Xbox 360 Going on a Diet?

[MinusTheBear]

This was done by design by Sony to make it more difficult for game developers to program games for PS3 here is a quote from Kaz Hirai CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment. this was the answer he gave to Don Reisinger from Cnet back in 2/28/09. Whether we the gamers like it or not this what they have done and one reason that Sony was slow out of the gate and why alot of 3rd party game developers don't like making games for the PS3.

That is an absurd statment by Sony's CEO and really speaks to level of his incompetence about the video game industry. To burn bridges with game developers is such a dumb move. From a CEO it is just utter fail when it comes do business decisions. What you want is a system that bridges the gap between hardware and developer friendly tools that is effecient, cheap to work on and still puts out great games. What are the latest numbers on the profit or net losses on the PS3? The systems hardware doesn't make a console great but the games that are developed for it.

 

[Nemo128]

Minus, I agree.

Here's the thing. Sony's statement, while completely idiotic, was slightly out of context. They wanted a console that would have the potential to grow, not just be difficult for the sake of difficulty. Now here is where it gets dicey...

Any developer worth their weight in source code knows that the time consuming and difficult part of game development is the concepting. Putting the source code down in the IDE and running the compiler is trivial. The problem is, if your instruction set is overly complicated, more time is spent dealing with the "how" of the project than the "what". In effect, they are ensuring that games are simply about wiz-bang than about content.

I take serious issue with this. Some of the graphically-best games I've played were less entertaining, had less replay value, and were less engrossing than older games with inferior graphics.

 

[Ares]

To your point wouldn't people stop buying PS3's answer is no, they sold 10.1 million units in fiscal 2008 and 13 million in fiscal 2009. We will have to wait and see how the PS3 sells this fiscal year. Kaz Hirai's comments were made in the begining of 09' and their sales still increased.

 

[Ares]

I am in agreement with Minus and Nemo on this, If you want to ensure your consoles longevity great, but don't do it at expense of the game developers because without them a console is almost certain to die but not always. Will the PS3 suffer the same fate as the Sega Saturn or Dreamcast I highly doubt it reason being that these two consoles had next to nothing in terms of support from 3rd party game developers. Now the question is how Sony's decisions they made this console generation will effect them for the next one. I don't think alot of game developers are going to forget what Sony did this generation.IMO To answer your question Minus Sony is getting a profit close to $50 a unit in terms of hardware sales right now but that does not offset the losses they took in the beginning which was something like $250-$300 per unit I believe.

 

[Nemo128]

The PS2 was Sony's ace in the hole. It created the perfect console to enable group-think. Now Sony could produce a shitty development platform like the PS3 and developers have no choice but to support it if they want to have an audience worth marketing to.

It's an egotrip by Sony basically. Sony's stance is that the 360 and Wii are not serious competitors, so they can do what they please in the market as long as the Playstation sheep continue to buy their consoles. What they don't realize is that the 360 can compete if they attract developers with incentives, and the Wii is not trying to compete for an exclusive place in households.

FFXIII being on the 360 is one small chink in Sony's console armor. Sony's grasp on the industry is only contingent on their dominance in the Japanese market. Developers can turn the tide to their favor (putting money into the platforms with faster and higher ROI), and that would benefit both Microsoft and Nintendo. In the end, the loyalty of the consumer will decide all these things. If either company (Sony and MS) were to make the right moves, they would dominate the other.

Of course, Nintendo needs not bother with competing. Their platform has significant ROI in terms of turnaround time and profit, their console is either a dominant fixture or a supplementary one at worst, and it is multigenerational to the degree MS and Sony can only dream about. Nintendo may not provide the best graphics and sound, but they have a solid architecture plan that has kept them relevant and successful since before Sony and MS were even in the market.

 

[Shock]

It's not fat, it just has big ram sticks.

 

[Serj22]

I pulled off the 360's shell and looked for its ramstick, it doesn't have one. The R chips it does have are covered in band-aids which was microsoft's way of fixing it's boo-boo. It doesn't work, and is also one of the sources of the red-ring. I could fit that whole system in a slim DVD player case if it didn't have the heat sinks or original output cable, the giant HDMI shaped plug thing.

 

[hopjohn]

why have you had to purchase six of them????

Did you not realize that the 360 was rushed to market with known issues and they didn't bother to try and do anything about it for more than a year?

The first three units had video processor failure due to overheating. The issue there was poor VPU heatsink or none at all on the earliest models, not to mention horrid air circulation within the unit.

On the next, the DVD drive failed long before its MTF.

MS isn't about quality, it's about market share and anything to hurt competing sales.

And... No, I didn't have to pay for any of the additional units.

 

[yepimonfire]

yes i did know about that, but when you said "purchase" i thought you meant actually having to pay for six of them, after the second one goes, i would say eff it. and this is very trendy of microsoft, the same crap happened with vista, i hated the damn thing until all of the updates and service packs were released, it was so buggy that i have yet to upgrade from XP on my main computer because i know that XP is reliable and would rather not waste 100 bucks on a new buggy OS to replace one that functions fine. i rather hate microsoft, but in terms of computers they pretty much have a monopoly going unless your willing to use a mac, but that is limited in function compared to a PC, or linux, which isnt really good for most home-based computer users.