News Tretton admits PlayStation 3 mistakes

[Da Dego]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/12...n_3_mistakes/1

The PlayStation 3 just turned one year old and what better way to celebrate than for Jack Tretton to acknowledge what went wrong?

[Icy EyeG]

Well... My English skills may be a bit bad, but I don't see much of an acknowledge here...

[Bursar]

"Another thing that I think really strikes a chord with PS3 consumers is that we're giving them everything they need, in the box, day one."

But the current boxes have less in them than the first ones... I image by the time another year goes by, even more stuff will have been dropped out of the PS3 specs.

[WilHarris]

a) Is Sony really one to complain about Microsoft offering multiple SKUs? I mean, 60GB, 80GB, 40GB, 20GB, Wifi, no wifi, memory card reader, no memory card reader...

b) Buy a 40GB PS3 today - the one on the shelves - and there is no HD cable included. NO HD CABLE. WTF is HD gaming about then?

[BioSniper]

I'm going to have to agree with the Harris on this really. Pot calling the kettle black and all that kind of stuff.

Also why is he still listed as staff?

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by BioSniper

Also why is he still listed as staff?

Glitch in the matrix

[CardJoe]

He never left - he just slept inside his cocoon and re-emerged as Hiren. Now he's changed back. Why did you think Hiren had been so quiet lately, eh?

[Flibblebot]

Originally Posted by Tretton

we had easily a million consumers in North America alone that wanted to get their hands on a PlayStation 3 ... and we had roughly 200,000 units to take advantage of that demand

Really? I don't remember the PS3 being short supply when it launched. Strange, I remember people reporting that stores had masses of stock on the shelves.

Obviously I'm thinking of a different PS3.

[Fod]

yah that's what i as thinking, flibblebot. i seem to recall penny-arcade writing a comic about it too!

this is in no way an acknowledgement of mistakes. translated from PR speak it's roughly equivalent to:
"we could have sold a million units at launch if we wanted to, but, yeah we're just too cool for that. MS sucks. buy a ps3"

BUT!
i honestly think the ps3 will gain a lot of momentum in the coming year. it's starting to stretch its legs with games like drakes fortune: uncharted and as a media player is beginning to make a little more sense to me. i may have to make good on my claim that i will buy a ps3 when there are games worth playing on it sometime soon. but hey, that could yet be a while off- after all, i did say gameS. (yeah. i went there. ice burn!)

[Carbon_Arc]

"Our competition talked about the fact that they want to offer consumers a choice, but then they make it clearly apparent that if you really want to have the full gaming experience, you need to go out and invest a lot more money than you originally thought you were,"

Yeah, shelling out for that second Wii-mote really hurts the wallet.

[leexgx]

40gb ones is easy to get the 60gb one is very hard no one has them, unless your planing on paying £450-£500+ ebay/amazon

ps3 40gb one is easy to get but has no PS1/2 support or card reader less USB ports as well

if i ordered month ago i could of got it at the norm price of £350, guess i have to wait untill after Xmas as prices will go down then

[Carbon_Arc]

What gets me about all this is that i actually want to buy a 'next-gen' console, but all the accounts of dodgy reliability have put me off the Xbox 360, and the PS3 doesn't really have any games that I want to play and cant get for half the price on the PC.

So for now it's Nintendo DS cheesecake

[Veles]

It's a bit disgraceful that a year old console still isn't up to scratch, Sony released prematurely with both the PS3 and BR, BR is constantly undergoing revisions that make old players obsolete without a firmware upgrade and while the PS3 has brought some very nice features to the table, it's online experience leaves lots to be desired. I quite like the interface, I think it's less clunky than the 360's, but the reason MS can charge for their online service is because their online service is so much better (at least for now it is).

I'm getting quite tired of the PR bullshit that they're spinning now. Future proof, yeah right, the PS2 was supposedly future proof, everything in one box for a HD experience? Yeah that's why it didn't come with any form of HD video cable in the box. I almost laughed when I read that he thought MS was bad for all it's SKUs.

Originally Posted by Carbon_Arc

but all the accounts of dodgy reliability have put me off the Xbox 360

They're not that bad, there seem to be people who have bad luck with them. I've had far more problems with my PC than I've had with my 360 and all my friends' 360s combined, and with the 360 if it goes wrong, it's just a trip down to the shop to get a replacement.

[Lucidity]

The biggest mistake of the PS3 is not having enough? Seriously this guy is full of ****. The biggest mistake is trying to use it to promote your larger business agenda. ie blu-ray and cell. Had the PS3 gone the traditional route with a IBM dual core or tri-core unit, and a regular dvd drive all of the PS3s problems would have been solved. Games would be easier to program for, it would of released on time, and most importantly it would have been cheaper. So instead of shipping 200k overpriced units with a huge lack of software, they could of shipped 1 million reasonably priced consoles with more software because it was made in less time. Yah that and they should of settled with immersion and had rumble from the start. Sony you suck!

[frontline]

"What we're trying to do here is ... refocus the game industry towards high-definition gaming"

er, haven't we had that for a number of years on our PC's?

[devdevil85]

The reason for not including the cable is, of course for Sony, to A) lower the cost B) not to waste cables that won't be used. You guys need to remember that a lot of people are still using Standard Def. I do think that they should've allowed the user to grab atleast 1 HD Sony-brand cable (whether it was RGB or HDMI). Why they didn't do that idk.

Also, the SKU thing is ridiculous because every console is the same from the beginning, right? You, the informed consumer (and I would hope you'd be informed before spending $399 to $499 on a console), should be able to differentiate on what features matter to you, and if not then you deserve to "be surprised" when you find out there's no memory card, no 2 extra usb slots, or BC).

Originally Posted by WillHarris

a) Is Sony really one to complain about Microsoft offering multiple SKUs? I mean, 60GB, 80GB, 40GB, 20GB, Wifi, no wifi, memory card reader, no memory card reader...

btw, every PS3 comes w/ wifi....

Sony is pushing BR because they see it as being the format of the future in terms of HD movies/gaming and I have already seen games on 360 such as Mass Effect that could've benefitted from the increase in space over DVD9.

Also, for anyone to consider the online play of PS3 inferior to XBL is just ignorant. Having played multiple games on the PS3 online, I have never lost connection, nor have I noticed lag or longer than normal loading times. And believe me, after seeing my friend spend a total of $100 on XBL (which don't get me wrong, XBL offers more than the PSN in features) I can only sit there and wonder why MS isn't able to do the same thing or discount the price.

[DXR_13KE]

Originally Posted by devdevil85

btw, every PS3 comes w/ wifi....

except the 20Gb version if wikipedia is to be believed...

[sandys]

Originally Posted by Veles

it's online experience leaves lots to be desired. I quite like the interface, I think it's less clunky than the 360's, but the reason MS can charge for their online service is because their online service is so much better (at least for now it is).

Out of interest what does the 360 offer with regards to online that the PS3 doesn't because having had both I couldn't say the PS3 online experience has been lacking at all I certainly haven't missed anything so I find it hard to understand comments like this as I look at live and just think what the fook am I getting for £40 a year that my PS3 and PC don't offer for free?

Originally Posted by WilHarris

a) Is Sony really one to complain about Microsoft offering multiple SKUs? I mean, 60GB, 80GB, 40GB, 20GB, Wifi, no wifi, memory card reader, no memory card reader...

I think the key point with regards to multiple SKUs is that the PS3 is a consistant platform, developers can uses all functionality like HDD and BR and know that their customers will all benefit, the lack of a HDD on some 360s means that all 360 games have to for the most part be developed with this in mind, which is a restriction.

Originally Posted by WilHarris

b) Buy a 40GB PS3 today - the one on the shelves - and there is no HD cable included. NO HD CABLE. WTF is HD gaming about then?

Yup that was a disgrace but then I am one of the lucky few with a HDTV.

[Woodstock]

and while there at why dont they put no hardrive add backwords compatibility get rid of ps3 support o wait we now have a beefed up ps2

[Veles]

Originally Posted by devdevil85

The reason for not including the cable is, of course for Sony, to A) lower the cost B) not to waste cables that won't be used. You guys need to remember that a lot of people are still using Standard Def.

Sony is pushing BR because they see it as being the format of the future in terms of HD movies/gaming and I have already seen games on 360 such as Mass Effect that could've benefitted from the increase in space over DVD9.

Also, for anyone to consider the online play of PS3 inferior to XBL is just ignorant. Having played multiple games on the PS3 online, I have never lost connection, nor have I noticed lag or longer than normal loading times. And believe me, after seeing my friend spend a total of $100 on XBL (which don't get me wrong, XBL offers more than the PSN in features) I can only sit there and wonder why MS isn't able to do the same thing or discount the price.

If they wanted to save money then they should have cut the BR drive, that would have made the console significantly cheaper. Sony's story that they put it in there for increased storage space is utter bullshit, they put it in there to force their new format (which isn't any better technically than HD DVD) onto consumers who aren't ready for it, as you say, not many people have an HDTV.

You say mass effect could have been better on a BR disk? No, it wouldn't. You know why? It only takes up 6 gig of space on the disk. That's right, 6 gig, they could have made the game bigger, but the problem had nothing to do with lack of space on the disk, there just wasn't enough money or time to make enough quality content to fill up an entire DVD9, let alone a single layer BR disk.

Are you guys beginning to see the picture now? All this crap about future proofing and massive games is just spin, to con you into lining the pockets of the Sony shareholders. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of these down with capitalism types, but the way Sony has treated their customers is appalling. All of Sony's products have been slowly declining in quality compared to the competition for a few years now, but they keep asking for more money for it's products. Sony has thought of themselves as the king of the hill and have been abusing their position to the point where they have alienated many customers and have put their position at risk.

As for live, I'm not talking about the actual online gaming being better, but the service in general. It's much better designed, it was out long before the PS3 was out yet Sony failed to add in basic features to PSN, like not having to quit out of a game to read a message and a poor store system that is just a web site instead of a program designed specifically for the system. Like I said, the PS3 and BR look more and more like a botch job every day.

Here's the main reason why XBL is better than PSN. If you buy a game on the xbox with online features, you will be able to play it online no matter how old it is. If I feel like it, I can pop in one of the first xbox live games on the original xbox and it will still play online. This is because MS owns all the servers dealing with connecting people to someone hosting a game. That is what the £40 per year is for (or if you shop around, £30) and IMO it's money well spent, because I know that one of my favourite yet not very popular games, Shadowrun, will still be playable even though the studio who created it have closed down.

Take for example, the re-botch of MGS3, it was released about a year ago and had great online multiplayer added, but a few months back Konami decided to pull down the servers because it was costing them too much to keep them online. This has happened with many PS2 online games and will very likely happen with PS3 games because although the service is free, you pay a different cost.

I'm not saying the xbox 360 is the perfect console and the PS3 is utter crap, I'm not really into brown nosing MS either. Both consoles have their strengths and weaknesses, both companies have their merits and flaws. PSN is great if you can put up with the annoyances and the chance that you won't be able to play your favourite game online anymore. The PS3 is fantastic value for what you get, it's just a question of whether you want all it has to offer.

I just think the 360 is the more polished of the two, the PS3 just feels like an unfinished product, it feels like a PS2 with extra bits taped on awkwardly, it's a mess of ideas and features that haven't been ironed out even though it took almost a year for it to come out after the 360, it's got some great innovations but also lacks the very basics I'd expect from a box that supposedly gives you the complete experience. MS seemed to build the 360 from the ground up, starting with the most basic features to make sure they were there and working well, whereas Sony seemed to aim for a big skyscraper but forgot to dig the foundations for it, creating a console that is user unfriendly for no foreseeable reason.

I also think Sony is probably one of the worst examples of a company I have ever seen, you can't argue against that because there is no logical argument against it, they're just plain awful.