I have a theory of why the PS3 really failed...

[The Yosemite Bear]

This is why Nitram and I have a Wii. Reasonably priced, one excellent launch title (Zelda), several really fun mini-game collections (ie: Wii Sports, which we have started using for the daily exercise option), and a generally fun, simple GUI.

Add in the online functionality, the availablity of classic titles from NES, SNES, TurboGraffix, and Sega Genesis, and the Wii proves why it's been outselling everything but the DualScreen handheld.

an interface so cheap and fun that even grandmothers are loving it (yes my mom keeps telling me to buy a wii)

[Hawkwings]

See, there's a lot of money to be made in video game consoles. Microsoft needed market share: they bought it. 4 billion dollars? Microsoft can throw that kind of money around. It's an investment: they went from nobodies to the top player in 2 generations.

What's the point of dominating the market if they don't make money out of it? Has the 360 made up for the loss on the Xbox yet?

Because dominating the market means that most people will buy their stuff later?

I mean, if Sony's machine flops, and all the "good games" go over to the Xbox, what are the gaming enthusiasts going to buy? Not fanboys, but the people that like playing those games.

It's investing for the future. They're hoping that this investment now will pay off later on. Besides, you don't make money off the consoles, you make money off the games.

[Stark]

Because dominating the market means that most people will buy their stuff later?

I mean, if Sony's machine flops, and all the "good games" go over to the Xbox, what are the gaming enthusiasts going to buy? Not fanboys, but the people that like playing those games.

It's investing for the future. They're hoping that this investment now will pay off later on. Besides, you don't make money off the consoles, you make money off the games.

Answer the question. If the 360 hasn't made up the loss from Xbox yet, then that's what, six years running a loss? If they spend a decade on the top of the pile but make less money than others did in a shorter time, what's the point?

Aside from 'M$= teh ev1lz' of course.

[Medic]

Another thing that the PS3's abysmal launch and pre-launch have done is obscure Microsoft's own mistakes. The 360 costs $400, its games cost $60, and its peripheral prices are ridiculous. $70 for a fucking controller with the play and charge kit is insane, no matter if it's wireless and how good it is, to say nothing of a $100 wireless network dongle.

MS's direct competitor seems to like the $60 price point as well. The peripherals are obscene though, a WIRED 1st party controller is $40 as is the VGA connector to plug it up to a monitor.

They make you pay monthly to play online,

Funny, my receipt is $50 for 12 months.

the game selection is still pretty weak after a year,

I'm sure the MOST FAIR comparison is the Wii and PS3 game libraries circa November 2007 with the November 2006 X360 library, right? Is it really so unfair to judge a product real time as opposed to the time-travelling scenario you seem to favor? Having a head start gave MS an installed base and leverage to chip into PS3 exclusives but the fact that this is enabled by a late arriving and careless Sony doesn't mean it's not legitimate to compare the current X360 library with 2 just-launched systems. Maybe if they lined up on a track and a gun fired in the air and everyone agreed to release their big killer aps concurrently with each other, then yeah, I might care for such comparisons. As is, it's business and the early bird gets the worm.

the failure rate is astronomical and coupled with a 90 day warranty and $140 repair cost.

For now I won't contest the claim of the failure rate since you didn't bother quantifying it either but perhaps that is the reason MS bumped up to a year long warranty? It was also retroactive. Seriously, this was in in G&C a long time ago.

The hard drive is 20 GB in an era where 300-400 GB drives can be had for under one hundred dollars at retail.

Not a winner, it is removable but knowing MS they'll make a 100gb HD about $150.

There's no HDMI and no 1080P support, and backwards compatibility is still lacking.

HDMI seems pretty hard to retro fit but the 1080p support was also covered in G&C, and on that topic, it's got 768p now as well. (that's 1366x768 and what I'm running on my monitor)

All of this looks positively spectacular compared to Sony's experiment in finding the limits of human stupidity, but it's still pretty dismal compared to previous successful consoles. Is it really all that surprising that the PS2 is still selling so well?

Not at all but even that successful system fucked over many a consumer -- like me. I'm on my 3rd PS2, it's the smaller version and it's never had a problem. Although neither have I played DVD movies on it as a rule, an activity I strongly suspect to have fucked over my previous, larger PS2's.

edit: moved X360 Elite related material.

[Praxis]

Oh I'm sorry, silly me. I thought companies did business to make money. Thank you for correcting this view.

See, there's a lot of money to be made in video game consoles. Microsoft needed market share: they bought it. 4 billion dollars? Microsoft can throw that kind of money around. It's an investment: they went from nobodies to the top player in 2 generations.

They barely outsold the GameCube with a 4 billion dollar loss. (IIRC it was like 24 milion to 21 million sales, compared to Sony's >100 million)

If they had been top place that'd be different, but $4 billion for 1/6th the market isn't much.

XBox 360 got ahead by it's own merit (and IDIOTIC competitors; namely Sony. Nintendo chose not to compete in the same manner).

[Xon]

That $4 billion sunk into the Xbox/Xbox360 would be covered by a single quarter of Microsoft Office's profits. Over the 6 years since the Xbox was released, that really is fuck all for Microsoft.

They lost more than that in lawsuits over the same time period.

[Stark]

That $4 billion sunk into the Xbox/Xbox360 would be covered by a single quarter of Microsoft Office's profits. Over the 6 years since the Xbox was released, that really is fuck all for Microsoft.

They lost more than that in lawsuits over the same time period.

I just can't see how it can be called a financial success if it's lost asspiles of money over many years. Sure, strategically it makes sense if they eventually start making money, but that means it isn't a financial success YET. It's definately a brand success, in any case.

[atg]

That $4 billion sunk into the Xbox/Xbox360 would be covered by a single quarter of Microsoft Office's profits. Over the 6 years since the Xbox was released, that really is fuck all for Microsoft.

They lost more than that in lawsuits over the same time period.

We're not discussing Office though are we? If the Gamecube was a loss maker would you be claiming it didn't matter because Nintendo made it back on profits from the DS?

[The Yosemite Bear]

Orr just because p3 and psp are deader then fossils the p2 is still dominating the consol market....

[Xon]

We're not discussing Office though are we?

Microsoft's cash cows are Windows and Office (thier server brands are also profitable, just not on the same mind boggling scale). With these 2 brands they have a strangle hold on the desktop market and have been hammering thier way into the server market as well with stuff which works really well with Windows (desktop) and Office.

The Xbox/Xbox360 is really thier 1st sucessful venture into the home entertainment industry, which they have been trying to get into since the early 90s. The CEO of Netflix is now on the board of directors for Microsoft's, the Xbox360 was designed from the ground up to stream media off Windows boxs on the local network, and from the Live service.

Microsoft's biggest advantage in almost any market they enter is the massive integration between thier products. If you dont think Microsoft's Xbox Live service isnt running on Windows servers, I've got a nice bridge to sell you.

You simply cant talk about how a single product is doing without factoring in Microsoft's overall strategic goals (Windows in anything with a processor and memory from the looks of it ). There are very few Microsoft products which do not integrate with other Microsoft products.

If the Gamecube was a loss maker would you be claiming it didn't matter because Nintendo made it back on profits from the DS?

That Nintendo hasnt actually used loss leading for any of thier consoles or handhelds, and the 2 products you brought up have almost no integration with each other.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Another thing that the PS3's abysmal launch and pre-launch have done is obscure Microsoft's own mistakes. The 360 costs $400, its games cost $60, and its peripheral prices are ridiculous. $70 for a fucking controller with the play and charge kit is insane, no matter if it's wireless and how good it is, to say nothing of a $100 wireless network dongle.

MS's direct competitor seems to like the $60 price point as well. The peripherals are obscene though, a WIRED 1st party controller is $40 as is the VGA connector to plug it up to a monitor.

I'm not comparing the 360 to the PS3 in my post. That's the entire point of the post. To an outside observer who is unlikely to buy any of the consoles unless they were spectacular, the 360 is a very unimpressive product.

the game selection is still pretty weak after a year,

I'm sure the MOST FAIR comparison is the Wii and PS3 game libraries circa November 2007 with the November 2006 X360 library, right? Is it really so unfair to judge a product real time as opposed to the time-travelling scenario you seem to favor? Having a head start gave MS an installed base and leverage to chip into PS3 exclusives but the fact that this is enabled by a late arriving and careless Sony doesn't mean it's not legitimate to compare the current X360 library with 2 just-launched systems. Maybe if they lined up on a track and a gun fired in the air and everyone agreed to release their big killer aps concurrently with each other, then yeah, I might care for such comparisons. As is, it's business and the early bird gets the worm.

See above. The entire point of my post was to cast the 360 in absolute terms, rather than compare to the PS3 or the Wii.

the failure rate is astronomical and coupled with a 90 day warranty and $140 repair cost.

For now I won't contest the claim of the failure rate since you didn't bother quantifying it either but perhaps that is the reason MS bumped up to a year long warranty? It was also retroactive. Seriously, this was in in G&C a long time ago.

Why was the failure rate so high to begin with, and what reason do we have to think the damn things will stop failing after the year warranty expires if so many couldn't even last 6 months? I'm not sure if anyone has been able to assign a reliable number to it, but the number of complaints and the policy change suggests that it's a lot higher than the 3% Microsoft has suggested.

There's no HDMI and no 1080P support, and backwards compatibility is still lacking.

HDMI seems pretty hard to retro fit but the 1080p support was also covered in G&C, and on that topic, it's got 768p now as well. (that's 1366x768 and what I'm running on my monitor)

So it does support 1080P now? I had heard about the upcoming support, but I was not aware it was actually implemented already.

HDMI is the standard of the future, and it should have been included when the system was designed. Because consoles don't typically get updated mid-way through their lives (although MS may be looking to change that with the Elite), it's now stuck with no HDMI port for 3-4 more years, during which time that may become a much bigger liability than it is now.

All of this looks positively spectacular compared to Sony's experiment in finding the limits of human stupidity, but it's still pretty dismal compared to previous successful consoles. Is it really all that surprising that the PS2 is still selling so well?

Not at all but even that successful system fucked over many a consumer -- like me. I'm on my 3rd PS2, it's the smaller version and it's never had a problem. Although neither have I played DVD movies on it as a rule, an activity I strongly suspect to have fucked over my previous, larger PS2's.

edit: moved X360 Elite related material.

The PS2 has had its bricked systems, too, and the Emotion Engine with its 2 ALU's was hardly the pinnacle of inspired console design, but it certainly had a better selection after 1 year than the 360 does now. It also had a friendlier price, including for the peripherals and games as well as the unit itself, and it seems that the failure rate was also much lower.

It must be said, however, that the PS2 wasn't really the greatest ever console, either, despite its record breaking sales. It also got off to a slow start, and also failed to be more powerful than PC's when it was new. The PS1, on the other hand, did things that an affordable PC simply could not do when it was new, it was easy to program for, it had lots of great games early on and throughout its life cycle, and it was much better than SEGA's offering. The best console, in my mind, was the Super NES, which I bought on launch day for $199 including two controllers and Super Mario World. After a paltry but high-quality launch selection, it had so many great games from its early life to after the PS had come out that it's hard to even come up with a Top 10. I still don't think I've seen a console that started out with games like Super Mario World end up with games like Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario RPG. I haven't seen any consoles lately that came with two controllers and a game for $200. To be fair, $200 in 1991 is about $325 in today's money. That still means that a company should be able to include one controller and a game for $300 and still turn a profit on the hardware.

[Vympel]

Oh I'm sorry, silly me. I thought companies did business to make money. Thank you for correcting this view.

Ah great, so you're going to argue Gamecube's purpose for Nintendo was to turn a profit, irrespective of it's performance and market share compared to previous Nintendo systems, games, etc etc? Please.

(nevermind this is the "defeat the enemy in the market place!" mentality pointlesswasteoftime.com joked about as infecting fans of particular consoles, as opposed to determining which system was good for gaming).

[Vendetta]

I just can't see how it can be called a financial success if it's lost asspiles of money over many years. Sure, strategically it makes sense if they eventually start making money, but that means it isn't a financial success YET. It's definately a brand success, in any case.

That was the point of the Xbox. It wasn't about making money, it was about establishing a brand which placed Microsoft products in the living room.

Ah great, so you're going to argue Gamecube's purpose for Nintendo was to turn a profit, irrespective of it's performance and market share compared to previous Nintendo systems, games, etc etc? Please.

Nintendo is a company which trades only in the games market. They need every product to make a profit, because that's how they make money as a company. Nintendo always sell hardware at a profit, that's the point of nintendo game hardware, to make money for Nintendo shareholders. Loss leader strategies are alright for Microsoft and Sony because they have profitmaking divisions to back them up. Not so good for Nintendo, because they don't, which is why they don't do it.

Why was the failure rate so high to begin with

Cheap-ass DVD drives.

[Medic]

I'm not comparing the 360 to the PS3 in my post. That's the entire point of the post. To an outside observer who is unlikely to buy any of the consoles unless they were spectacular, the 360 is a very unimpressive product.

snip

See above. The entire point of my post was to cast the 360 in absolute terms, rather than compare to the PS3 or the Wii.

Ah fair enough, I'm limiting my imagination to the offers on the table.

a lot higher than the 3% Microsoft has suggested.

Areed although you'll be able to Google a story on %100 failure rate for X360's and that sounds like so much hyperbole. (although I'm entirely open to 'bad batches' of systems, look at the laser defects in PS2, that was the 1st $600 system, after a fashion) My own frustrations aside, I've known people with launch-era PS2's that never did go bad.

Haha, yeah, PS2 wasn't the best system ever, not the hardware, it's just that's where all the game's went and the Dreamcast was a joke thanks to its predecessor's monumental flop-action. Although the PS1 was easy to program for? Even the professional-shills at OPM magazine said the PS1 initially was difficult to develop for, and that games later in the system's life looked WAY better. (they showed screenshots of Battle Arena Toshinden as proof )
Although, developers at that time were making the jump from a 2D system to a 3D system, I imagine that was no small jump.

[Sam Or I]

I've known people with launch-era PS2's that never did go bad.

Mine is slowly dying (It was a launch era), it just started a couple months ago when I picked up FF12, the infamous clicking started to happen. It plays some games but other it does not load. I never beat FF 12 because of it. I joke around as Sony timed it to die when the PS3 came out.

[Sam Or I]

Blu Ray is why it failed so far. Because Blu Ray players are so damn expensive. If Blu Ray is a success latter on the PS3 will gain significant market share.

Timing for the PS3's launch I don't think was part of it. Timing to launch the PS3 with Blu Ray was the mistake. Right now Blu Ray players are a rich mans toy, while the average consumer has not even thought about purchasing a Blu Ray player. Heck most people don't even own a high def TV yet. That is two technologies that have to become mainstream (High Def is on its way, but I have not laid down the cash for a new TV yet) before the average consumer starts looking at a Blu Ray player.

[Hotfoot]

Blu Ray is why it failed so far. Because Blu Ray players are so damn expensive. If Blu Ray is a success latter on the PS3 will gain significant market share.

Clearly you haven't been paying attention to the market. Blu-ray has been picking up and surpassing HD-DVD.

Timing for the PS3's launch I don't think was part of it. Timing to launch the PS3 with Blu Ray was the mistake. Right now Blu Ray players are a rich mans toy, while the average consumer has not even thought about purchasing a Blu Ray player. Heck most people don't even own a high def TV yet. That is two technologies that have to become mainstream (High Def is on its way, but I have not laid down the cash for a new TV yet) before the average consumer starts looking at a Blu Ray player.

Wow, this would make sense, if it weren't for the fact that the Blu-ray players might be the only thing keeping the PS3 afloat, because it sure as hell isn't the games, or the hardware.

[The Yosemite Bear]

my refurbished launch era PS2 is still going strong. Yup, I got a launch era PS2 that had been sent to the factory for having a bad DVD drive, and after the new drive was put in and everything checked, they resold it, as refurbished. It's been going strong with me since 2001.

[Spyder]

I've actually still got a launch PS2 that I've had since launch.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Really shows how much build quality has dropped that it's considered impressive for a launch console to still work. A friend of mine has an Atari 2600 that still works. In fact, I bet most of those older consoles that weren't completely abused or neglected still work.

[Stark]

My 360 smells like electrical shorts when it's on. Does anyone want to bet a warranty claim won't work?

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Man, a guy on Penny Arcade said his brother, in a fit of game-related rage, threw their SNES out a second story window, and it still worked!

[Hotfoot]

Really shows how much build quality has dropped that it's considered impressive for a launch console to still work. A friend of mine has an Atari 2600 that still works. In fact, I bet most of those older consoles that weren't completely abused or neglected still work.

Yeah! What's with that? Stupid console designers! Why aren't more consoles cart-based bricks?! I demand carts that you have to blow on to make sure the contacts still worked! The games were so much better than the stupid laser-read spinning discs! Who needs spinning disks? God that's stupid!

[Master of Ossus]

Yeah! What's with that? Stupid console designers! Why aren't more consoles cart-based bricks?! I demand carts that you have to blow on to make sure the contacts still worked! The games were so much better than the stupid laser-read spinning discs! Who needs spinning disks? God that's stupid!

The cartridges would be a superior format if the cost and capacity were equivalent. Only the fact that they are significantly different changes the equation in favor of DVD based solutions.

[VF5SS]

Fewer moving parts do often create a more solid piece of equipment. Those consoles of past generations will last for a good long time.