In their recent PS3 sales success and blu-ray coup I had totally forgotten how thick Sony can be.
Category: Sony
post format war
It is hard to imagine that HD DVD would come back from the blow that Warners BluRay decision delivered. The internet was busy speculating about half a billion dollars in bribes that supposedly that came down rolling Barham Blvd. I think that the sales performance of DVD makes the Studios very nervous. All too quickly they got used to the huge volume of DVD revenue and a steady increase for that matter. The average american bought DVDs for $53, rented them for $25 in 2007. And he/she paid $32 at the Cinema Box office. For both HD formats combined a single dollar left peoples purses in the last year.
In total billions these numbers look like:
16 DVD sales
7.5 DVD rentals
0.3 nextgen DVD formats (both)
9.6 Box office
The troubling point for the studios seems to be that DVD sales are declining. Already in 2005 DVD set top box sales had gone done for the first time in history. Back then it probably was the fanfare about the ‘next thing’. People don’t like to buy yesterdays gadget. The studios felt they needed to get HD via DVD going. And Sony did the better show and number exercises.
Both formats encoding technology, bandwidth and other core parameters are pretty similar. As Mike Curis eludes to, the scripting technology in HD DVD seems to be more open, developer friendly and thefor hugely favorable over the bloated Java based BluRay implementation. But what’s to expect from Sony.
Flat panel displays sales have taken off, and about a year analog TV will be turned off. With the format war being over the Bluray sales should surge. And, I think, they will. Initially. Many bluray players will be PS3s. After correcting the outrageous price Sony’s next gen box had finally some sales worth mentioning. How many people bought the black box because they could not get the cute white one is a different story.
I wouldn’t be surprised if DVD+BluRay Sales volumes would come out flat in 2008 and from there on further decline. There are three reasons for this future disappointment:
* It’s the internet stupid.
Not only the net alone. Technology progresses everywhere. Hell, my toaster wants more attention than it’s great grandfather did 20 years ago. Media is omnipresent. VHS had to compete with, well, Books and TV. Maybe radio, cinema and newspapers. That’s about it. Bluray faces a vastly different world. None of the existing media emanations will just fade away. And new ones get created with an increasing pace. There is simply not enough time to watch all those movies.
* we don’t care since you don’t care
The Studios have failed to understand their own product. There is a history to this. And others failed similarly: The music industry would be in much better shape, would they have not confused the means of peddling circular things with the end of enabling people to enjoy music. Both HD formats allow for better visible quality compared to DVD. Better bandwidth and modern codecs could make for a great experience. Despite this potential most early Discs that were available have been widely criticized for their poor transfers. Some people felt that they would be better off with a decent upscale of a good quality DVD. People love movies. A considerable slice of the population, and almost certainly the majority of early (media) tech adopters care for a good experience. The Studios should have put the utmost emphasis on quality. And that starts with the film transfer. Even though the studios are not keen to involve creative people more than absolutely necessary, they should have gotten them on board for the launch of the new media. Imagine Steven Spielberg approving a 5 movie disk set claiming “this is how I want my movies to be seen”. People would spend allot of money for this. They would get players, lay cable. The whole thing. Maybe the studios should have gotten together with the ACE and directors guild to develop a approval system. Pay directors and DPs to sign off on a DVD transfer. I would pay happily knowing that the creative vision was intact. OK, in some cases I would simply paying for the drug habit of that one hit wonder boy. But I do that anyway, one way or another.
* it’s complicated
HDMI 1.3 is really exciting, since it not only features greater than bitdepths but also could carry the extended xvYCC color space. While being true, not many people know what this means. And neither should they. DVD succeeded because it was ‘as simple as CD’. No more rewind. That made Hollywood billions. Simple is key. The HD formats are not exactly known for simplicity. And the studios are not helping. Neither do the hardware makers. I find my way around these matters. But it’s my job to understand all this. And if it wouldn’t, then I would really watch another movie than to worry about downsampled movies that were escaping DRM through the analog otherwise. Having two formats was of course a big problem. But even with BluRay remaining it’s not as easy as it should be. Different disc sizes. Flat panel resolutions. Frame rates.
Image processing. And an interface written in Java simply scares me: There are just too many ways developers mess up. Hardware makers and studios alike fall in love with features that have nothing to do with their product. Multi Angle was one of these technical possibilities that DVD had. Studios were all excited about it. Since they didn’t understand what their product is: A movie is one view. One perspective. Everything else is a cute vaudeville attraction or plain and simple porn that desperately tries to stand out (no pun intended).
If these numbers are acurate then PS3 is holding 10% of the next generation gaming market.
It’s here: SONY’s response to the iMac. The Lamp like iMac G4 that is. Released exactly 5 years and one day ago.
When the PS3 came out there was allot of media frenzy about the huge ebay prices.
Three days before christmas neither Wii nor PS3 are possible ot find in stores. But @ eBay you can buy them. Just watched a PS3/20GB go for 530 US$ and a Wii for 450US$. The problem for Sony is that the actual retail prices compare differently: 80% markup for the Wii and 6% for the Ps3. Looks like people don’t want the PS3 that bad. Which is really bad: At a whopping 500/600 pricetag and with a considerable install base of the Xbox 360 Sony needs to build some momentum. Sofar they fail to accomplish that. It might become a negative chicken/egg thing: with a not so promising install base game developer might avoid to take the risk of a PS3 development that would use the power of the Cell chip. Innovative ideas might be aimed and tested at the PS2. A known development environment and huge install base. Maybe somebody will make a wii like add on to create similar controllers for it. PS3 has not much going for it, except it’s looks and the fact that it’s the most affordable Bluray player.
In November the best selling game console was (drumroll) the Playstation. Playstation-2 that is: 664,000 of the units that debuted in the beginning of century found new owners. With prices as affordable as 99 dollars and the biggest game library there is it makes for a pretty nice product. Next one in the sales charts is Microsofts Xbox 360 with 511,000 units. Pushing its install base into substance after being out for one year. Nintendo’s Wii was able to get 476,000 out to i’ts users in a few days. Quiet a start. Trailing the pack is the Playstation 3, the console that was supposed to revolutionize everything. Much has been written about Sony’s ambition with this machine, it’s supply issues, the craze for the first units. Not much was said about the pretty pictures that the unit is able to create. Which is not good news. After all a ps3 is five to six times more expensive than a ps2. HD alone is not enough I am afraid.
Just saw an unoppened PS3 go for 560 US$. It was the 20GB model that retails for 499 US$. Sixty one dollars for having spend the night in front of a video game store? Not so good in my book. The prices @ ebay for PS3 have been coming down over the last weeks. Which is not a good sign for Sony. If hardcore games would want this machine badly, the prices would be higher. Now if the geeks don’t want it that bad, how about the general public? The plan was that the PS3 would push bluray ahead of HD-DVD. Now it looks as if Bluray has to save the face of the PS3. It’s a cheap player compared to other next gen DVD options. But compared to standard def players it still is expensive: 230 US dollars get you a decent player that will make all you existing movies look really good.
Speaking of: I started buying DVDs. Opportunistically: There are so many movies I have not seen, might want to see again. If the DVD is cheap enough then I just pick it up. After a few weeks of this strategy I ended up with lots of DVDs sitting in my room. IF there is time to watch something there is something to look at. And I like it, that I know I can easily go back to what I have seen. The quality could be better here or there. But it is not worth the money to go back and spend all that money: I get a ps3 from ebay, then a screen that is worth using and I have spent 1500 US$. Then I buy all the movies there are and have 30 mediocre to ok movies for 2,000 US$. When I buy DVDs cheaply and watch them on my laptop I could have 250 movies to watch for the same amount of money. HD is not NOT worth ten times the money. Not even twice. With the Oppo player you actually get an amazing picture out of a standard DVD. Out of most of them. It’s impossible to beat. People will realize this, sooner or later.
For the longest time I wrote that the PS3 would be doomed. Then, apparently unimpressed, it shipped anyway. There they were the stories about long lines at the stores. People getting thousands of dollars for the console on eBay. Just this very moment a PS3 sold for 820 + 55 shipping on ebay. Unoppened. Of course. Retail is 599. EA hints that 200K PS3s have been shipped. Ebay is pretty brutal. Demand and supply. EA also claimed that around 20,000 PS3 have gone through the eBay mill. Nintendo managed to make and sell 600,000 Wii consoles in the first eight days of availability. They are aiming at 4 Million by the end of the year. That’s what Sony aimed for. Years ago. Now they settle for an eight of that.
These are the people saying that ‘next gen’ would not start before they said so.
In other words: The Wii won. It outsold the PS3 3 to 1 by now. It gets good reviews. People like it. The PS3 had allot of hype. Now and it exists, and way to many people shrug their shoulders. Having 45% markup on a product that have 200,000 of and wanted to sell twenty times more? Not realistic. If there would be 4,000,000 eager PS3 buyers (for 600 US$) then the ebay price would be way higher than it is now.
somebody in Japan opening a PS3
I thought this day would be much further away, and I was wrong. Sony ships the PS3. In small quantities, but they apparently got the thing to work. And it looks shiny, is supposed to very silent as well. Object of desire this christmas. The eBay prices will probably be crazy. More demand as supply.
I still don’t think that PS3 can repeat the success that PS2 had:
- PCs are bound to become the premium gaming environment. Their technology gets upgraded constantly. A gaming console is locked inn its feature parameters for a couple of years
- PS3 has to compete with PS2 as well as with Wii and Xbox 360
- Even though the hardware could be the perfect living room hub it is unlikely to happen: Sony showed with the PSP how they are able to strangle a great hardware concept by plain stupid software implementations
- HD DVD formats have a tough time getting the traction that their technology might deserve
Here the manual for PS3.
Conceptually it was a well intended follow up: Sony’s Bravia commercial using exploding paint instead of many balls.
Execution wise there certainly are amazing explosions. There are few good camera angles. But most of them are, well, uninspired. The idea of using an abandoned housing project is interesting. Somewhat. I have just seen to many of them being blown up. Somehow you expect them to sink together once they become the object of the camera. But it was not this non delivering on the expectation that broke the spot. It was the unispired music choice together with that I call dismal editing. I can only write this, since I have not looked up yet who did it. It’s easier that way. And I am sure it was the usual clusterfuck of decission making or pure lack therof that pushed this brilliant idea of a follow up into the lower ends of mediocricy. The sport lives from the real Bravia. Not more, not less. A typical sequell that can’t deliver. Too bad they blew it.