Desperados 2

62 thoughts on “Desperados 2”

1. Seeing as this is the gaming blog, I thought you might be interested:
   Curmudgeon Gamer: History of Console Prices (or: $500 ain’t the worst…)

   I read through the comments and have a lot of questions, such as, is Sony really making a loss on individual PS2 sales? (maybe at some point they were, but now?!) And is PS really the only profitable division of Sony? I was also surprised to see that PS2 has 10 times the sales of XBox, given the hardware/Live advantage XBox. I had a bit of a browse through Wikipedia but didn’t really get anywhere. Perhaps Megan can post an expose on issues surrounding current/next gen consoles.

2. My goodness that was a lot of comments, did you read them all Dave? At one sitting? It’s taken me all day.

   After reading all of them, I could help but highlight a few:

   To all the people saying the Wii is next-gen and the PS3 and 360 aren’t: I’m a developer and I can tell you the Wii IS A GAMECUBE (you couldn’t even call it the Gamecube 1.1). That’s how it is backwards compatible with the cube. Nintendo could have gotten by just releasing the controller, but since the Gamecube had already flopped, they had to pretend it was a new unit. It isn’t. They gave it a little extra cache memory but that isn’t useful for making the graphics any better or the games more complex since the memory they added was too slow for anything that changes frame-to-frame. Developers are still stuck with the same 24MB of main memory (which made it the most difficult platform of the current gen to port to) and we use the same devkits as we had for the cube (which most had thrown into the closet because all cube development had ceased). It’s a nice controller, but the console itself is just a Gamecube with a standard DVD drive (because they are cheaper than the custom mini-DVD drive in the cube) and some slow flash memory.

   Interesting…

   Wow. The graph and stuff– good work. One thing, however, that people seem to be overlooking, is the fact that the PS3 is not a game machine. No? No. It is primarily a Blu-ray disc player. Does this justify the $600.00 price point? No, it REQUIRES it.

   The technology for blu-ray is new, cutting edge, proprietary, and expensive. Since Sony has tried to win other format wars and lost (See Betamax, Minidisc, UMD, Etc.) They are using the PS3 as a means to force their format in the HD battle. Why? Because if they are successful, every company that makes a blu-ray player or releases a movie on that format will have to pay them a licensing fee. Big BIG money. With no competition, they can charge what they want for the movies, etc. Hell, even Microsoft would have to pay to make an add-on Blu-ray drive for the 360.

   Blu-ray, though, is the STATED reason for the PS3 delay, is more expensive that HD-DVD, and requires a complete refit of manufacturing plants. Combine this with that name-recognition thing (Average Joe Customer- “I want a HD-DVD player thingee for movies” Typical Wal-Mart, Circuit City, Best Buy Employee “Blu-ray or HD-DVD, sir?” Customer- “HD-DVD, isn’t that what I said” — you get the picture) and Sony is betting the farm on this. So what is the point? The point is this– in this scenario, gamers lose. Sony has put them on the back burner, hopefully only temporarily.

   It is wierd, though. Sony seems to be a company at war with itself. They push blu-ray in the PS3, forcing the cost up, and maybe killing the Playstation Brand, which until now was their biggest money-maker, yet at the same time talk about how a content distribution model is the future (paying for and downloading HD movies, music, games etc. to a hard drive and using it from there.) Wouldn’t this eventually make blu-ray obsolete? Believe it or not, by NOT forcing HD-DVD down consumers throats, but letting people buy it as as an add-on, Microsoft might be on the right track. Then they could also offer a larger (200GB?) hard drive for people who wanted to go the content-distribution route– xbox live would be perfect to integrate that into, no?

   The sad conclusion that I have drawn is this– if Sony can’t establish a fomat monopoly with Blu-ray, they could be in big trouble. Do they have a chance? It will take a while to tell, but HD-DVD players are already on the market and sold out. Movie studios will go where the money is, and Blu-ray might end up a niche format like UMD. If this happens, no amount of price cuts, awesome exclusive games, or even further stealing of ideas from their competitors (Tilt controller, guide button, two-tiered price point, there online model to name a few) will save them. By putting all their eggs in the blu-ray basket, Sony is doing a diservice to all gamers. Believe it or not, I am not a Microsoft fan-boy. I don’t want to see Sony fail, because competition in the industry is best for us, the gamers.

   (Paragraphs are mine)

   I found this one pretty articulate and interesting as opposed to the repitition in the rest of the other posts. And after the endless suggestions of how the graphs could be improved:

   Now what you should do is examine this with the gross national product of China from 1943, divide by the current world’s population, cross-reference the figures with American tax dollars going into K-12 education systems, and multiply it by the percentage of decrease of the Amazon rainforest.

   In terms of your questions, perhaps I could try and find the Sony Company reports, and perhaps I will, but not right now. I could believe that they were making a very marginal loss or profit on the PS2 console now, but I don’t think they would be making big losses. As to whether other divisions are profitale, I’m sure they must be. The Xbox was definitely at a disadvantage to the PS2 because it came to market late. It really is remarkable that they brought the 360 in so far ahead of the PS3.

   What interests me is what Blu-ray means. I found the comments of the guy above fascinating in saying that the success of the PS3 and Blu-Ray is integral to any future success of Sony. I can see the logic in this, but it seems like a big gamble for a company that’s already lost that game once.

   There was something else I was going to say, but it escapes me for the moment. It will certainly be interesting to watch the sales figures of the various consoles over the next 24 months. My money would definitely be on Microsoft first, Nintendo second and Sony last.

3. I have an unfortunate addiction to information. Many times now by body has been held hostage as my brain absorbs every single comment on a post, so now I am quite good at doing it rapidly. I think I went through those in about an hour or so? It was a serious read, certainly. I did skim anything long, since they’re not really comments then anyway. (And yes, a lot were crap. They got a bit of skim treatment too.)

   One comment linked to a graph of price vs sales, which was really good in case you missed it. I also had a guffaw at the comment that responded to your first extract there, “yes I really believe you’re a developer and not just some fanboy with an opinion.”

   You can’t help but feel that Sony is making an outrageous mistake with Blu-ray/$600 et al, yet it seems so obvious that surely they must see it and have some kind of plan. I dunno. Sony is getting good at making mistakes these days, it seems.

   You’re a brave man to put money on those places. The only thing I would really want to commit to at this stage is that it will be a whole lot closer this gen than the last time around. And I suppose that means that Wii will be the winners.

   PS. The PS3 certainly looks like it has potential, check out:
   http://www.cabel.name/2006/05/e3-2006-wrap-up.html

4. Yeah, I saw the graph on price vs sales. There was also another comments further on that provided a link (I think it was to IGN) that confirmed the comment about the Wii being a gamecube. I didn’t follow the link though, so could be wrong.

   The situation is that Sony has made a very high stake gamble. If they can successfully use PS3 to win the DVD format war, then they will achieve a huge victory. However, if they lose, they will lose a huge amount of profit from the PS series and fail to make Blu-ray the standard.

5. I now see that the all-powerful tycho over at Penny Arcade has made his opinions on the subject clear. He will not be buying a PS3 at launch price. I can’t help but wonder if his opinions just cost Sony 10,000 or more units, potentially US$6m. Ouch.

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