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380 new games coming for the PS3 this fiscal year

Sony's PlayStation 3 has been on the market for a little over seven months now, but it has not been the roaring success that company executives had once promised. Development of the PS3 resulted in budget overruns, internal turmoil between key executives and a lengthy delay for the console. For his part in the rocky development of the PS3, “Father of PlayStation” Ken Kutaragi was forced out of the company and replaced by Kazuo Hirai.

When it comes to the sales of current generation hardware, the PS3 is at the rear of the pack. For the month of March, Sony sold just 130,000 of its PS3s compared to 199,000 and 259,000 respectively for the Xbox 360 and Wii. For the month of April, sales totals were at 82,000, 174,000 and 360,000 units respectively. In May, the numbers were 82,000, 155,000 and 338,000 respectively.

Sony hopes to reverse the fortunes for its $599 console (the $499 20GB model was dropped earlier this year) by opening the flood gates with new games. There are currently roughly 150 games available for the PS3 platform, but Sony plans for at least 380 new games to hit store shelves during the current fiscal year.

"Attractive game software is the key to accelerate PS3 growth over the next year," said Sony CEO Howard Stringer today at the annual shareholder's meeting.

The increased number of game titles will help Sony move a projected 11 million PS3s during the current fiscal year. The company shipped 5.5 million PS3s through the month of March -- less than the projected number of 6 million.

"All the production problems have been solved. We are making a comeback already," Stringer continued.

Also on the agenda is tackling the huge losses in Sony's Games division. The division witnessed a $1.9 billion USD loss for the fourth quarter due to the PS3.

"We always lose money in the hardware initially, and we recover that money gradually," remarked Stringer. "We believe that the PS3 going forward will be vital to our future, and succeed."

Sony is has already found at least two ways to reduce costs on its PS3. The company removed the Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesizer (EE+GS) chip which is necessary for hardware-supported backwards compatibility for previous generation games from European PS3s. That functionality is now accomplished with software emulation.

Sony has also increased the production of the blue-violet diodes necessary for the PS3's Blu-ray drive which should drive down manufacturing costs.

Whether these lower costs on Sony's end will be passed on to the consumer remains to be seen, however. Stringer had this to say last week with regards to PS3 price cuts: "That is what we are studying at the moment. That’s what we are trying to refine."

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Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic.
By ZimZum on 6/21/2007 9:05:53 AM , Rating: 4
The only thing that can turn the PS3 around at this point is a drastic price drop. Which is likely the one thing that Sony wont do. I also think taking the 20GB model off the market was a mistake. When it comes to average consumers the Wii's price point is obviously the sweet spot. The 360 is pushing it. But The $600 PS3 is getting the "Awww hell Naw !! From prospective parents. The PS3 is and will continue to be a successful console. It just wont be quite as successful as the other 2. And certainly wont meet with Sony's lofty expectations.




RE: Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic.
By mdogs444 on 6/21/2007 9:16:48 AM , Rating: 5
I dont think the PS3 is considered a "success" right now, and not to positive that it will be in the future either.

My reason is:

Sony claims they are losing hundreds of dollars on each PS3 that is sold due to high manufacturing costs. Since they cannot force the public to buy a high priced item, and since so few have been sold (in relation to what they need to sell), there are not nearly as many overpriced accessories & games being sold, which is where Sony would make up the difference and attempt a profit.
If they decide to drop the price of the console to attract buyers - it would have to be more than a $100 price drop, because the $400-480 tag on the 360 is still a bit high, as shown from the sales of the Wii. Also, if they did drop, that means they would be losing that much more money on each console, and counting a major increase in sales of games & accessories.

Most people are starting to realize that even though there is a ton of functionality built into the PS3, buyers are not really getting what they pay for:

1. Blue Ray (and HD-DVD as well) are not mainstream yet. The costs of the movies are high, and the selections are minimal. No one wants to pay an additional $10-15 for a movie on Blue Ray (or HDV-DVD) over regular DVD. The other problem is that neither has won the format war, and I dont really think anyone cares who wins. If they offered a Hybrid DVD player to play both formats (although that would go against Sony trying to monopolize the HD market), people may be more open to the change - rather than the fear of being stuck with another BetaMax.

2 They advertise as a true 1080P HD Solution, yet do not come with cables to support it. $100 for the HDMI cable? Are you nuts, it costs them less than $2 to make it. Thats highway robbery to spend an additional $100 just to make your console do what it should have done straight out of the box for $600.

3. Sony's attitude towards its consumers prior & during the launch put a sour taste in many, many peoples mouths. If you need clarification on this fact, im sure many others here would be happy to chime in.

4. Right now, the game selection downright stinks. But even when it does increase, most of them will be cross platform games - available for 360, Windows, Wii. What is going to make people purchase, and increase sales of, the PS3 when they can have an alternative to play the same game for hundreds of dollars less?


RE: Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic.
By Proteusza on 6/21/2007 9:38:41 AM , Rating: 2
I agree with all of your points. Lets hope Sony learns from its mistakes, because I get the feeling that, at least in the console world, they dont like not winning - they arent used to it.

Their PS1 and PS2 were runaway successes, and they thought if they did the same thing but bigger and grander, then they would win.

I think the biggest problem with the PS3 was scope creep. The project went from being a games console to a all in one entertainment device, and on that road, it picked up a heftier price tag and longer development time. They dont need blu ray for games, and the Cell is overkill - a third party solution would have been fine. But its a marketing engine for them - the Cell is going to be used in lots of devices from now on, and blu ray, is, well, blu ray.

had they not bothered with blu ray and cell, and instead gone for a third party multi core CPU, they could have beaten the 360 to market, at a lower price, and scooped up lots of developer support. now they dont have a choice but to let the PS3 run for at least 6 years because they need to try and recoup their investment. less costly development could have allowed them to start R&D for a new console sooner. nintendo and MS will now undoubtedly have new consoles before Sony, because Sony cant afford to.


RE: Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic.
By ZimZum on 6/21/2007 10:01:49 AM , Rating: 1
They did take their success for granted. But you can see why. The came out of nowhere into the console market where they essentially had no previous experience and dominated the market from the start. They assumed it would continue with the PS3.


RE: Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic.
By RayDorset on 6/21/07, Rating: -1
RE: Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic.
By Proteusza on 6/21/2007 10:34:39 AM , Rating: 2
The problem is that, as great as the Cell is, a CPU can only influence games so much.

I mean, fully utilizing the Cell, we could see some incredible stuff. Better physics and AI in games, larger more detailed worlds. the problem is, as great as all that is, it still needs to be rendered on the screen, and the GPU on the PS3, while good, isnt in the same league as the Cell in terms of the advancement it represents over its predecessors. Right now, its great, but in 5 years time, it will be like pairing a Core 2 Duo with a Riva TNT - a CPU just cant make all the difference.

The other problem is, while developers will eventually use more of the Cell's power, in 2-3 years MS will probably release X3, which will outdo the PS3.

Shorter project cycles are favoured quite a lot now, I'm surprised Sony went for such a long term and risky project.


RE: Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic.
By RayDorset on 6/21/07, Rating: 0
By ChronoReverse on 6/21/2007 11:06:50 AM , Rating: 3
In one direction. One has to wonder why on a modern system, there isn't an unified memory system.


By Proteusza on 6/21/2007 11:17:13 AM , Rating: 1
How do you know that? Are you a developer for the PS3?

Graphics pipelines work best if they are pipelined (ie serious of sequential computations). so I dont think passing data back and forth between a CPU and a GPU would be very efficient.

What would the CPU do? Transform and Lighting? could be useful for displacement mapping I suppose.

Its powerful enough to make a difference, but I'd hate to write graphics code for it. If developers have to write graphics code to use GPU's and CPU's again, they wont be happy at all.


By FITCamaro on 6/21/2007 11:40:42 AM , Rating: 2
The Xbox 360s video memory runs at 700MHz(1.4GHz effective), not the link between the CPU and the GPU.


RE: Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic.
By phil126 on 6/21/2007 3:13:27 PM , Rating: 1
The problem is that Sony made wonderful hardware with no consideration for software. It is very difficult to develp PS3 games at this juncture. Software tools are slowly coming out. Since it has only one general processor a several specialtty processors (cell), threading becomes much more difficult than even on the Xbox360 or PC. And anything you write for the Wii or 360 cannot port to the PS3 without major changes to take advantage of the cell processors.


By bubbacub616 on 6/21/2007 6:11:32 PM , Rating: 3
my own (unsubstantiated) thoughts are that the cell was originally designed to it "all in one" (with the spe's working to crunch through the graphics with main code running on the power pc core) but sony soon realised that nvidia/ati had already shot way ahead of what the cell could produce with regard to graphics - hence the rather late announcement to go off shelf with the RSX. at this point the cell was already made and hence the die space on the spe's was already spent (and will largely be wasted throughout the ps3 existence - due to programming dificulties)


RE: Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic.
By euclidean on 6/21/07, Rating: 0
RE: Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic.
By mdogs444 on 6/21/2007 11:03:14 AM , Rating: 1
Then again, the most expensive video cards are just for bragging rights.....3d mark scores, benchmarks, overclock scores. Cmon, we all know this.

No reason you HAVE to buy a $500 video card when a $200 card will play the game just fine, and most likely, with almost all options turned all the way up. I highly doubt anyone is going to notice that 10fps difference - and if they do and think its worth an extra $300, then that is their perogative.

However, those people who spend $500 ona video card are in a very small & selective group, not mainstream. Same with the Wii/Xbox & PS3.


By Min Jia on 6/28/2007 4:22:49 AM , Rating: 1
It's "prerogative", you fucking idiot!


RE: Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic.
By wallijonn on 6/21/2007 1:51:56 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
How many people out there play computer games, and how many of those people buy the new high end video card because it will increase performance?


Yes and no.

There was a need for a more powerful card when people started buying LCD monitors with high native resolutions. Now the card had to work at 1600x1200@60fps because otherwise it would be muddy.

So everybody who absolutely needed to had to upgrade. Now that Vista is out, going forward people will either need to upgrade to a DX10 part or build a whole new computer because of the necessity for PCI-E & DX10.

Going forward I can no longer play PC games because I refuse to spend "another" $1200 to build a new PC. Which means that I'll have to transition to the console. Would I pay $$835 for a PS3? No. ($600 for the PS3, $100 for the HDMI cable, $75 for the extended warranty, taxes.)