cvxfreak said:
Sony's history as an electronics manufacturer doesn't count now? The comparisons with Nintendo and Sega not only are a little too early, but they ignore the nature of the hardware in question. The GC was designed to be inexpensive and small from the onset, and even with the Wii taken into account as the defacto GC redesign, the size reduction was relatively minimal (this reflects the different nature between Sony and Nintendo's HW - the FC and SFC redesigns were minimal compared to the PSone/2). The PS3 is on a vastly different plane here. Even if the original Xbox were super successful, it would never have been redesigned. That must be taken into account.
What grounds do you have for assuming the original Xbox would never have been redesigned, had it been super successful? Sega and Nintendo manufactured their own hardware, just as Sony does. In that respect they were electronics companies too. MS does not make the components of their consoles, but they are responsible for overall manufacture. The main area where Sony has some advantage is that they can use Cell in other products, but in the discussion below, it is difficult to see where a single-chip PS3 solution could be reusable.
Also, your argument relies on the redesign being dependent on the console war in Japan, but that's only part of the picture. In the West, the PS3 managed to keep up with or surpass the 360 this year in NA, while it's been leading in Europe for a long time (sales there have been solid, AFAIK). So there are so many factors at play here than just Japan. From what I can tell, western PS3 sales have been solid for the last few months, all things considered. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on that one.
The "console war", as you put it, has been lost to Wii already. There is no way Sony will catch up to Nintendo's lead now. They may be scrapping over second place, but that's the same situation MS and Nintendo were in last generation. Sony's situation in Japan is as important as elsewhere, largely because of the software support that would be necessary for growth worldwide.
Seeing as how the DS Lite was responsible for finally pushing the DS above the PSP in monthly hardware sales in the US, I wouldn't be surprised if a redesigned PS3 truly brought the 360 and PS3 further apart.
This is something I am surprised to hear you say
Of all the discussion in this thread, I think we've reached one conclusion - hardware design doesn't push hardware sales; software does. The introduction of DSlite was simultaneous with the explosion of non-game software in every region. Besides, the DSlite wasn't even a cheaper model - it was just a more aesthetically pleasing design. We can make guesses what might have happened without a redesign, but there is no surefire answer.
Back to the point at hand.
PS1 and PS2 redesigns featured a number of different devices to achieve low cost and compact design.
1. Miniaturization of semiconductor technology. In both the PS1 and PS2 cases, the core chips were able to be reduced to single chips. Many people in this thread are citing 45nm tech as grounds to make a PS3 slim, but shouldn't we be waiting until the Cell and RSX are on a single chip? This itself seems quite unlikely anyway, given Sony's intent to reuse Cell across its entire range of products.
2. Removal of cooling tech. Both PS1 and PS2 miniaturization resulted in chips that ran significantly cooler, eliminating the need for cooling tech. To achieve this in PS3 would rely on three things: external PSU, new chipset running cool enough AND safe temperature for HDD operation. The HDD is a factor not present in previous Sony consoles, but it definitely comes into the heat equation. (As an aside, let us consider Fafalada's suggestion of solid state memory replacing HDD. This certainly isn't going to be cost effective next year. If anyone cares to make some reasonable fact-based projection for beyond that, by all means go ahead).
3. HDD. Back to this part, but not heat-related this time. HDD inclusion brings with it some size requirements. Regardless of brand, we're talking at least 95mm thick, 7cm wide, 10cm long. Including the Blu-ray drive alongside this will rule out a form factor as small as the PStwo or PSone, at least.
4. Removal of several interfaces. PS1 lost all outputs except power and combined audio/video socket. The PS2 lost it's interface adaptor, removing the possibility to use external hard drives (previous minor revisions had already removed the iLink functionality). What could Sony reasonably remove while maintaining core functionality of the PS3?
5. External PSU. This can be achieved regardless of power consumption (see other hardware), but Sony seems historically to prefer external PSUs when a low power consumption has been achieved.
And finally the sales data (from Sony's site).
Around 73 million PS1s were on the market when PSone was released. The PS1 family soldiered on with another 29 million or so units. Original release of PS1 was 1994/12, PSone in 2000/07, a gap of six and a half years.
Some 80 million PS2s were on the market when PStwo was released. PS2 family currently stands at 131 million (these are manufactured numbers, by the way). PS2 hit the market in Japan 2000/03, PStwo 2004/11, with a gap of four and a half years.
PS3 currently stands somewhere around 11-13 million? No current figures are on the Sony site, and manufacturing numbers, in particular, are over a year out of date. But clearly not approaching the momentum either of its predecessors had.
The gap from PS2->PStwo was shorter for two main reasons: 1) PS2 had already achieved much more success than PS1 in a shorter time frame and 2) PS2 piracy was growing rapidly with the HDD adaptor.
Price info:
PS1 (1994/12) = 39800 yen / PSone (2000/07) = 15000 yen
PS2 (2000/03) = 39800 yen / PStwo (2004/11) = open price, but most stores sold for 19800 yen
PS3 (2006/12) = 49800 yen
