million colors
Resolution: 256 x 224 - 740 x 480

N64

CPU: MIPS 64-bit RISC CPU
CPU Clock Speed: 93.75 MHz
Memory: RAMBUS D-Ram 36 Mbits
Graphics Processing Functions: Z buffering, anti-aliasing, realistic texture mapping
Resolution: 256 x 224 - 640 x 480 dots

PS2

CPU: 128-bit Emotion Engine running at 294 Mhz
System Memory: 32MB Direct Rambus
Memory Bus Bandwidth: 3.2 GB per second

GC

MPU (Micro Processing Unit): Custom IBM Power PC Gekko running at 485 Mhz
Main Memory Bandwidth: 2.6GB/second

xbox

CPU Type: Intel Pentium 3 Processor technology
CPU Clock Speed: 733Mhz
Memory: 64MB of RAM
Memory Bandwidth: 6.4GB/sec

jdhdiggs

You need to drop the 360 from the Xbox, Cool info.

Are you sure PS1 sold that many units? I can't remember a single person I know ever having one....

cheddar

Oops :rolleyes:! I found the PS1 data on several forums and websites and they were all pretty consistent adjusting for dates posted. It probably also includes the second release when they made the mini one and sold it for cheap. Testament to third world sales? I dunno...

aaharvel

Demiurge wrote:

Oh, just asked because it didn't make sense, and you'll see why...

The graphics and wow factor are a big factor in people shelling out the money for these systems. I'd like to see their inflation data. I'm old enough to remember buying the Nintendo when it first came out, as well as my brother being 10 years old having a lot of the older systems and I never remember anyone gasping for air over the prices.

In any event Neo Geo and 3DO are some of the biggest flops in console history so sales figures would have been inmportant to include in the graph otherwise it's worthless. The most popular system are in the '$400' and under category, assuming their inflation data is accurate. Not to mention it doesn't account for the graphic achievements that would get people to spend more money and all of the other advances in gaming over the years.

not a videogame guy anymore but i remember those days. $700 for a 3d0 and games that cost $200 A PIECE for the NEo-GEo.

However, those machines were hardly multi-media capable either. Maybe it'll be different for the ps3. Although I haven't played videogames since the old days of SOTN on Playstation some 10 years ago, I might shell out the money for a PS3 when it comes time to be wanting a universal player that can cd, sacd, blue-ray and high-def. $500 doesn't sound all that bad considering it's abilities.. IF you're thinking on a multi-media scale.

tommyboy

aaharvel wrote:

not a videogame guy anymore but i remember those days. $700 for a 3d0 and games that cost $200 A PIECE for the NEo-GEo.

However, those machines were hardly multi-media capable either. Maybe it'll be different for the ps3. Although I haven't played videogames since the old days of SOTN on Playstation some 10 years ago, I might shell out the money for a PS3 when it comes time to be wanting a universal player that can cd, sacd, blue-ray and high-def. $500 doesn't sound all that bad considering it's abilities.. IF you're thinking on a multi-media scale.

Don't forget the ps2 with the dvd player, it was TERRIBLE. The ps3 will be the same way, better off getting a seperate blu-ray after they drop in price.

drew spelts

tommyboy wrote:

Don't forget the ps2 with the dvd player, it was TERRIBLE. The ps3 will be the same way, better off getting a seperate blu-ray after they drop in price.

They could possibly learn from their mistake and actually make a decent player out of the system. IMO if the blue ray player that is in the PS3 is better than my OPPO then I am sold on blue ray all together.

cheddar

Kris Siegel wrote:

That is not the reason for the hard drive. You don't install games on consoles, you just play them. You won't be storing all that data onto the hard drive, that would be way too slow. The hard drive in the XBox 360 is used for download games, additional data (like GTA4's episodic content) and saving music and games onto it. Sony's hard drive will be used for similar things: saving games, music downloads (they're going to have an iTunes like interface so you can buy music) but they won't support episodic content (not sure why but according to rock star it won't, which is why its XBox 360 version will have the extra content and the PS3 won't).

The exclusive episodic content has to do with xbox live, not the hard drive, and I just confirmed that games like gran turismo will load significantly more data like track info. etc directly onto the hard drive decreasing load times from menus to just a few seconds. No more waiting 20 sec. for the race to start or switch game chapters loading from the optical drive. I guess that's why the 360 could release a core without an HD and the premium PS3 has a 60gig drive.