Why Did The PS3 Fail?

How big of a font do you need to fit the words "Not enough good games, price too high" onto 207 pages? 3; Maybe it's reiterated in every single language in time ever known to man and then some.
 
drohne said:
i'd like to see somebody rig a definition of 'fail' which excludes the ps3's performance to date. still there's something nauseating about these faux-lamentations of public irrationality -- as if unjustified ps3 bashing keeps benjamin birdie up nights

:lol

I sleep pretty well. But unless I explain myself I'll just get labeled as an Xbot or (for like the seventieth time) a viral marketer. Those are facts, and culturally, that's the state of affairs. It really has nothing to do with the PS3 specifically. Any sensible person knows that the PS3 cannot be labled a failure just looking at the facts, but "feelings" and "perception" have labeled it as such. Just like the first question any newscaster is going to ask someone who's house in fire will be "How do you feel right now?" and not "How did the fire start?"
 
I'm going to buy this if its at Kinokuniya tomorrow.
 
BenjaminBirdie said:
:lol

I sleep pretty well. But unless I explain myself I'll just get labeled as an Xbot or (for like the seventieth time) a viral marketer. Those are facts, and culturally, that's the state of affairs. It really has nothing to do with the PS3 specifically. Any sensible person knows that the PS3 cannot be labled a failure just looking at the facts, but "feelings" and "perception" have labeled it as such. Just like the first question any newscaster is going to ask someone who's house in fire will be "How do you feel right now?" and not "How did the fire start?"

Looking at the sales "facts" and extrapolating from there it could be deemed a failure without having to resort to emotion or feelings.

Of course there are certain markers needed to make the judgment, but by serveral standard industry markers (WW LTD, attach, hardware sales comparisons to it's predecessor, 3rd party support, ...) the PS3 is currently failing and hence could be said to be a failure.

It depends where you draw that line. You could draw it much lower and say that noone is failing, but where is the fun in that.
 
Vagabundo said:
Looking at the sales "facts" and extrapolating from there it could be deemed a failure without having to resort to emotion or feelings.

So you take the demand for the 1st year line-up/price and extrapolate it for the next 4 years?
 
Visualante said:
Why is the thread title in the past tense?

It's the title of the book.

thuile said:
I think this book comes too early. Xmas give us a glimpse about the future of Playstation 3

We're going to start seeing a lot of these stories in the mainstream media after the holidays.
 
Bulla564 said:
So you take the demand for the 1st year line-up/price and extrapolate it for the next 4 years?

Of course you could, why not?

I could make more accurate predictions if I had some sort of statistical model for console sales, as it a very nonlinear system.
 
Awntawn said:
How big of a font do you need to fit the words "Not enough good games, price too high" onto 207 pages? 3; Maybe it's reiterated in every single language in time ever known to man and then some.

lol, was thinking about the same thing. Why write a 207 page book on it when it can be summed down to a few lines.
 
The book should have been more appropriately titled:

Why Did The PS3's Launch Window Fail?

Of course, if the PS3 does what Wollan expect, and end up kicking ass all over the Wii and 360 and gain the most WW marketshare before the end of this cycle, then this book will become a classic of our generation.
 
I think the title of the book is pretty reasonable. If anyone had been shown the PS3s performance two years ago, no one would have hesitated to call it failure. This is SONY, the company that ruled the roost, and now they're dead last. How can that be anything but a failure? There's a big difference between "D00000MED" and failing. The PS3 will not cease to exist simply because it occupies the bottom spot. It will be the same sort of "success" the Gamecube was. Games will come out and some of them will be special and brilliant, but I don't think you recover from a year like Sony's had.
 
The reason the PS3 failed (as of this writing) is because every exec over there thought it could never fail.

Hence many bad choices occurred.
 
Vagabundo said:
Of course you could, why not?

I could make more accurate predictions if I had some sort of statistical model for console sales, as it a very nonlinear system.

Unless you can predict the exponential effect of both an increasingly better line-up, and a decreasing price at the same time, and predict the appeal/quality of future games, you will sound just like the author of this book: irrelevant.
 
besada said:
I think the title of the book is pretty reasonable. If anyone had been shown the PS3s performance two years ago, no one would have hesitated to call it failure. This is SONY, the company that ruled the roost, and now they're dead last. How can that be anything but a failure? There's a big difference between "D00000MED" and failing. The PS3 will not cease to exist simply because it occupies the bottom spot. It will be the same sort of "success" the Gamecube was. Games will come out and some of them will be special and brilliant, but I don't think you recover from a year like Sony's had.

Precisely.
 
besada said:
I think the title of the book is pretty reasonable.
For sensationalist trash, sure. For a thought out objective discussion it's quite appalling.

Just a title to get attention. Not that I care.
 
Wait. People are actually arguing whether the PS3 failed or not? Uh, okay. I thought Media Create and NPD sales threads here were popular. Ever read them?

PS3 failed. Hard. Already.

Though there's a slight chance for recovery and overtaking Xbox360. If they lower the price in the US and Europe this Christmas. Japan is gone and taken by Nintendo. They won't even have GameCube "success" over there. The west still has a kinda interest in the PS3 if it weren't for the price. But the interest is fading fast. $299/Euro 299 or bust. Sony can't afford to wait until next year, then they are history.

And even with this the PS3 failed. Because everybody is comparing it to PS1 and PS2 and it's not having anywhere the same success. Equals failure.

And yes, Xbox360 also is a failure already. One year headstart, already getting overtaken by Nintendo and not even reaching the same number of people as with the first Xbox.
 
Bulla564 said:
Unless you can predict the exponential effect of both an increasingly better line-up, and a decreasing price at the same time, and predict the appeal/quality of future games, you will sound just like the author of this book: irrelevant.

Actually, I can do better than predict it - I can just use history.

See: Gamecube

For sensationalist trash, sure. For a thought out objective discussion it's quite appalling.

How is it 'sensationalist trash' when insofar as Japan is concerned (the territory in which the book is written and supposed to be circulated), it's 100% true?
 
Bulla564 said:
Unless you can predict the exponential effect of both an increasingly better line-up, and a decreasing price at the same time, and predict the appeal/quality of future games, you will sound just like the author of this book: irrelevant.

This is subjective and in my opinion, erroneous, at least to the public at large. The price will drop further though, we agree on that.
 
For sensationalist trash, sure. For a thought out objective discussion it's quite appalling.

Just a title to get attention. Not that I care.

It's one person's opinion, the book isn't a debate. It's saying performance is quite radically worse than anticipated and the reasons behind that.
 
Bulla564 said:
Unless you can predict the exponential effect of both an increasingly better line-up, and a decreasing price at the same time, and predict the appeal/quality of future games, you will sound just like the author of this book: irrelevant.

There is a lot of current information out there as to how the markets are reacting this time around to price cuts and games announcements.

There is a lot of historical information from the N64/PS1 era and last gen that you could get these trends.

It would be time consuming, but I believe you could come up with reasonably accurate forecast of what is going to happen in the next four years.

A lot of analysts were blindsided by the Wii, but should not have been. Once announced I think they should have seen how well it would sell.
 
manzo said:
Hakomaru, 箱○ or 糞箱
lolz
is the real abbreviation for 360 in Japan amongst the gamers.
I don't care what gamers call it in japan, エックスボックス サンロクマル is what Microsoft are calling it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whE0Y0LeNWE

Listen to what they say at the end. If that's not enough for you then head over here:

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360
 
013001002424.jpg
 
DSWii60 said:
Can you explain this joke please?

Hakomaru = round box/circle box/box circle/etc. Original Xbox was called "Hako" which is just box in Japanese. You get the idea.

箱○ = Hakomaru

糞箱l = kusohako, literally shitbox.
 
a better title would be:
Why the PS3 is failing.

Seriously, if the Wii was in the exact same position as the PS3, everyone would have called it a failure.
 
Vagabundo said:
There is a lot of historical information from the N64/PS1 era and last gen that you could get these trends.

You mean historical trends of a console that has MGS, GT, FF, and every other Sony franchise, at a mass market price?

Wait. People are actually arguing whether the PS3 failed or not? Uh, okay. I thought Media Create and NPD sales threads here were popular. Ever read them?

PS3 failed. Hard. Already.

See kids, sensationalist crap is not exclusive to authors that blow their load early in a generation.

Actually, I can do better than predict it - I can just use history.

See: Gamecube

What about the GC? bad 3rd party support, an image it was not able to shake off, franchises many did not care for? None of this applies to the PS3.
 
Lee N said:
I don't care what gamers call it in japan, エックスボックス サンロクマル is what Microsoft are calling it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whE0Y0LeNWE

Listen to what they say at the end. If that's not enough for you then head over here:

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360

Microsoft can call it whatever they want in my point of view. I don't call the PS3 as PLAYSTATION 3 as Sony calls it. We have our own abbreviations of consoles, so do the Japanese. ;)
 
Bulla564 said:
You mean historical trends of a console that has MGS, GT, FF, and every other Sony franchise, at a mass market price?

Nah. How about the historical trend of a console that had Zelda, Mario, Kirby, etc...

What about the GC? bad 3rd party support, an image it was not able to shake off, franchises many did not care for? None of this applies to the PS3.

'An image it was not able to shake off' and 'franchises many did not care for' does not apply to the PS3? How on earth can you type that without breaking down in paroxyms of laughter?

And as for bad 3rd party support, Nintendo had that during the GCN, which Sony apparently isn't suffering much from yet. However, Nintendo has (and had) far more immensely marketable 1st party franchises than Sony has, so that's offset now, isn't it?
 
Bulla564 said:
What about the GC? bad 3rd party support, an image it was not able to shake off, franchises many did not care for? None of this applies to the PS3.

Almost all of that applies to the PS3. Bad 3rd party support - lost exclusives and delayed, shitty ports. An image it wasn't able to shake off -- the stink of failure has already begun to swarm around the PS3, which is why books like this are coming out. As for the franchises no one cares about, well, even though the GC did horribly, it still had Pokeman and Mario. Does the PS3 have anything that even approaches the sales monstrosity of those two games?

MGS4, which does better in the U.S. than here still doesn't come close to Pokeman or Mario. Maybe Final Fantasy, maybe. I can't think of a single franchise Sony has a lock on that comes close to doing battle with Pokeman/Mario, can you?
 
manzo said:
Microsoft can call it whatever they want in my point of view. I don't call the PS3 as PLAYSTATION 3 as Sony calls it. We have our own abbreviations of consoles, so do the Japanese. ;)
They can call it クソゲー for all that I care, but they wouldn't put that in a book title like this one.
 
besada said:
MGS4, which does better in the U.S. than here still doesn't come close to Pokeman or Mario. Maybe Final Fantasy, maybe. I can't think of a single franchise Sony has a lock on that comes close to doing battle with Pokeman/Mario, can you?
And after the DQ9 fiasco, calling FF a "lock" for Sony isn't something I'd consider permanent.
 
RevenantKioku said:
And after the DQ9 fiasco, calling FF a "lock" for Sony isn't something I'd consider permanent.

Shh..I'm trying to be nice. Did you know that you're drowning in penises, by the way?
 
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