Topic: Sony bad-mouths Nintendo yet again

[Peachylala]

This guy is completely depressing.

That sounds better.

Stupidity nowadays is no longer funny. Third excuse makers are to blame for that.

[KDR_11k]

You have to be a dumb motherfucker to think that the PS3 was a risk.

Actually you'd have to be the kind of dumb motherfucker who's heading Sony to think it's not a risk, it was a huge pile of unnecessary risks but Sony didn't know that and thought they'd gone with the safest option because they wouldn't want to take a risk.

[Stogi]

That's my exactly point. They chose the safest option. Saying they took the biggest risks may or may not be true, but they had no intention to gamble.

[broodwars]

That's my exactly point. They chose the safest option. Saying they took the biggest risks may or may not be true, but they had no intention to gamble.

I don't see what's so safe about loading up a $600 console with features most people will never use.  For instance, I'd hazzard a guess that maybe 1% of all PS3 owners actually know about the ability to install an alternative OS to replace the XMB, and of those maybe 5% who would actually use it because the XMB is fine as it is.  How about the ability to play streaming video, audio, or images from a network?  That's a feature I didn't know it could do until I recently installed Windows 7 and I laughed at seeing a Microsoft logo appear on my PS3 XMB.  My PS3 has 4 USB ports, but the console only comes with 1 controller and for the life of me I can't think of any 4-player PS3 games right now, and I'm primarily a single-player gamer anyway.  The PS3 is full of stuff like that: features that most people will probably never use but probably do jack up the price.  Add them all up and you get a $600 console in a bad economy.  Sounds pretty risky to me.

[BlackNMild2k1]

It was safe because Sony figured 100 million people would run out to buy it regardless of what it cost and that would automatically win them the HD movie format war, which at the time was more important than the cost of the system.

To Sony the risk was NOT putting Blu-ray in the PS3 and losing out on the huge investment that was the HD movie disc format which is expected to be the companies bread and butter over the next decade. The PS3 was their safe bet to use as a Trojan Horse to push the format.

[Chozo Ghost]

Blu-ray is this generation's equivalent of laser-disc. Most people do not own HD-capable televisions yet, and of those who do many of them don't really care about it. For example, I have an HD tv but I don't think its so much better than the other TVs that arent HD. And I don't have a blu-ray player, nor any intention of getting one in the near future.

Blu-ray is definitely better than DVD, but its not as much better than DVD as DVD was over VHS. VHS sucked monkey balls, so people were more than willing to rebuild their movie collections with the new format. But with Blu-ray it just doesn't matter as much. DVDs don't have to be re-wound, and they do not wear out the more you play them like VHS did. Also, VHS had crappy sound and video quality even at the best of times. DVD solved these issues, which made DVD a worthy upgrade.... but all Blu-ray offers over DVD is HD, and that just isn't as important. Plus the movies cost more in blu-ray.

[BlackNMild2k1]

But it's not about what BRD is or isn't, the risk was that Sony put alot behind the tech and needed it to be adopted by the industry as a whole. The risk would have been to NOT include that investment in their "sure to sell, blockbuster hit, get a second job to afford, 5 million sold w/o any games" PS3, as they needed BRD to take off.

[GoldenPhoenix]

You have to be living in a dream world to think blu-ray isn't getting more and more significant. Just look at the shelf space that is expanding for Blu-ray movies. I'm sorry, I may not be Sony's biggest fan but to say it is the next laser-disk is silly going by the current success of Blu-ray and its rapid expansion.

[UncleBob]

You have to be living in a dream world to think blu-ray isn't getting more and more significant. Just look at the shelf space that is expanding for Blu-ray movies. I'm sorry, I may not be Sony's biggest fan but to say it is the next laser-disk is silly going by the current success of Blu-ray and its rapid expansion.

Blu Ray is getting more shelf space because retailers are trying to push it more.  I can assure you, sales increases are very nominal in this category.

Notice how, now that HD-DVD is dead, you don't see Sony releasing any more press releases about how many Blu Ray movies they've been selling?

[Chozo Ghost]

Blu-ray is expanding by taking over the niche marketshares once held by HD-DVD. If you take a niche market and another niche market and merge them you have something bigger, but it still isn't that great.

DVD still reigns supreme, and will do so for a long time, I predict. CDs came out in the early 80s and they are still around despite better alternatives like DVD-Audio and so forth. These alternatives are better, but only marginally. And that's how it is with Blu-ray too. Most consumers don't care about the subtle increase in picture quality. When you have to pay $30 for a new movie, its ridiculous.

[UncleBob]

June 20th, 2006 - First Major Blu-Ray Movies released (7 titles, including "50 First Dates", "Hitch", and  "The Fifth Element".

Aug. 11th, 1997 - First Major DVD Movie released ("Twister")

Aug. 14, 2006 - Last Major VHS Movie released ("A History of Violence")

So, nine years from the first major DVD release, we had the last major VHS release.  So, if DVD is still alive and kicking in 2015, we can finally call Blu-Ray a failure.

[Chozo Ghost]

The problem Blu-ray faces isn't just from the existing DVD format.... there's also the problem of even better formats on the horizon such as Holographic Versatile Discs (HVD) and Protein Encoded Discs that will completely blow away Blu-ray's edge and make it totally obsolete.

Blu-ray can hold like 30-50gb per disc, right? Well, HVD and so forth can hold hundreds of GB per disc, so as you can see Blu-ray isn't going to have a long life. BLu-ray won against HD-DVD, but it doesn't matter because before it can even start to put a dent into DVD the Holographic discs and protein discs are going to appear and they'll be the next big thing.

I predict people who invested serious amount of money into Blu-ray drives and media are going to be pissed in a few years when better stuff appears and makes their stuff as obsolete as 8-track tapes...

[broodwars]

I predict people who invested serious amount of money into Blu-ray drives and media are going to be pissed in a few years when better stuff appears and makes their stuff as obsolete as 8-track tapes...

Here's the thing, though: the market can't withstand multiple format shifts within a certain period of years.  No doubt we have better stuff on the horizon, but in the time we had VHS after it won the war against Betamax we had both Laserdisc and DivX.  Despite there being superior formats, though, the market didn't convert until DVD came along.  The market is starting to convert with Blu-Ray now, probably nowhere near as quickly as Sony would like but it is doing so.  I can't see the market adopting a replacement format for at least 5 years, maybe more depending on the adoption rate of HD-TVs.

[D_Average]

Why isn't anyone mentioning Apple TV?  I heard they would make great games someday too....

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

I doubt people play games when watching a Fruit Channel.

[Peachylala]

Why isn't anyone mentioning Apple TV?  I heard they would make great games someday too....

Resi Evil 4 Ipod Failure says hi.

[Ian Sane]

where our competition tends to be relegated to either select regions or to select consumer audiences.

Translation: MS is only popular in North America and Nintendo is only interested in TEH CASUALZ so pick us, Sony, or Japanese hardcore games are DOOMED.  That's the gist I get from it.  Actually that's a pretty damn good scare tactic aimed at the PS3's target demo.

The PS3 was a huge risk, just it was a stupid one and I think it's more that we all noticed the risk more than Sony did.  Sony was arrogant in thinking that people were willing to pay $600 for a console.  They shoehorned Blu-Ray into the whole thing to try to win the format war and if that failed, the PS3 would be even worse off then it is now.

And irony of ironies Sony is now taking more risks than Nintendo because Nintendo changed the market.  Nintendo took risks with the Wii launch but since then they've played it super safe.  The market embraces stuff like Wii Fit and Wii Sports so Nintendo gives it to them.  Note that almost everything else they make involves established Nintendo franchises.  As good as a game like Super Mario Galaxy is it is a completely zero-risk title.

Sony meanwhile is aggressively targeting the hardcore market which is now the smaller market and the riskier one.  The development costs for these games are higher so each title is a bigger risk.  And while Nintendo is busy pumping out more of the same franchises Sony has introduced Uncharted, LittleBigPlanet, Resistance and Infamous.  Nintendo gets all this credit for being so innovative (and I think that USED to apply) but the irony is that Sony, who is supposedly so generic and cookie cutter, is constantly introducing brand new IP.  IP that though critically acclaimed does not have a familiar brand name to rest on.  Each time they have to take the risk of unproven IP filling the role of a major first party exclusive.  And they were better at this last gen as well as they introduced God of War, Ratchet & Clank, Killzone and Team ICO's games.  Last gen Nintendo released Pikmin and what else?

I see people on this forum make fun of LBP, not because they think it's a bad game but because it wasn't the big success Sony was hoping it would be.  Yet if Nintendo took a risk with a new IP and it turned out to be a good game but bombed I don't think anyone here would be ragging on it.  If anything those same people would be praising Nintendo for taking the risk.

[vudu]

Here's the thing, though: the market can't withstand multiple format shifts within a certain period of years.  No doubt we have better stuff on the horizon, but in the time we had VHS after it won the war against Betamax we had both Laserdisc and DivX.  Despite there being superior formats, though, the market didn't convert until DVD came along.  The market is starting to convert with Blu-Ray now, probably nowhere near as quickly as Sony would like but it is doing so.  I can't see the market adopting a replacement format for at least 5 years, maybe more depending on the adoption rate of HD-TVs.

The problem with your logic is what happens if a new format is introduced before the majority of consumers "upgrade" to Blu-Ray?  The danger to Sony is that they'll skip the format completely and just jump to the even better technology. 

[BlackNMild2k1]

If Sony had established franchises that they could milk (Ratchet & Clank), then I'm sure they would (GoW). Sony has no choice but to introduce new IP's because they don't have a stable of long standing guaranteed sellers like Nintendo. MS would do the same exact thing if they could (Halo), but they have the same problem as Sony.

WiiFit & WiiSports were both HUGE gambles (also read as RISK), it's just that they both paid off HUGE and Nintendo should be proud of that. Just because they (DS, Wii, Wii____ ) are the huge successes that they are today does not mean that they were safe bets and it was not known that they would be "embraced" when they were being developed, since nothing like it has ever really existed in the console space before.
And if we took a look at the history of Sega, we would all know that releasing peripheral after peripheral was a big no no and risk not worth repeating, but Nintendo did it anyway.

As far as games like LBP go, I don't think anybody bashes the game because it's from Sony and it was hyped to all hell, I think they bash it because it wasn't very fun or good. It was pretty, and functioned as demonstrated, but it just wasn't a fun game to play. I'm pretty sure no one here knocks a good game just because it's on a different system, otherwise Uncharted 2 wouldn't be getting the praise that it is.

And Nintendo did take a risk with a new IP, WiiMusic ring a bell? I remember everyone ragging on that game, even though some liked it, a majority of the internet was like WTF Nintendo, WTF is this ****!? SO once again, I'm not really following you here.

[D_Average]

I would disagree with Wii Fit as a gamble. Once it was introduced, gamers and press alike knew it would be a massive gold mine months before release given the success of wiiSports and wiiPlay.  They knew Reggies criptic prophecy of "WiiFit is it" would certainely come to pass.   

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

"and it was not known that they would be "embraced" when they were being developed, since nothing like it has ever really existed in the console space before."

Well all your logic trains are off their tracks, cuz the Wii/Fit embrace is simply the spiritual offspring of the love surrounding the Nintendo Entertainment System.  Think about how the whole NES experience reaches out to customers, and how that parallels with what goes on today, and how things transformed to bring about 'today.'

All should not start talking risks and gambles until you've agreed on a proper frame of reference.

[Ian Sane]

Just because they (DS, Wii, Wii____ ) are the huge successes that they are today does not mean that they were safe bets and it was not known that they would be "embraced" when they were being developed, since nothing like it has ever really existed in the console space before.

I didn't say they weren't risks at first.  Wii Fit was probably the last true risk Nintendo took.  The Wii series is established now.  Even something like Wii Music is still a somewhat safe bet because it has that Wii name.  Yeah we were all WTF but we weren't even the target market for it anyway.  The sheer fact that it was called "Wii Music" ensured that at the very least it was going to sell with those that bought the previous Wii titles.  There was risk they might not like it or that it would have any longterm sales but I highly doubt Nintendo was ever worried about making back their investment on it.

Nintendo took a huge risk with the Wii but since it paid off they have become complacent.  You look in the pipeline and you see sequels and the Wii series.  In fact that's pretty much the entire Wii first party library right there.

And from the perspective of the traditional game market today's Nintendo is as cookie cutter as you can get.

[BlackNMild2k1]

The NES was over 20 years ago, who knows if the level of "love" you are trying to resurrect is still around. How would they know if they can rope back in all the lapsed gamers?

WiiFit when near completion, was probably a media darling because of the success of Wii/Sports/Play and America's sudden health & fitness revival. As much as America (and the rest of the world) can hop on and off the fitness bandwagon, no one would have ever expected WiiFit to be the success that it is today.

And from the perspective of the traditional game market today's Nintendo is as cookie cutter as you can get.

If it ain't broke, then don't fix it.

[D_Average]

All the podcasts I listenedto expected Wiifit to sell out like crazy. Go back to some of the old RFN shows for example. In fact, many thought Wiifit would be even more successful by becoming it's own platform. Johnny actually brought this up on the latest episode as it seems Nintendo may finally allow b board only games which is a great step towards a legitimate b board platform.

[BlackNMild2k1]

WiiFit when near completion, was probably a media darling because of the success of Wii/Sports/Play and America's sudden health & fitness revival.

But let me finish that thought.

...but when Nintendo said, "hey lets make a exercise game that is dependent on a bathroom scale for balancing and charge $90 for it"... No one could have thought it would be the hardware pushing piece of software that it was today.