Topic: Sony getting hit Hard lately

[KDR_11k]

Profit? Sorry, it don't work that way, in this country Wiis don't sell above retail on eBay, in fact Wiis with no extra stuff sell for about 40€ below retail. Also I doubt other NWRers want PAL Wiis.

[Arbok]

Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k
Profit? Sorry, it don't work that way, in this country Wiis don't sell above retail on eBay, in fact Wiis with no extra stuff sell for about 40€ below retail. Also I doubt other NWRers want PAL Wiis.

Have you tried the UK?

[MLS_man_64]

Hey everyone, saw this on Gammasutra.  What do ya'll think?


"Analyst predictions suggested PlayStation 3 shipments for the new business year will increase by 67 percent to 10 million units, benefiting from better semiconductor production yields and other cost cutting measures – such as the removal of the Emotion Engine emulation chip. Sony however has denied these projected figures.

[UPDATE: According to a separate report by financial website Bloomberg, Sony has denied analysts' 10 million unit figure. In addition, the report also cited a Sony representative who noted that the company is also looking into introducing a "model with a bigger hard disk,” though no further details were given."


BS?

[UERD]

They can ship enough PS3s to fill the Grand Canyon, for all MS or Nintendo could care; if the demand isn't there, it won't matter.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Reminds me of ET for Atari.

[couchmonkey]

I'd say Sony's denial shows that the company is less optimistic about PS3's future than the analysts.  Why deny such a rosey prediction if you expect to live up to it?

A larger hard drive seems possible as downloading video becomes more and more common, but I don't think that presents any great value until things like IPTV expand.  And even then, is it any good for Sony?  The hardware is not profitable so the company needs to sell something to make up for it...IPTV users aren't necessarilly gamers.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Sony registered something with the SEC for an 80GB PS3 model. It was speculated to replace the 60GB and the 60GB would replace the 20GB. Since this has been found out(2 weeks ago), the 20GB has been discontinued.

[couchmonkey]

Interestive...so are Sony and Microsoft going to have a reverse price war?  I can't wait for the $550 360 with the 200 gig hard drive.

[oohhboy]

I can't believed any of this is happening. A reverse price war in the console market? Entire consoles threatened to go E.T?

Seriously, there has got to be a point where, just for space reasons, that retailers are just going to say no to anymore PS3s or 360s no matter how much either companies blackmail them to stock them in such silly numbers.

[Ceric]

Quote
Originally posted by: oohhboy
I can't believed any of this is happening. A reverse price war in the console market? Entire consoles threatened to go E.T?

Seriously, there has got to be a point where, just for space reasons, that retailers are just going to say no to anymore PS3s or 360s no matter how much either companies blackmail them to stock them in such silly numbers.

Agree.  Storage space costs money.

[Flames_of_chaos]

I think it would be more simpler just to change the hard drive in the PS3 considering that its easy to replace the 20 or 60GB SATA HDD considering its not a specific type of HDD like for 360 you need to buy 360 specific HDDs

[S-U-P-E-R]

Dropping by to post that Sony is letting some people go in Europe because consoles aren't moving. Also, ukresistance is a fantastic site.
http://spong.com/article/12304/Sony_Europe_Success_Means_160_Staff_To_Go/?d=200704171124&cb=503

[oohhboy]

I believe staff were going to be let go anyway regardless of how well the PS3 did. Stringer has been slimming down and "Retiring execs" ever since he got there in his quest to turn the company around. Sure they got 100 million pounds revenue from the UK, but considering the loss, that is a ton of money sent to the fireplace for warmth. They can't decrease the price, so they have to improve their margins.

I find that the double talk that all the execs are constantly engaged in more disconcerting. No matter how intelligent they once were, no matter how much prep time, they can't say anything without tripping over themselfs. Brain slugs?

Edited for oops.

[couchmonkey]

I think it's the price of having a failing product that you believe could turn around in the long-term. Sony doesn't want to show any signs of weakness for the sake of Blu-ray, but it leaves investors and observers wondering if Sony realizes that there's a problem.

[BlackNMild2k1]

CLEAR!!!! *THu THump*.... beep beep..... beep beep....

Alright this thread almost died. It is not your time yet thread, not yet....

Anyway, we all know that you can go into just about any store in the U.S. that sells videogames and probably find about 1 or 2 hundred PS3's in the back. I'm sure we have all seen the latest NPD #'s that came out yesterday too.

Nintendo DS 508K
PlayStation 2 280K
Wii 259K
Xbox 360 199K
PlayStation Portable 180K
Game Boy Advance 148K
PlayStation 3 130K
GameCube 22K
Xbox n/a

But this time Sony is the first Siony is the first to respond, and with a cleverly written little piece of PR
that suggest what we all know to be true.

Quote
While PS3 saw a month-over-month increase of 2% with sales of 129,638 units, we continued to find ourselves supply constrained in March due primarily to the shift in manufacturing focus to the PS3 PAL version to support the launch of the system in Europe.

source

Thats right the PS3 continues to be supply constained all through March.... are they refering to the hard to find(cause its been discontinued due to lack of interest) 20GB model? Or is "supply constrained" referring to customers willing to shell out FIVE HUNDERD NINETY NINE US DOLLARS for a PS3?  

[Deguello]

That's some nice manipulation of NPD figures.  2% increase.  The only problem is that the February NPD was over 4 weeks.  March NPD was over five.

I think I can let the math speak for itself from here.

[Ceric]

BnM thats easy.  "Supply Constrained" means they can't ship out as many as they want to.  So I want to ship out a million of them to the US but darn it I can only make 200,000.  The supply is constraining my ability to ship my target number.  

[BlackNMild2k1]

I'm not sure how this is gonna effect the PS3 but I think it definately takes a little wind out of its sales(sails).

Pioneer to release $299 US Dollar Blu-Ray players

Quote
Pioneer on April 17 debuted its BDC-S02 Blu-ray Disc (BD) Combo drive model in Beijing, for immediate launch in China and later in other markets around the world at a recommended retail price of US$299, according to Pioneer's Taiwan subsidiary Pioneer High Fidelity Taiwan.

That would mean that PS3 is no longer a "cheap" BD player by any means and that excuse or bulletin point would no longer be very useful, especially with the drought of actual games to play at the moment. But this could also lead to a major PS3 price drop, which is what 95% of the potential PS3 buyers are all waiting/hoping for.
 

[Kairon]

That's actually good for Sony. Now they haver one less obstacle to dropping the price on the PS3.

~Carmine "Cai" M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Ceric]

Now if their is a $399 HD/Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Player it be great for the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray market but terrible for the XBox 360 and PS3 Bullet points.

[Spak-Spang]

Ceric:  the only way I would buy one of the new HD formats is if it came like that...all inclusive.  But there is noway you could sell that product so cheap because of licensing fees to use buth the HD-DVD format and the Blu-Ray format.  

[Ceric]

Spak-Spang:  I don't know anymore.  After seeing the Lord of the Ring comparison.  I've done more for less benefit.

[couchmonkey]

One has to wonder what the $299 Blu-ray player means for the cost of Blu-ray manufacturing in general, too.  Maybe Sony isn't losing as much money as everyone thinks.  Unless Pioneer has some super-secret tech that it isn't sharing (and seriously, Sony could afford to pay a nice chunk of cash to find out what that is, if crazy per-system losses for PS3 are true).

Of course, you still have Cell, but that is supposedly coming down in price thanks to the 65-nanometer version as well.

[Spak-Spang]

I think most consumers are still have with DVD quality medium, even with Hi-Definition HD televisions and content available...and people just aren't ready to switch mediums.

I am one of those people...and I believe that both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are going to be Laser Disc technologies.  They aren't going to catch on, and are being introduced to a public that isn't demanding or really desiring an upgrade in technology yet.

[Ceric]

Personally, I think that the picture quality could go up a hundred folds and the TV's to display it could be as cheap as dirt and still general consumers won't really want it.

Why do I think this way?  My gut feeling and from the people I know tells me that a lot of people switched to DVD for 3 reasons:

1. VCR Tapes were getting harder to fine
   
2. DVD's don't wear out nearly as quick
   
3. DVD's are smaller and thinner then VHS/Betamax Tapes.
   

Those are the 3 core reason I believe people switched.  The new formats give us none of that.  DVDs aren't harder for find, optical discs for the most part wear the same, and the form factor is not smaller.  I don't think we'll see a real shift till we move to a media about the size of an SD card but stills offer the space and quality of the new HD discs if not more of both.  I can fit roughly 14 SD cards in the same area as a standard optical disc (Though the real number is probably 10 because of the circular nature of discs).  I also have an idea on how to shrink the number of movable parts but that is not for this discussion.

At that point the media becomes far more mobile. (Can be incorporated into phones, PDAs, and other small formfactor handheld devices.)  I really don't know where we go from their except more space, faster access speeds, and better durability.