Hilarious new Sony PS3 article, "shortages will be completely eased by May" Huh?

[jajaja]

I'd actually be really curious to see a list of consoles, whether they were sold for a loss at launch (and how much of a loss) and either how successful the system was in terms of sales, or how successful the manufacturer was in profit from the system, games & accessories, over the lifetime of the console.

Not exactly what you're looking for, but i found this list interesting

[Rob2600]

Not exactly what you're looking for, but i found this list interesting

I'm guessing those are U.S. sales figures because the Xbox did not sell nearly as well in Japan.

[jajaja]

Ye, i guess so. Found it on another forum earlier today.

[chrisbid]

True, but its still way to early to say anything about a flop or not.

no, its not

the only console to ever move up in market position after launch was the SNES. every other machine starts off at their highest point in market position, and stays stagnant until new machines are released. in the case of the SNES, it took nintendo two years to catch up, competitive pricing, and sega screwing themselves to get there and the race was always pretty close until sega dropped the genesis for saturn development in 95.

there is a small chance sony can make up the early deficit, but it requires heavy action now, and they seem to be content with staying the course. Microsoft is helping out by raising their price to match specs with the PS3 (a move that would make more sense if the PS3 was blowing the 360 away) leaving the door open for sony to stick around. If MS manages to lower the price of the 360 or make Halo 3 a limited time pack in this xmas, sony will have to make some drastic moves to stay in the game.

[jajaja]

no, its not

the only console to ever move up in market position after launch was the SNES. every other machine starts off at their highest point in market position, and stays stagnant until new machines are released. in the case of the SNES, it took nintendo two years to catch up, competitive pricing, and sega screwing themselves to get there and the race was always pretty close until sega dropped the genesis for saturn development in 95.

there is a small chance sony can make up the early deficit, but it requires heavy action now, and they seem to be content with staying the course. Microsoft is helping out by raising their price to match specs with the PS3 (a move that would make more sense if the PS3 was blowing the 360 away) leaving the door open for sony to stick around. If MS manages to lower the price of the 360 or make Halo 3 a limited time pack in this xmas, sony will have to make some drastic moves to stay in the game.

First, not a single soul can say what the future brings, ergo, no one can know if PS3 will fail big time or not. They can predict yes, but they cannot tell for sure. Its been like 5 months, its nothing. What happends if PS3 suddently cost $300 in 1 year and all the good games are out? Many talk like the PS3 will cost $599 throughout its entire lifetime, but that will never happend What Sony will do in 1-2 years we dont know, i'm sure they dont even know hehe. We can only guess, but we can never know for sure.

So.. yes, its too early to say if its a flop or not.

[Nature Boy]

The hard core gamers lined up the night before the Dreamcast was released and bought it right away, but the casual gamers fell for Sony's hype and waited a year for Playstation 2 to come out.

Why don't DC fans ever point out the fact that the Saturn/32X/Sega CD had something to do with killing it? How many poorly received consoles/add ons do you think a company can release before consumers decide they don't want anything to do with the company?

The PS1's success over the Saturn is a big reason the PS2 hype worked in the first place. Casual gamers hated the Saturn - why would they suddenly decide that it's successor would be better than the machine they *did* like?

[veronica_marsfan]

Why don't DC fans ever point out the fact that the Saturn/32X/Sega CD had something to do with killing it? How many poorly received consoles/add ons do you think a company can release before consumers decide they don't want anything to do with the company?

Quoted for truth. I had a Genesis, invested in a 32X, only to see it abandoned/discontinued a year later by Saturn...

...and that was introduced with virtually no games & abandoned after only two years.

32X - waste of money. Saturn - waste of money. Why should I ever trust Sega again? I refused to touch the dreamcast.

[agbulls]

32X - waste of money. Saturn - waste of money. Why should I ever trust Sega again? I refused to touch the dreamcast.

Blasphemy! The Saturn was never a waste of money. I'm sure many DP'ers would agree with me on that one.

[Rob2600]

32X - waste of money. Saturn - waste of money. Why should I ever trust Sega again?

True, but what about Sony? I was working at a major video game chain at the time and customers were constantly coming in with broken PlayStation consoles. Some people were buying their third and fourth PlayStation. Why? I understand that sometimes things break, but the PlayStation problem seemed to be so widespread...and yet, people kept pouring money into Sony's pockets for an inferior product. I never once dealt with a customer who had to turn their Saturn, Nintendo 64, or Dreamcast upside down to get it to work.

Later on, many customers had problems with their PlayStation 2 consoles as well. There were tons of disc read errors and some people's consoles were actually scratching rings into their games...and yet, once again, people kept buying more PlayStation 2 consoles after they kept having problems and breaking.

What is wrong with people? Yes, Sega eventually deserved customers' lack of trust, but didn't Sony, too? I guess what goes around comes around and now the Wii is outselling the PlayStation 3 by 2-to-1.

[jajaja]

I was working at a major video game chain at the time and customers were constantly coming in with broken PlayStation consoles. Some people were buying their third and fourth PlayStation.

What did they do with the old one(s)?

[Rob2600]

What did they do with the old one(s)?

Some people asked if they could trade in their broken PlayStations, some people asked if we fixed them, and some people asked if Sony replaced them for free. I'd tell them no, they'd buy new ones, and give the broken ones to me to throw away. They were like disposable consoles.

[jajaja]

Some people asked if they could trade in their broken PlayStations, some people asked if we fixed them, and some people asked if Sony replaced them for free. I'd tell them no, they'd buy new ones, and give the broken ones to me to throw away. They were like disposable consoles.

Bah.. people are stupid They should have gotten it covered by the warranty If its within the limit of course (here its within 2 years) so Sony or the store would replace it. Also possible to fix it if the lazer is broken. Ah well, PS2 isnt exactly THAT expencive so i guess people can afford to buy multiply consoles if they want/need. Still got my PS2 from 2001 and it works like new.

[Rob2600]

Bah.. people are stupid They should have gotten it covered by the warranty

As far as I knew, Sony's warranty was 90 days. We sold extended warranties, which were pointless in most cases, but were extremely valuable when it came to the PlayStation and the PlayStation 2. Of course, customers didn't want to spend the extra $20 on the extended warranty, but would end up coming back to my store months later and spending an extra $150 on a new PlayStation.

Could this be one of the reasons why 100 million PlayStation consoles were sold?

[Nature Boy]

Some people were buying their third and fourth PlayStation. Why?

Because it was likely cheaper and certainly less of a hassle to buy a new console rather than getting the original one fixed. A sad truth of most modern electronics.

[FantasiaWHT]

Could this be one of the reasons why 100 million PlayStation consoles were sold?

You know, that's a really good point, for both PS1 and PS2. I wonder what a statistical analysis would look like that took into account the failure rate of each system? Take a random sample of current PS2 owners and ask them how many PS2's they've owned (for any reason). If the average PS2 owner purchased 2 PS2's (pulling a number out of a hat), then the market share of Sony is not really evidenced by 100 million consoles, but by 50 million consoles.

[jajaja]

As far as I knew, Sony's warranty was 90 days. We sold extended warranties, which were pointless in most cases, but were extremely valuable when it came to the PlayStation and the PlayStation 2. Of course, customers didn't want to spend the extra $20 on the extended warranty, but would end up coming back to my store months later and spending an extra $150 on a new PlayStation.

Ye, i guess warranty variates from countries to countries. Here its in the law that you have 2 years when it comes to things like this, no matter what the producer of the product says. Hehe true, its like that, u dont want to spend like $5 on insurance because you want to save money. Might not be too bad to buy insurance after all

Could this be one of the reasons why 100 million PlayStation consoles were sold?

Some of these are multiply buys indeed, but its not the main reason. If you look at software sales for PS2 its a huge amount of money, indicating that alot of different people own a PS2 (unless alot of people buy multiply copies of the same game hehe ). If people want to buy many consoles, a sale is a sale

[Rob2600]

Some of these are multiple buys indeed, but its not the main reason. ... If people want to buy many consoles, a sale is a sale

True, most PlayStation owners probably only bought one console, but a decent amount of the fan base bought two or three. That must have had an impact on total hardware sales.

I forgot to mention all of the fanatics who came into the store and bought the small PSone when it came out so they could install it in their cars...in addition to the original PlayStation consoles they already owned.

[Nature Boy]

True, most PlayStation owners probably only bought one console, but a decent amount of the fan base bought two or three. That must have had an impact on total hardware sales.

It has an impact but not a *large* one I'd guess.

Sure I own four PlayStations, but I also own four NESes. How much of an impact does that have? Of those 8 consoles, one was bought brand new by me.

(Funnily enough it was a PSone, with a screen, so that I could play in my car or whatever ).

[chrisbid]

First, not a single soul can say what the future brings, ergo, no one can know if PS3 will fail big time or not. They can predict yes, but they cannot tell for sure. Its been like 5 months, its nothing. What happends if PS3 suddently cost $300 in 1 year and all the good games are out? Many talk like the PS3 will cost $599 throughout its entire lifetime, but that will never happend What Sony will do in 1-2 years we dont know, i'm sure they dont even know hehe. We can only guess, but we can never know for sure.

So.. yes, its too early to say if its a flop or not.

if the market maintains it current trend, market position will stay the same for all three systems. as i said in my post, it will take drastic action for sony to buck the current trend, and cutting the price of the PS3 in half would qualify as drastic. a ticky-tack price drop wont help very much, as it would be easy for MS to match it.

[FantasiaWHT]

Totally anecdotal, but when the slim PS2 came out, about 80% of the ones my store sold in the first few months were bought by people trading in their fat versions.