Has Sony just fucking lost it?

[Durandal]

Does Microsoft have "do crazy shit" aura or something?

When Microsoft enters some market you almost always get the market leader doing some truely crazy shit which practically gives the market to Microsoft.

Sony has just been going downhill in general lately. I think it started when they realized just how badly the iPod was bitch-slapping them.

[Master of Cards]

on 360 there's the 10-16 crowd and then the late 20's to 35 group

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Here's an article from USAToday that says a slight majority of gamers are over 18, and the average age is 29. However, it looks like they're including casual internet games, which would put a lot of secretaries in that category.

[Glocksman]

Does Microsoft have "do crazy shit" aura or something?

When Microsoft enters some market you almost always get the market leader doing some truely crazy shit which practically gives the market to Microsoft.

Sony has just been going downhill in general lately. I think it started when they realized just how badly the iPod was bitch-slapping them.

Given Sony's history of being on the leading edge of personal audio with the Walkman and Discman players, back in 1999 I would have bet on Sony to be #1 in mp3 players 5 years later.

I would have lost.

Seriously though, it seems to me that the 'content' (read: movie studio and record label) side of the company has literally taken over and their fears of piracy and irrelevance due to online content distribution have really damaged Sony's reputation, product line, and cost them the market leadership they could have had in personal audio/video products.

[Praxis]

Can anybody confirm this?

I just heard on the new episode of Attack of the Show that Sony expects PS3 games to run from 59.99 to a hundred bucks each.

Never trust G4- they're the guys that measured gigahertz per second.

Sony's comment was that games would be $60 or above, but prices wouldn't double overnight so don't expect to see $100 games.

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?si ... 29/1956232

[Stark]

I'm with Glocksman - Sonys insistence on their stupid software and ATRAC DRM basically means nobody wants to use their MD/MP3/flash players if they can avoid it. They've been killing themselves ever since they thought they could make MS the flash standard by making it slower and four times as expensive than CF.

[Dominus Atheos]

Never trust G4- they're the guys that measured gigahertz per second.

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?si ... 29/1956232

When?

No, fuck that.

How?!?!

[LMSx]

Can anybody confirm this?

I just heard on the new episode of Attack of the Show that Sony expects PS3 games to run from 59.99 to a hundred bucks each.

Never trust G4- they're the guys that measured gigahertz per second.

Sony's comment was that games would be $60 or above, but prices wouldn't double overnight so don't expect to see $100 games.

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?si ... 29/1956232

Still, over $60 for games? Sony, say hello to the Nintendo 64. Hope that works out for you. $60 is already a money grab- we're talking about an optical medium here. No way they should cost as much as cartridge games.

[Uraniun235]

$60 and more was seen for several games for the Super Nintendo.

[Nephtys]

$60 and more was seen for several games for the Super Nintendo.

Wing Commander, plus Speach Packs for the PC cost well over 80 dollars back in.. 1991?

[Hotfoot]

Still, over $60 for games? Sony, say hello to the Nintendo 64. Hope that works out for you. $60 is already a money grab- we're talking about an optical medium here. No way they should cost as much as cartridge games.

You do realize that most of the cost from games doesn't actually come from the format they come in right? It really comes down to how much the games cost to develop and market at the time. The game companies aren't the RIAA or MPAA trying to artificially jack prices through the costs of printing the units.

[phongn]

I'm with Glocksman - Sonys insistence on their stupid software and ATRAC DRM basically means nobody wants to use their MD/MP3/flash players if they can avoid it. They've been killing themselves ever since they thought they could make MS the flash standard by making it slower and four times as expensive than CF.

Well, MS did come out before CF did, to be fair. But that was typical Sony in not embracing the market standard but instead using their own.

As for MD - Sony had a golden opportunity right there to replace CD as the portable music format of choice and replace the floppy disk. MD Data had 140MB of capacity (better than Zip Disks) and nowadays Hi-MD can store 1GB or data or so (uncompressed). But, as usual, they shot themselves in the foot.

Still, over $60 for games? Sony, say hello to the Nintendo 64. Hope that works out for you. $60 is already a money grab- we're talking about an optical medium here. No way they should cost as much as cartridge games.

Price is set by supply-demand economics, dontcha know.

Wing Commander, plus Speach Packs for the PC cost well over 80 dollars back in.. 1991?

I think the base game was $60 or so, and another $10-20 for the speech pack. It was released in 1990.

[Praxis]

Never trust G4- they're the guys that measured gigahertz per second.

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?si ... 29/1956232

When?

No, fuck that.

How?!?!

They didn't actually measure it, they just stated it on TV.
"IBM has produced a processor that runs at 500 gigahertz per second."

I've heard other statements from G4 that were equally badly worded. They never get their facts straight.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

As for MD - Sony had a golden opportunity right there to replace CD as the portable music format of choice and replace the floppy disk. [snip tech format stuff] But, as usual, they shot themselves in the foot.

Wait, what? I know that when MD first debuted in the early 1990s, they were marketed as a portable music format, but they bombed out because people thought Sony was trying to replace the compact disc, so customers didn't stand for it. Some years later Sony eventually began marketing them as a replacement for the cassette tape, primarily as a format for making home-recorded mixes and such, which is where the format found some success.

In the first incident, as I understood it, it wasn't that Sony shot themselves in the foot, but that people simply refused to buy them specifically because they feared Sony was trying to replace CDs with MD.

[phongn]

Wait, what? I know that when MD first debuted in the early 1990s, they were marketed as a portable music format, but they bombed out because people thought Sony was trying to replace the compact disc, so customers didn't stand for it.

Well, yes. But if Sony had released it at a competitive price and opened up the format they would've had a hit - it was smaller than CD, more robust and for portable purposes, good enough.

In the first incident, as I understood it, it wasn't that Sony shot themselves in the foot, but that people simply refused to buy them specifically because they feared Sony was trying to replace CDs with MD.

There was also the bad marketting of MD and the generally closed format.