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DAR
Hello Doug, I am fascinated by the console wars as well, and I almost completely disagree with your claims on this issue. It’s as if you have no sense of history of these systems. I’ll respond to a few of your claims:
THOMP
Sony’s Playstation 3, sold 82,000. The upper-mid-range Xbox 360 sold 174,000. The ancient, obsolete and supposedly replaced Playstation 2 sold 194,000.>>
DAR
The idea that the PS2 is in any way ancient and obsolete is nonsense. With an install base of about 100 million units, over 11,000 games available to play on it and a sales price 1/6 of the next gen PS3, the PS2 will continue to be a best seller for Sony for quite some time. And please stop pretending that this is some kind of surprise for Sony. It is in fact the game plan. Perhaps you are unaware that fully 60% of PSone sales occurred AFTER the PS2 was released in Japan. Also, as with when the PS2 first came out, Sony is selling it’s PS3’s at a loss (about $180 per unit). They will be quite happy to sell a great number of PS3 later down the road when they have streamlined production and get costs down (as they are currently doing extremely successfully with the PS2).
THOMP
… the real dominant console still appears to be the ancient PS2.>>
DAR
With regard to install base, correct. And this may be the case for some time. And don’t forget, the PS3 plays all PS2 games.
THOMP
This means you can’t make a game that uses the PS3’s full potential and then port it to the dominant console in the market. >>
DAR
That’s just silly. Did the fact that the hugely successful PSone could not play next generation PS2 games deal a blow to the PS2? Of course not. Your comments seem to lack any understanding of the history of these game consoles and how their life spans overlap.
THOMP
Within a year, most new games will be designed around a Wii, or PS2 technology that came out in 1999. The PS3 especially will be a sitting waste of unused horsepower.>>
DAR
Wanna bet? What rubbish. The PS2 will be a major player for some time because of it’s huge install base but the PS3 (and X-box and Wii) are the future. The same situation pertained during the last console change except for the fact that the X-box is a much larger contender this time and may grab about 1/3 of the market. It’s a big market. If Blue Ray wins the format war (as I think it will) this will only help the PS3 more. With the high price of Blue Ray players it is (at the moment) almost the equivalent of buying a Blue Ray player and get the PS3 game machine for free.
THOMP
Dare I say it? The race for more powerful graphics and bigger games may plateau, at least briefly.>>
DAR
Well of course. The PS3 is Sony’s new plateau and will be for at least 5-6 years.
THOMP
more bad news for the PS3, whose main competition is now the personal computer.
For $500 - less than the price of a PS3 - you can order a blu-ray player and burner for your PC from newegg.com.>>
DAR
As if we weren’t playing PC games 10 or 15 years ago? As if a mere internal blue ray player/burner is in any way comparable to a PS3! Good grief. And how much did the computer cost that the drive sits in? And can it play PS3 games with the level/speed/quality of a PS3? Of course not ( see below).
THOMP
It won’t play PS3 games. It will play upcoming PC ports of PS3 games, however, and games designed for the PC.>>
DAR
Right, and the little duel core Pentium 4 2.0GHz chip (minimum required to drive the blue ray burner you refer to) will not compete with the eight 3.2GHz chips humming along in the PS3 cell system.
THOMP
The lush, expansive games that seemed bound for the blu-ray disc for the PS3 will now go to the PC too. Why? Because the PS3 customer base is so small.>>
DAR
Almost all of those “lush expansive games” can be stored on a DVD. If not one then two. The size of the memory disk used has absolutely nothing to do with quality of the game (Blue Ray is simply a memory disk and much small than a hard drive). What has everything to do with it is the power of the PS3 game console itself. PC’s will probably catch it but it will be some time.
THOMP
If you’re going to develop a lush, expansive game - something that’s very expensive - you want a bigger base of potential customers than the PS3 offers.>>
DAR
That would have been an absurd thing to say when the PS2 first launched, and it is just as absurd to say it now. Sony thinks much longer term than the few launch months you are considering.
THOMP
The PS3 is already hurting.>>
DAR
As I pointed out the last time you floated this one, the PS3 sold more machines than PSone, PS2 or the X-box during their first 3 months. Also, to rebut your other complaints, ALL of these machines launched with a sorely limited number of games and the launch games are ALWAYS a poor indicator of the full power potential of the console (which is not usually realized until a year or two later). You say these things regarding the PS3 as if it is somehow supposed to be a big deal. It isn’t. These things are to be expected.
THOMP
Not quite “Game Over” for Sony, but getting close.>>
DAR
Wanna bet? What a load.
Above you said the PS3 will be: “a sitting waste of unused horsepower.” Not so. Programers, as usual will tap that power in the coming years. Mine is being tapped right now. I have my PS3 running a distributed computing system with Stanford University. I am loaning it my PS3 power. It is at this moment, as it does almost 24/7, crunching numbers and simulating folding proteins for the purpose of curing various diseases like cancer. To give you and idea of the PS3’s power, consider this. Stanford has 190,475 computers, mostly Pentium 4’s working in this system to accomplish 181 teraflops. This has been going on for years. That’s nice. Currently (at these very moment) there are 27,395 PS3 owners that are donating their computing power in this system. They are putting out 496 teraflops. You do the math.
Actually, let me do it. PS3’s, with only 1/7 the number of systems running, are doing 2.7 as much number crunching as the PC’s. And they only have them set on idle (about 30 gigaflops).
cheers,
Darrel.
ps You can read about this project here:
http://folding.stanford.edu/
An old graph from March:
