Sony’s Phil Harrison claims the company ‘overreached’ by including Blu-ray in the PlayStation 3
Published November 6th, 2006 in GamingSony’s Phil Harrison claims that the company had “overreached” with it’s decision to include Blu-ray in the PS3 at launch. From the Eurogamer article:
Referring to the shortages of blue diodes that forced Sony to postpone the console’s European launch until March, Harrison told Eurogamer’s Rob Fahey, “we have overreached in production of the Blu-Ray component - I can’t deny that”.
“But that’s the price you pay for adopting brand new, leading-edge technologies that will be future proof. We will resolve those issues - we are already catching up.”
Well, I’ll say. If there’s any decision that ruined the PlayStation 3 in terms of potential sales, as well as production quality, it’s the Blu-ray drive. The thing is responsible for both the console’s high price and the shortage of units at launch, and the decision to include it in the console at this time was just a stupid idea. Personally I think that the right decision would have been to either not include the Blu-ray drive and have it as an add-on, or better still, wait until next year to release the console, after the Blu-ray drops in price. Sony has plenty of experience with successfully entering the console market late, so it’s not as though they couldn’t pull it off this time around, especially if the offering was that much better than their competitors for the same price.
At this point it’s too late to make any more decisions, what’s done is done. Sony will include Blu-ray at launch this month, far earlier than it would have been wise to include it. And they will be paying the price for it. It’s looking more and more like the Nintendo Wii is going to dominate the console race this round.
Sony ‘overreached’ including Blu-ray in PS3 - Harrison [Eurogamer via digg]
Bah, the $499 PS3 is only $100 more than the 360 and there are enough differences besides Blu-Ray to account for that: Cell, Bluetooth wireless system, PS2 architecture included too for backwards compatibility, free online gameplay. You could count Blu-Ray as free.
Or pay $199 for a 360 HD-DVD drive, when games won’t be able to utilize it for more capacity, EVER.
Low numbers will hamper Sony’s sales early on, certainly. It was the same with PS2. I think it will end up with PS3 having sold the most units in the end, followed by Wii, then 360.
I think that the Wii will most likely come out on top, simply because it’s cheap, it offers a different experience than the other 2 platforms, and it looks to have the most solid game library going for it at the moment. I think that it will most definitely have the most units sold in the first year anyway, if not through it’s whole cycle.
However, I’d argue that the Wii isn’t in the war so to speak. It’s a completely product than the PS3 and 360, and targets a very different market. The Wii is strictly a (relatively low powered) no frills game console with a brand new gameplay style that targets the casual gamer. The PS3 and the 360 on the other hand are in direct competition with each other, as they are both high powered entertainment systems that have the goal of pushing next-gen media formats, and they target the hardcore gamer and the videophile. So I’d argue that the PS3 vs 360 is the real war here, the Wii is somewhat irrelevant to talk about in a competitive context since it is not really in direct competition. In the 360 vs PS3 war, I do think that the PS3 will come out on top because it is the better deal overall. From the videophile’s standpoint, it provides a cheap Blu-Ray player out of the box, while the 360 makes you spend extra and ends up costing more in the end should you choose to add the HD-DVD functionality. From the gamers standpoint, the PS3 is more powerful, and Sony traditionally offers more unique games. Besides, the best Xbox exclusives have a tendency to end up on the PC anyway, so why buy a 360 when one could just wait a bit and play it on the PC later (often with better settings)?
All that said, I’m probably going to go for the Wii initially. I don’t own a 360, and I plan on waiting to see how the other 2 consoles and their game libraries turn out before I decide whether or not to shell out for them.