News Sony shenanigans

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/02/20/sony_shenanigans/

 

Not just a little it would appear.

I don't really care about the company and their fortunes except that to lose such a major player in any of it's markets would not be a good thing for competition.

 

If it is going to be released in Japan first, then I think even a $500 price tag won't stop the consumers here.
Sony is it in Japan. Nintendo is the only competition.
Xbox isn't even on the map really.

Sony will market the PS3 as a complete entertainment center in one box.
So $500 worth of entertainment center isn't too much.
Sales in Japan will be huge, needless to say.
Then the north American Market...and Europe trailing.
Prices will probably be slashed in the American market for those Christmas time sales.
Overall, you'll still end up with massive profits for Sony.

Not to mention that the games at launch and cutting edge tech will keep the PS3 in the lead for as long as the PS2 had been.

I'm not a Sony fanboi, I've never owned any sony product in fact.
I just experience the Japanese market everyday.

 

Why do Japaneese love it so much?
It will cut out the >21 audiance for a consol (which the xbox360/revolution will happily lap up) at that price, not many mums will go out and spend $500+ games before xmas on one pressie

 

Cause the Japs are VERY brand loyal, and just as nationalistic as the US.

 

Sony seems to have messed up everything recently, going to take a long time to get their PR back. Honestly, today I bought a Bullet for my Valentine CD, guess what? all it says is "enhanced cd" on the back. It didn't tell me I couldn't rip music from it. It didn't really matter that much, but I had to use audiograbber to rip to .wav, then dbpoweramp to convert to flac. A complete waste of half an hour trying to rip it.

 

I bought an enhanced CD yesterday. Whacked it in my DVD drive and turned on dbpoweramp, which worked immediently. Stright from CD to ape.

 

will not buy one soon, will wait sometime, until it gets to about 150€. even then i would not buy it, i hate sony,
if PS3 gets DRM'ed to hell it will have a very, very short life, but.... i do hope cell processors come to the PC world to give Intel and AMD a run for their money.

 

It does seem like they're starting to panic a little, and are screwing up as a result (which then causes even more panic etc.)

And $500! Yikes! No doubt that'll be about £450 for us Brits.
Still, cheaper than the Neo Geo launch price

 

My prediction, expect 360's everywhere mid this year. Revolution late this year and PS3's early to mid 2007. It's a perfect schedule and allows pretty much anyone who wants to, to buy as many consoles at launch as they like.

The only real problem lies with Sony's selfishness, they have a huge market share and fan base that should allow most competition to not pose a major threat. However they still lead their customers along by not giving a realistic launch date, in some desperate bid to keep them away from the competition fearing that they then won't have enough money to buy the PS3.

If they keep taking their customers for fools they're going to run into serious problems.

 

Most of this seems like bad news for Sony (and for me, since I'm looking forward to getting my PS3 as soon as possible, but will nonetheless have to wait till the prices drop a bit). However, I found the M-L report to be laughable. I mean, they don't even have enough QA to refer to the PS2 as the PS2 rather than the PS III, they passed over that "tiny" mistake regarding the price being shown as $900 instead of $800... those little things add up to a major dent in their credibility, IMHO.

 

I was hoping for a price-war between Microsoft and Sony, at least to make the 360 a little more affordable. If the PS3 is $500 then Microsoft may not see a 360 price-cut as necessary. However, I won't be buying either machine until there is some worthwhile software (but that's another story).