After the balls in SF Bravia ad Sony is making another one. The teaser and some stills.
Ives Klein would have loved that. Wait a minute I just had an idea. Sony, can I make a commercial, please. Pretty please?
Category: Sony
Universal retracts support for retates it is not supporting blu-ray
And so it begins to tip and slide. People said generally that Bluray had the upper hand in the beginning of this format war. It certainly is no ‘war’, since nobody cares. But it looks like Blu-Ray’s chances of getting the market are slimming down quickly. It’s not at the tipping poing yet. But it might happen quicker than Sony wants.
This kind of press puts even bigger pressure on the PS3. Not that it could deal with the current level. I have not seen an announcement that production has begun. Two months left to launch, and nobody has ever seen a PS3 how it would be sold. Just design mockups and Blu-Ray players.
update 9/24/06: it seems that this news item was kind of a press stunt: Universal never backed Blu-ray in the first place. They just said again they would not do it.
Sony sold one million PS2 consoles in the first 3 days in Japan. Now they launch with 100,000.
They claim that they have received three million Cell Processors from IBM.
Of course Nintendo could not help itself and issued a press statement that IBM ship shipments for their Wii console are on trak. They will announce a launch date next week it seems.
Microsoft will lower the price for the XBox 360 in Japan one week before the PS3 comes out. They only sold 159,000 consoles since they launch last year.
4 days ago I wrote that the PS3 is in trouble Given how grim it looked to me I thought that I might have gone too far in my assessments. Suddenly those predictions look less outlandish. From 2 Million at launch down to 500,000. US: 400K, Japan: 100K and Europe: none, launch in March 2007 over there. Imagine you are a game developer for the japanese or European market. Imagine you bothered to develop for the PS3 at all.
The official Sony PR speak ‘blames’ a shortage in the blu ray diodes. Those do cost like 1 US$? 10? Sony is a propoenent of Blu-Ray technology since 4 years. They knew they would need those blue Lasers at one point. Still they rather make laptop batteries for Dell and Apple, instead of producing this rather essential part? C’mon, it’s called ‘Blu-Ray’. I have problems buying that it’s this little laser that kicks Sony’s next console strategy like it supposed to do.
Beginning this year Sony delayed the Ps3 launch from Spring to November saying that the DRM for the BlueRay discs would not be finalised. Which was obvious BS. They did have enough laser diodes back then? And those dissapeared?
Interesting also that there were standalone players in early summer with working DRM.
I think that the ‘blu-ray-shortage’ is a straw fire to direct the attention away from the real problem. The Cell does not want to run inside of that puny little case that Sony dreamt up. It does, but it gets way hot. The yields are beyond horrible. But if you say that now, then people that run their shiny new console under a blanket will blame Sony for their ‘over heating failures’.
With the ‘blu-ray’ spin Sony says that they very expensive PS3 contains this precious thing that is so amazing that you can not even make it. It’s a rare gem. So they want everybody to believe. “Whoa, you managed to get a Blu-Ray laser”?
Awesome. Kids like Lasers. It might even work. For a week or two. Till people will start looking at the PS3 online component. Anybody heard anything there? Wouldn’t it be time to give out teasers? Getting attention away from the Xbox by announcing details? Well, there is nothing. Which is not a good sign.
“It’s Living” Sony’s slogan for the upcoming PS3
“It’s dead, alright” me saying that PS3 might sink Sony much quicker than people think.
Sony said that they would have 2 Million PS3 on launch, 2 by the end of the year and another 2 by the end of March ’07. Of course they think that all of them will be sold. There are more than 200 Million PS2 consoles out there. To launch a next gen product with 1% of the existing install base seems reasonable. You expect a healthy run on those precious devices. And they feature a Blu-Ray DVD player. Standalone players retail for around one thousand dollars. The PS3 only for 600. What’s there not to love?
A whole lot. It’s September, and officially Sony has not started to make the thing. They have ten weeks to produce two Million units of something that they have not made yet. At this years E3 they showed playable Dev kits (think full size PC) and bluray players inside of the nifty designed cases. It might be very well the shape and design of the box that will make the PS3 the disaster that might take Sony out within a few months. Please note the the double might in the last sentence. Sony is a huge company, how could they fail so disastrous? It’s unlikely, but also the possible truth.
The PS2 saved Sony. The win of that ‘console war’ helped to hide other disasters that the company experienced. On the heights of the PS2 internal and external Sony-might Kutaragi could pretty much ask for anything in order to ‘secure’ Sony’s dominance of the gaming sector. Naturally the next generation console would be the battlefield that needed to be defended and won. Sony planned to throw around it’s might and simply went off and invented a new type of CPU. Over four years IBM invested 400 Million US$ into this thing. First application: Millions of PS3s.
Now let’s suppose that things went ok, just not ideal with the Cell. That happens. Actually all things that are visible to the general public indicate that that is what happened. And this might sink Sony quicker than anybody could imagine. In 12 weeks we will know more. In twelve weeks there should be millions of PS3s in homes around the globe, computing the hell out of everything. Sony’s PS3 is expected to ‘awe’ every viewer. It was the japanese electronics behemoth itself that set this level of expectations in widely recognized speeches and announcements.
Back to the ‘what if the Cell was only ok, not perfect’ scenario. The XBox 360 had won the launch time race. Sony countered by releasing enormous numbers for their next generation consoles. Coupled with equally enormous prices. They also revealed a design. Being in the business of making decent looking things for years it was a logical step to present the public of how the thing will look like.
Sony could be in the following simple situation right now: The thing simply does not work. Putting the Cell CPU in a case like they envisioned will melt it. The Xbox had thermal problems. The PS3 case is very small, and has no visible fans. Again: Nobody has ever seen a working PS3 in public. Ten weeks before two Million should hit the street. The yields on CPUs and BluRay diodes are supposed to be very low. If the current Cell does not work in the current case Sony has not many options. They are notoriously bad in pro active crisis management. The last push in the release date came pretty much exactly when the console was to be released.
Of course the likely hood of the instant Sony melt is not high. But it’s not entirely unlikely either. If Cell and cases simply would not work that would explain why Sony did not start making the devices yet. Instead of claiming such simple and embarrassing reasons they might point to a shortage in blue diodes for the Bluray drives as a reason for shortages. Would make the thing more ‘precious’. And would leave less room for people complaining about their overheating devices.
Even if they get the 6 Million units done and sold by March 07 I don’t think that Sony can repeat the PS2 with the PS3. The world has changed. PCs and their gfx cards will soon be much faster than any game console. Gaming consoles have excluded themselfs from the pace of upgrade cycles that are possible in the PC landscape. Good and bad, but fatal for the PS3 in the mid future. If it it’s not DOA that is.
Update:
two minutes after posting this rant I came accross this image of the PS3. Interesting amount of holes in the side there.
the Yankee group predicts 44% market share for the PS3 in 2011
I would bet money on this not to be true. I think that Microsoft will sell more than 27 Million Xbox 360s and Sony will never sell more than ten Million PS3s. Ever. Come back here and comment as much as you like once they should do. Those ‘experts’ at the Yankee group see Sony push 30 million units. Amazing.
But what do you do if you have an ailing consultancy? You publish controversial statements.
And you hope that nobody finds your past prediction attempts.
There are two high definition DVD formats. Bluray and HD DVD. Of course you knew that. Both formats have been released. There are players. There are movies. And, nobody cares. I don’t see any discussions or reviews online. It’s one big yawn. Bluray fanboys will point to the upcoming PS3 release. That being the Ace up the sleeve of the format. Interestingly enough, PS3 fanboys ‘predict’ that it will be the Bluray format that will help selling the console. A 500 US$ Bluray player disguised as a gaming console might be a cheap Bluray player, if others cost a 1K. But in the consumers mind they have to compete with the 40 US$ DVD player that plays an awfully huge library of movies. Upscaling DVD players cost just a few hundred dollars.
The quality of these next generation formats is certainly superior to DVD. The current discs however have been partially made from sub par telecine masters I have been told. That aside, people don’t understand nor care about quality all that much.
Those two new formats have a better picture than traditional DVD. In order to see it you have to be equiped with a HD set.
Let’s have a look at the last format change. DVD replaced VHS tape. And it was better in the following ways:
- Image quality. Much more resolution. VHS was dreadful.
- Audio quality. They called that CD quality. VHS was dreadful.
- Sourround audio. Five speakers in your living room. No possible before with anything.
- non touch mechanism. VHS is an analog tape. Tape is tricky as it is. Tape and head wear and environmental impact like dust. Analog tape degrades. Every time you use it
- multi angle. yes, is a feature. Nobody used it. Almost nobody.
- multiple audio tracks. Directors commentary or alternative language tracks. Both add great value.
- menu system. Helps with branding and use.
- non linear. Jump to any location is almost instantly. Together with the menu system
- no rewind. Sounds like a stupid thing. Now that you don’t have to rewind anymore. Was major annoyance withVHS and big deal for DVD
- smaller and known form factor. “just like audio CD”
- region code and copy protection. Good for the studios. They thought.
- computer use. I have used a data tape based on S-VHS. Was 75,000 US$.
With DVD there was a format war too. The other one backed by Circuit City and Dreamworks folder almost instantly. It’s “feature” was that the movies were much cheaper, but would expire with in 48 hours. After that they wanted to charge consumers for every view. Greed. Make sure you hide it well, or you will fail like that.
DVD vs. VHS is a pretty substantial list. After a few years it was a done deal.
Bluray and HD-DVD will never build any momentum. They will fail like Super CD or UMD or Minidisc have failed.
HD-DVD launched. Bluray launched.
People don’t care. Of course there are reviews in the more tech geek media.
But apart from that there is not much movement.
As expected people don’t care.
There was a format war before this one. Audio CDs with their 44,100 Hz 16 bit sampling rate were not state of the art as far as technical ability around the turn of the century. So Philips and Sony came up with the Super Audio CD that quickly went into a format war with the similarly feature yet incompatible DVD Audio.
That was 1999. There are probably around 631 audio geeks who can get really excited about these formats and their differences. The rest of us is happy with compressed mp3s that indeed can sound horrible.
The current HD DVD format flavors do present a bigger quality jump than the CD / next gen format had to show. Most peoples eyes are better educated than their ears.
In order to watch next gen material there is a very considerable investment needed. You need a HDMI capable screen with enough resolution and the right image processing ingredients. And an expensive player.
Roughly between 3000 and 6000 US$ worth of equipement.
I remember that we paid 450 US$ for our DVD player three months after it came to market. There were 18 titles available, but the quality jump from VHS was stunning. VHS was considerably bad compared to live TV. DVD was noticable better. And there was decent sound too. And the things needed no rewind. And there were multiple audio tracks with commentary and an OK navigation system. And the disks seem to last longer than tape. And they used up less space.
Sure in the beginning many Studios were betting on the other format. Divx, not to be confused with Divx , was an attempt to get people used to the fact that they can not own anything that Hollywood creates. A failed attempt, but not the last one.
HD-DVD vs. Bluray
The score seems to be zero zero.
Only four month ago the run for the domination of the console market seemed to be
wide open
After E3 and the 600 US$ price tag of the PS3 the market has shifted
Granted these are simple online polls. But there is certainly a trend. One that should make Sony feel very very uneasy.
If the HD-DVD camp is smart enough to ship two sided HD-DVD / DVD versions of movies for the same price than the DVD version then this format war might be over within a year. Nobody will be betting on the loosing horse this time. If the HD-DVD companies would control their greed just for a couple of months then they could really win this in a landslide. Good for everybody. Having a double sided Blueray/DVD combo is simply not possible, unless you actually sandwich two discs together. Actually they should start selling a movie and just give you two discs. One in the current format, and one in the next one. Making those disks is not that expensive. People would start building their HD library as they continue to buy movies. If you already have 10 movies that you can play on a HD player then you are much more likely to buy one. With the double disc approach you can avoid a sales drop for the current DVD format: People feel odd right now, that they have to spend money on something that will be obsolete soon.