When Will Sony Cease Being a Hardware Manufacturer?

[Aussie2B]

Anyway, Nintendo going third party would be awesome. They seem to be against creating powerful hardware so just have another company create it and just be a third party developer. If SEGA could do it Nintendo could as well! I want Mario on my PS4 or PS5!

Nintendo isn't against creating powerful hardware. They're simply smart enough to try a different strategy when things aren't working. The N64 was a more powerful 3D machine than both the Saturn and PlayStation, and the GameCube was more powerful than the PS2. Yet despite that, they were in a far second place (or third place? Not sure if the Xbox or GameCube came after the PS2). Why invest that money into making a more expensive machine that's more powerful than the competition when the PS2 proved that you can be the weakest and still dominate? Since specs alone weren't working for them, Nintendo decided to go in a different direction, willfully choosing to produce the weakest system of the generation, looking for a different selling point, and, go figure, it worked out wonderfully for them with the Wii. Really, when you look at gaming history, the weaker systems are often the most successful. Cheaper price points, likely cheaper to develop for, they have a lot in their favor. Even before the Wii, Nintendo had experience pitching hardware far weaker than the competition with the Game Boy, and they crushed the competition with it.

[GhostDog]

Nintendo isn't against creating powerful hardware. They're simply smart enough to try a different strategy when things aren't working. The N64 was a more powerful 3D machine than both the Saturn and PlayStation, and the GameCube was more powerful than the PS2. Yet despite that, they were in a far second place (or third place? Not sure if the Xbox or GameCube came after the PS2). Why invest that money into making a more expensive machine that's more powerful than the competition when the PS2 proved that you can be the weakest and still dominate? Since specs alone weren't working for them, Nintendo decided to go in a different direction, willfully choosing to produce the weakest system of the generation, looking for a different selling point, and, go figure, it worked out wonderfully for them with the Wii. Really, when you look at gaming history, the weaker systems are often the most successful. Cheaper price points, likely cheaper to develop for, they have a lot in their favor. Even before the Wii, Nintendo had experience pitching hardware far weaker than the competition with the Game Boy, and they crushed the competition with it.

The thing I have against Nintendo is that their hardware is substantially less powerful than the competition. I've never owned a Wii but from what I saw in videos the graphics didn't seem much better than Gamecube's and the Wii U's graphics are on par or slightly above the PS3's and XBox 360's. I know it's still early in the Wii U's life but there's no doubt that the new XBox and PS4 is going to blow it out of the water in terms of graphics and will probably sell more units. Nintendo is way behind and eventually people will want powerful graphics from them. They tried the Wii and it provided something different but now the Wii U is struggling with its strange overpriced controller that's driving up the price of the system. Nintendo needs to get with the program and not think that people always want a gimmicky controller. They tried it with the Wii and it was a success but with the sales of the Wii U it's obvious that people are over that.

[danawhitaker]

Yet despite that, they were in a far second place (or third place? Not sure if the Xbox or GameCube came after the PS2).

Xbox, then Gamecube. Three days apart, if I recall correctly.

[The 1 2 P]

Xbox, then Gamecube. Three days apart, if I recall correctly.

She wasn't referencing which of those systems came out first but rather which one finished in second place and which one finished in third place during the last gen. The Xbox slightly outsold the Gamecube overall by a few million systems last gen.

[danawhitaker]

She wasn't referencing which of those systems came out first but rather which one finished in second place and which one finished in third place during the last gen. The Xbox slightly outsold the Gamecube overall by a few million systems last gen.

Then that would be Xbox, followed closely by Gamecube. ;)

24 million vs. 21.75ish million.

[duffmanth]

Consoles and physical games will be around for a long time to come. All of this bullshit about streaming and/or downloading full retail games without a physical console isn't going to happen for a very long time, if ever. Network infrastructure isn't anywhere close to where it needs to be to stream and download full retail games, and ISP's also need to get rid of data usage caps to. I strongly prefer physical games and consoles, as do most gamers I know. Tablet, smartphone, and social games will never replace the console gaming experience.

[dendawg]

When is Sony going to quit being a hardware manufacturer?

About the same time people quit posting idiotic questions on the internet. :ass:

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b328/FrankieViturello/thisthread_zpsd0e7f879.jpeg

[Bojay1997]

Consoles and physical games will be around for a long time to come. All of this bullshit about streaming and/or downloading full retail games without a physical console isn't going to happen for a very long time, if ever. Network infrastructure isn't anywhere close to where it needs to be to stream and download full retail games, and ISP's also need to get rid of data usage caps to. I strongly prefer physical games and consoles, as do most gamers I know. Tablet, smartphone, and social games will never replace the console gaming experience.

A physical game is not the same thing as an unlocked physical game. Your problems with ISPs and network infrastructure are easily overcome by just selling someone a physical disc containing the game and then requiring them to connect to a server for a few seconds to activate it. That's the bigger threat to collectors IMHO as that already occurs on the PC side and consoles are definitely next.

[Aussie2B]

The thing I have against Nintendo is that their hardware is substantially less powerful than the competition. I've never owned a Wii but from what I saw in videos the graphics didn't seem much better than Gamecube's and the Wii U's graphics are on par or slightly above the PS3's and XBox 360's. I know it's still early in the Wii U's life but there's no doubt that the new XBox and PS4 is going to blow it out of the water in terms of graphics and will probably sell more units. Nintendo is way behind and eventually people will want powerful graphics from them. They tried the Wii and it provided something different but now the Wii U is struggling with its strange overpriced controller that's driving up the price of the system. Nintendo needs to get with the program and not think that people always want a gimmicky controller. They tried it with the Wii and it was a success but with the sales of the Wii U it's obvious that people are over that.

Nintendo may have other problems going on with the Wii U, but the mere fact that its competitors will be more powerful isn't enough to do it in, as history has proven. There's a lot more to selling systems than specs.

[WCP]

The other day I was thinking that people aren't going to want to download 20 gig games.(or bigger). Physical media has it's place, because until the internet connections are lightning fast with unlimited bandwidth, it's always going to be an issue downloading those huge games.

As a guy that has been playing PC games for awhile now, I wonder what I'm going to do when all the games are 20 gigs or more ? I'll be downloading those damn things for days lol. I have AT & T Uverse, and I think they have a 250 cap. The wife watches Netflix 24/7, so i wonder if I'll be bumping on the cap soon...

[dendawg]

Nintendo may have other problems going on with the Wii U, but the mere fact that its competitors will be more powerful isn't enough to do it in, as history has proven. There's a lot more to selling systems than specs.

This....go look backwards...the most powerful system has NEVER won their generation, sales-wise.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

The other day I was thinking that people aren't going to want to download 20 gig games.(or bigger). Physical media has it's place, because until the internet connections are lightning fast with unlimited bandwidth, it's always going to be an issue downloading those huge games.

As a guy that has been playing PC games for awhile now, I wonder what I'm going to do when all the games are 20 gigs or more ? I'll be downloading those damn things for days lol. I have AT & T Uverse, and I think they have a 250 cap. The wife watches Netflix 24/7, so i wonder if I'll be bumping on the cap soon...

The reality of that situation is that ISP's are going to have to bump up (or ideally do away) with these silly arbitrary "caps" the same way that telecom companies largely did away with timed charges for local/domestic calling and dial-up internet service providers in the 90s did away with timed login fees.

Once that occurs companies that want to put large gig software up for download will need to allow for creative solutions like allow consumers to download their games days before release date (locked of course), in the background or with the system in a standby mode (things that PCs and smart devices do respectively and that Sony have presented as network options for the PS4).

[Berserker]

The other day I was thinking that people aren't going to want to download 20 gig games.(or bigger). Physical media has it's place, because until the internet connections are lightning fast with unlimited bandwidth, it's always going to be an issue downloading those huge games.

As a guy that has been playing PC games for awhile now, I wonder what I'm going to do when all the games are 20 gigs or more ? I'll be downloading those damn things for days lol. I have AT & T Uverse, and I think they have a 250 cap. The wife watches Netflix 24/7, so i wonder if I'll be bumping on the cap soon...

We're pretty much already there in the PC world though, aren't we? Or damn close to it anyway. Battlefield 3 is about 20gb, with the Premium Edition that throws in all the DLC it's nearly 30. Witcher 2 Enhanced is about 20. DA:O Ultimate is 24. I don't have many recent big-budget games, but it seems like 15-20gb is pretty much standard now.

Luckily these bigger downloads aren't a major problem for me anymore. I have a 7mb connection, pretty average (or probably below average these days). Usually I just start it up in the morning and by the time I get home from work it's good to go. Not instantaneous by any means, but to me it still seems extremely convenient. This might be due to the fact that I came to this from satellite, where I only had a window from 2am-7am in which I could download at 122kb/s. At 2gb a night, it'd literally take a week to download a 14gb game. Under those kinds of circumstances, a console with no physical media and games up to twice as big would be painful to say the least.

[WCP]

We're pretty much already there in the PC world though, aren't we? Or damn close to it anyway. Battlefield 3 is about 20gb, with the Premium Edition that throws in all the DLC it's nearly 30. Witcher 2 Enhanced is about 20. DA:O Ultimate is 24. I don't have many recent big-budget games, but it seems like 15-20gb is pretty much standard now.



Yeah... The biggest game I have is almost 13 gigs, Crysis 2 maximum edition. I also have Rage, but ended up getting the physical game from Newegg for 5 bucks. I think Rage is like 20 gigs, so it must be on multiple DVD's (I still haven't opened it).

I have a Playstation Plus membership, and one of the newest free games they have is Vanquish, and I was going to download the thing but it's 12 gigs, and I'm sure I'll want to play it at some point, but for some reason, I just don't like downloading these big arse files, wily-nily. I mean, if Vanquish was like 6 gigs, I wouldn't even have thought twice about it, but for some reason when the files are like above 8 gigs, I tend to only download them if I feel like I really, really need to have it.

90 percent of the PC games on my hard drive are under 8 gigs.

[Gameguy]

I think our cap is 60GB per month of bandwidth, sometimes if I download a lot I might use a bit over half of that. I'm not going to bother downloading any PC game or software 20GB in size, that's more than downloading an entire TV series.