Archive for the ‘PS3, PS4’ Category

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PS3 doesn’t suck as much as fanbois

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

What am I doing writing three blog posts per week, especially when I have another one (weekly roundup) to write tomorrow? Well, you see, I’m a bit angry. And when I’m angry, I blog. PlayStation 3What started as a perfectly innocent *opinion* from an ex game developer for Harmonix (makers of Guitar Hero and Rock Band) on his blog about the difficulties of programming on the PS3, has turned into a fanboy fight-fest, mostly from PS3 fanbois and members of the Sony Defence Force blasting his *opinions* in the comments section. The funny thing is that Jason Booth, the developer/blogger in question, didn’t even suggest that the PS3 sucks, just that it’s difficult to programme for and that the expectation that PS3 games will own Xbox 360 games in the future might not be fully realised. Here are the points raised in the blog post:

  • PS3 has a slower fill rate than the Xbox 360
  • Multi-processor programming is too complicated to take full advantage of the Cell
  • Blu-ray is great for providing more space, but has a slower load time. It is now mainly used to store duplicate game assets to speed up load time and work around some of the other limitations of the PS3
  • Optimization for the PS3 is costly, and developers lack the resources to do it effectively
  • Code for the PS3 cannot be re-used for non-PS3 projects, so investment in PS3 coding is expensive

Now I’m not saying that all these points are valid. Some are probably not, but I can’t comment because I don’t work on game development. But the reaction to it has been, sadly, typical whenever someone says anything bad about a particular tech, in this instance, from PS3 fanbois. So what kind of reaction do we get from PS3 fanbois? That game developers, who sometimes work 18 hour days and basically live at the office, are lazy. That because Jason spelt “Blu-ray” wrong and that he started his career as a computer graphic artist means he knows nothing about programming. Some even suggested that his new work involves producing a product that will compete with Sony Home, and therefore, he is a bitter programmer who is going to get beat by Sony and is venting his anger. How could these people come out with these statements when most (if not all) of them have zero programming experience? And why personal attacks against someone who simply expressed his own opinions about a piece of tech? The comments posted are not all from fanbois though. There are a lot of anonymous postings from programmers with even more technical evidence of the PS3’s failings. As someone who graduated as a Software Engineer, but never really went to work in the field, I can understand some but not all of the points raised, but it seem to make sense. These programmers are posting anonymously because they fear this kind of backlash from fanbois, and more importantly, the spanking they will get from Sony which in turn might mean a loss of employment. But it’s not just anonymous programmers, some of the industry’s biggest names have all spoken out against the PS3’s design. Gabe Newell, the man behind the amazing Half-Life series and MD of Valve software, said earlier this year that:

The PS3 is a total disaster on so many levels, I think It’s really clear that Sony lost track of what customers and what developers wanted. I’d say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a ‘do over’. Just say, ‘This was a horrible disaster and we’re sorry and we’re going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it.’

Then we have John Carmack, creator of Doom/Quake from ID Software, saying:

But the honest truth is that Microsoft dev tools are so much better than Sony’s. We expect to keep in mind the issues of bringing this up on the PlayStation 3… they’re not helpful to the developers… I suspect they’re not going to overwhelmingly crush the marketplace this time, which wasn’t clear a year ago.

And posted on this blog a couple of weeks ago, was this statement from BioWare President Greg Zeschuk:

If everyone’s waiting for this huge gap, it’s just not going to happen. By the end of this generation both PS3 and Xbox 360 will look awesome. Maybe 1 per cent of the population might be able to tell the difference between the two.

No surprise then that PS3 fanbois have already blasted all of these pioneers of gaming, some go as far as suggesting they’ve been bribed to say these things. I know who I would believe if I had to choose between Carmack/Newell/Zeschuk or Sony’s PR department and their legion of fanbois. What these experts are saying, is not that the PS3 totally sucks, but rather, that it’s not an easy piece of hardware to programme for. I’m sure the Xbox 360 and Wii have their own problems, but Sony seemed to have ignored the human element (ie. programmers) when they came up with their design for the PS3. I’m sure that if developers allocated more resources to the PS3, they could come up with games that will be as impressive if not more so than the Xbox 360 version. But the extra resources dedicated to make the game look good takes resources away from making the game fun to play and in the longevity stakes (see Lair, Heavenly Sword, Ratchet and Clank …). But even if you don’t believe these experts, then all you have to do is to look at reality (something that fanbois are unable to do, seemingly). The reality is that the Xbox 360 has the biggest market share, compared to the PS3’s pathetic 14% hold on the US market. The reality is that the Xbox 360 has more and better games so far, and that developers seem to develop more games and do it faster on the Xbox 360. The reality is that when cross-platform games are produced, these either look the same on either platforms, or in many cases, look and play better on the Xbox 360. That’s reality, and until it changes, nothing fanbois can say will make the PS3 a better game console.

Posted in PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 4 Comments »

Game Consoles – September 2007 NPD Sales Figure Analysis

Monday, October 22nd, 2007

This is another regular feature that I might run on this blog. Every month, marketing research firm NPD releases sales figures for game consoles (including portables).

The figures for US sales in September has just been released, and here they are:

  • Xbox 360: 527,800 (Total: 6.8 million)
  • Wii: 501,000 (Total: 4.5 million)
  • DS: 495,800 (Total: 13.2 million)
  • PSP: 284,500 (Total: 8.6 million)
  • PS2: 215,000 (Total: 39.3 million)
  • PS3: 119,400 (Total: 1.87 million)

NPD September 2007 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of September 2007)

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that the PS3 isn’t doing too well at all. Some have claimed that the PS3 is selling at the same rate as the Xbox 360 when it first came out last year. But this isn’t 2006 anymore – back then, nobody cared about “next-gen” or HD gaming. And sales figures are only worthwhile when you compare them to that of your closest competitors. With that in mind, September saw the Xbox 360 grab  46% of the next-gen market share, the Wii was close at 44.6% and the PS3 way behind on 10.4%. Of course, September was an exceptionally good month for the Xbox 360 due to the release of Halo 3, so sales of the console will drop in the coming months. Looking at total sales figures, the Xbox 360 still leads with 51.6%, the Wii at 34% and the PS3 at 14.2%. Sony has gone from a 80+% domination of the previous-gen market with the PS2 (which is currently still doing very well) to a minuscule share of the next-gen market and this must be worrying for Sony. The only consolation is that since the PS2 is still doing well, when it is finally discontinued, there might be a large group of upgraders to the PS3. But this is still a long time away, and there is no guarantee that these PS2 users will all grab themselves a PS3, considering many of them might have already gone down the Xbox 360 route. Cheaper PS3’s will help, but when price is the only factor, the Xbox 360 and Wii are both still in a more advantageous position having been released for longer, selling in greater numbers and have the greater chance of discounting. And obviously, the number of quality games for the Xbox 360 is what is really driving sales, and with the highly rated Mass Effect Xbox 360 exclusive coming out in November, the holidays period looks like a good one for the Xbox 360.

In the portable market, the PSP continues to sell well, even though the Nintendo DS is still selling at a 3:2 ratio. I’m sure Sony would be much happier if the PSP and PS3 sales figures were reversed, but the PSP, Sony’s first portable game machine, is holding it’s own against portable heavyweights Nintendo. The reason why the PSP is doing so well might come down to the fact that the Nintendo DS isn’t really competing on all fronts with the PSP – the DS cannot match the PSP’s music and movie playback capabilities, for example, and if Nintendo’s “games first” philosophies stay true, it’s unlikely that their next portable will be able to compete in these areas either.

See you next month.

Posted in Gaming, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, NPD Analysis, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 3 Comments »

Weekly News Roundup (21 October 2007)

Sunday, October 21st, 2007

Time again for the weekly news roundup. Got a lot to talk about this week, so let’s begin.

In copyright related news, YouTube has launched its new anti-piracy blocker. So that’s 90% of its videos being blocked now, and the rest is made up of clips of Chocolate Rain Guy, crying Britney Spears fan “guy” and video blogs from people talking about things nobody cares about. Even the lovable dramatic chipmunk might have to be removed, since it comes from a Japanese TV show which is no doubt copyrighted. In news that I should have covered last week, a UK car repair firm has been sued for copyright infringment because their workers had a radio on while working on the cars in the background. Has the world gone mad? It’s like the story of the mother being sued because her home video of her baby, which she had uploaded onto YouTube and removed, because there was some copyrighted music in the background. I think copyright control lost all common sense. It’s suppose to protect artists from lost revenue, but how does a home video of a baby hurt anybody? Comcast has begun to block certain P2P traffic in a bid to stop piracy, and possibly (more importantly) curb network usage. ISPs sell you bandwidth when they do not have the network capacity to accommodate it if everyone was using the maximum. It has worked before because most people don’t use anywhere near their allocated limits. Unfortunately with the net becoming more and more popular, and downloads becoming larger and larger (watching 24 hours of legal YouTube videos can use up GBs of bandwidth), people are using more and getting closer to their limits than ever before. If the net is to continue to thrive, then somebody, either in the private sector or the government, need to step in and fund further network infrastructure, because there is only so much you can do to limit traffic flow before it starts to hurt the Internet. Went a little off topic here, sorry about that.

Now to change the topic entirely, in gaming news, the PS3 has seen a sale surge up nearly 180% in recent weeks in the UK. At first glance, it seems that the surge is due to the introduction of the cheaper 40 GB PS2-emulation-less version of the PS3, but sales figure show that people are actually buying the discontinued model (with PS2 emulation) for fear that they won’t be able to buy a PS2 compatible PS3 in the future. I share their fears, but I lack the money to do anything about it. This might have been Sony’s strategy all along, but it all depends on what happens after the PS2 compatible PS3 sells out – will they introduce another model that has PS2 compatibility, or do what they are threatening to do now, which is to stop PS2 emulation support altogether? If so, won’t that hurt PS3 sales even more? While the situation may be far from desperate for Sony, they are sure acting like it with the latest news that they’ve sold their PS3 cell chip production plant to bitter HD rivals Toshiba. In the short terms, this frees up money for Sony and allows them to concentrate on their core products. But in the long term, won’t this gives Toshiba control over the pricing of PS3 cell chips and so wouldn’t this mean less price cuts in the future? Certainly, it will improve Toshiba’s profile as a technology leader, and the cost of running such a production plant can be offset easily by their record earnings recently. Toshiba is also developing a close relationship with Microsoft? Will we see a cell chip in the Xbox 720 perhaps? Microsoft themselves are doing pretty well recently due to Halo 3. It has pushed Xbox 360 sales past the Wii, shipping double the normal monthly number of consoles and almost 5 times as many sales as the PS3 (which declined 8% in a month which saw gaming sales actually increase by 64%). It’s amazing to think that a single game, the third in the series in fact, managed to do all of this. Sony really needs a game like this to push the PS3 instead of relying on Blu-ray to sell consoles, but there appears to be nothing on the horizon just yet (as least no exclusives). It’s not all bad news for Sony though, – their their PSP is doing very well, not a Nintendo DS beater, but still enough of a market to sustain it for a few generations. Microsoft, meanwhile, is planning to sell a Xbox 360 that includes a built-in HD DVD drive. Personally, I think they should have done it with the Elite, but I also don’t think they will do it until HD DVD become a more established format.

On to HD news, this article goes behind the scenes to look at the development of the Transformers HD DVD and the advanced interactive/web enabled content for the disc. The Transformers HD DVD has been selling very well, in the top 5 of disc sales on Amazon (that includes all DVD sales) – it’s the kind of movie that will sell discs, not because it’s a brilliant movie (it’s not), but it’s the kind of movie to really show off HD systems. It’s also selling well because the disc is region free, and I know lots of people here in Australia that have purchased through Amazon, and with the exchange rate and the horrible pricing of both Blu-ray and HD DVD movies here in Australia (the price for the Transformers HD DVD here in Australia is $US 38, compared to only $28 from Amazon), no wonder people are sourcing their HD movies overseas. There is also the strange situation where some movies are released by different studios worldwide, and these studios differ in which HD format they support – a Blu-ray exclusive in the US might be a HD DVD exclusive in the UK. With HD DVD being region-free, HD DVD owners are at an advantage when it comes to buying overseas. Blu-ray owners, however, have to be vigilant when checking to see if movies are indeed region-free (a lot of them are), or risk buying a movie they can’t play. Region control sucks. In Australia, companies cannot enforce DVD region control due to our competition commission (ACCC) stating that forcing region control might be against the Trade Practices Act. This is why almost all our DVD players are region free, even from big brands like LG or Samsung (there is usually a code to unlock these players). I hope the situation continues with HD players, but so far, all HD players are region locked. Speaking of HD players, Toshiba has finally started selling HD DVD players here in Australia, and it looks like they’ve read my post about free movie offers and the lack of them here in Australia. Toshiba are now offering free movies too with their players in Australia, more details here. Hopefully, this will allow HD DVD to break into the Blu-ray dominated market here in Australia (it’s not hard to dominate our very small market, especially considering the competing format has zero standalone players for sale).

That’s it for this week. See you in a week’s time.

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (21 October 2007)

Are you a fanboi?

Friday, October 19th, 2007

I mentioned in the last news roundup that Capcom had set up a countdown clock to reveal something. “Prepare Yourself” was the only clue as to what was set to be announced. PS3 owners, who were in quite a state after Capcom had dropped PS3 support for Monster Hunter 3, were eagerly awaiting this announcement to be a PS3 related surprise/apology from Capcom. Well, the countdown has reached zero, and the big surprise is Street Fighter IV, but no platform release information as yet (most likely cross platform). Around the same time, it was also announced that Lost Planet would make its way to the PS3, but this was met with a collective “meh” from the PS3 crowd – a year old Xbox 360 game is not what they were waiting for. You can read all the posts from PS3 fans on the Capcom forum on this apparent betrayal (the thread titles “I am _so_ done with you Capcom…”, “So disappointed at you Capcom…” and “Why Lost Planet?” sums things up). Then rumour circulated that there was to be a further annoucement on Friday – whether this is genuine or just some confusion in regards to the date of the countdown, we’ll find out soon enough (tomorrow).

Fanboi PostAnyway, what I wanted to talk about wasn’t Capcom or PS3, but rather, this culture of fanboism (or the political correct version, fanpersonism). This Capcom “saga” is just one example, and it goes beyond simply gaming, to everything from Mac or PC to Blu-ray or HD DVD. I can sort of understand people supporting Star Wars over Star Trek, but to support and, dare I say it, *love* a corporate produced royalty generating brand name like Blu-ray or HD DVD? Have people gone mad?

I guess some feel the need to actively support something simply because they’ve paid good money and want some reassurance that their choice was the right one. But for a true fanboi, this is not enough. They must actively oppose the competitor with such enthusiasm that borders on fanaticism. People feel personally insulted if the product they purchased has been rubbished in any way, even when secretly they know the criticism is probably justified. Have we become such slaves to consumer culture that we must submit our loyalty towards brand names in the same way we devote ourselves to our religion, or heavens forbid, our sports teams?

Now before I go any further, I must admit that I too have been caught up in fanboism. As an owner of a Xbox 360 and HD DVD supporter, I can easily choose a corner to stand in, since the “enemy” for both the Xbox 360 and HD DVD is Sony. And I must admit, I have often posted here and in the forum a very clear bias towards the PS3 and Blu-ray, not that I don’t have good reason to do so (and also personal reasons that I cannot go into further). But sometimes even I am amazed at my emotional state when important news breaks, such as Paramount’s decision to go HD DVD exclusive, and news of Blu-ray’s further dominance of the HD market. I too, feel joy and anger as if my personal honor has just been lauded or insulted. Even with the Capcom story, I felt a degree of (I don’t know how to put it in more formal language) “wanting-to-rub-it-in-to-the-face-of-PS3-fans-ness”, even though the news means nothing to me on a personal level.

Corporate BrandingIt is not enough that a new game is announced for the PS3 – it *has* to be an exclusive to make the news give you joy. It’s not good enough that PS3 owners get to enjoy Street Fighter IV, the first Street Fighter game in a decade, on the console of their choice. But the feeling that the same game will end up on the Xbox 360, well, feels more like a slap in the face than anything else.

Luckily, I have not fallen that far yet. I can still enjoy the fact that I will be able to play GTA IV on my Xbox 360 without the knowledge that it’s also available on the PS3 getting me down. Exclusive GTA IV content on the Xbox 360? Well, that’s just icing on an already delicious cake, nothing more and nothing to gloat about.

Okay, maybe just a little gloating …

Posted in High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 1 Comment »

Weekly News Roundup (14 October 2007)

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

Once again, I’ll go through all the news items that have gone through the Digital Digest website and forum for the week (I’ve kept this up for a month, a new record for me in terms of keeping up with anything).

Starting with copyright related news as usual, slashdot has slashdotted an article about a website (which I will not link for legal and personal objections, but search for “tvboxset” on Google) that is selling DVDs for TV episodes. Not so strange, except that these aren’t original DVDs, rather DVD-Rs containing shows probably recorded off TV or downloaded. Now, why isn’t the MPAA going after sites like this and instead, going after regular viewers and even websites like Digital Digest? In fact, professional piracy outfits are making enormous profits using professional DVD replicators to mass produce pirated DVDs to sell for profit (usually to fund further illegal activities), yet it’s only Torrentspy that’s getting the MPAA’s attention. You’ve got to wonder sometimes. And speaking of targeting regular users rather than professional pirates, Ian Roger of Yahoo Music says that companies shouldn’t waste any more time and effort on DRM, which has obviously failed to stop music sharing and at the same time, piss off regular consumers. Damn right.

Now in gaming news, and as covered in my last blog entry, Greg Zeschuk of Bioware says that the Xbox 360 and PS3 are pretty much the same in terms of performance, and that Blu-ray storage won’t necessarily win the day for PS3. While I agree, having more time to think about it, there are certainly situations where more space is good. Things like if you want to package multiple language versions of the same game onto a single disc. Of course, this limitation can be overcome by distributing different language versions separately, and it’s not an issue of gameplay. There’s always the possibility of multi-DVD releases, and don’t rule out Xbox 360 one day using HD DVD as a gaming format if/when it becomes necessary. The Wii has a new firmware out that allows USB keyboards to be used. I would really like the Xbox 360 to support a keyboard/mouse combination for gaming, although it would give certain users an unfair advantage in online gaming. Meanwhile, Capcom has dropped PS3 support for its upcoming game Monster Hunter 3, and possibly other games too, due to “high development cost” on the PS3. Capcom seems to have a surprise though, with a countdown clock that is set to reach zero in two days time and the mysterious phrase “Prepare Yourself”. PS3 fans are thinking it will be a PS3 related surprise to make up for dropping Monster Hunter 3. The relatively poor PS3 sales is probably a contributing factor to developers switching their focus to the Xbox 360/PC/Wii platforms – the maths is simply, the more consoles out there, the more profitable a game will be. In an effort to boost PS3 sales before the important holiday season, Sony is set to release its 40 GB “PS3 Lite”, featuring less hardware feature (no emulation, less USB ports, no memory card ports and comes in a different color). I like this move, although I’m disturbed by news that the “full” version will be discontinued when stock sells out (in an effort to drive sales to the “full” version, I suppose). Sony should release 3 different PS3 packages, the PS3 Lite ($399), a PS3 Standard ($499) that adds PS2 software emulation and a 60 GB HDD to the PS3 Lite and a PS3 Pro ($599) with 80 GB HDD, full hardware emulation and all hardware features and. Simple!

And finally, to HD news. Toshiba says HD DVD player sales are back on top, but only if you do not include the PS3 (to be fair, the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive is not included either). But the sale numbers are so small, both for hardware and movies, that the release of Transformers on HD DVD might turn the whole sales numbers upside down (currently number 6 on the Amazon DVD/HD DVD/Blu-ray bestseller list, was as high as number 3). A quite different type of HD DVD promotion, to celebrate the release of Star Trek TOS on HD DVD, nearly 300 theatres in the US will screen the HD version of the episode “The Menagerie”. LG is set to release its second generation dual-format player, this time with full interactivity (minus BD-Live for Blu-ray) for both HD formats. If they can release it at $500 to $600, it will sell quite well I think (one/two hundred dollars more than a single format player is cheap insurance against not being able to play that movie you want because it was released in the “wrong” format). But it will probably sell for $999, which explains why dual-format players only have a 2% market in HD standalones at the moment. Shame. In the same article, the HD DVD people are already talking about private networked presentations. Don’t really know how it works, but at least they are talking about it while Blu-ray has yet to even announce a BD-Live network capable player (there’s no reason why the PS3 can’t be made to support it now, except for the lack of any software to take advantage of it due to no other BD-Live capable players being available, even from Sony). If HD DVD really wants to win the HD war, all they need to do is to perfect HD DVD/DVD combos (no more playback errors, and preferably do one of those single sided multi-layer combos where both the HD and DVD versions are on the same side), then for the studio (most likely HD DVD die-hard Universal) to release a single combo version for all their hit movies still at the same price as DVD releases. And at the same time, don’t release a DVD only version of the same movie to force even DVD users to buy the combo version (the “budget” DVD only version to come in a few months time). If HD DVD is really not that much more expensive than DVD to manufacture, then it costs the studio very little, and will boost HD DVD in a huge way (albeit artificially). It would make for a smooth transition from DVD to HD DVD as long as the pricing remains the same. And Blu-ray can’t even compete if they wanted to.  

That’s all for this week. Join me, the same time, same blog, next week for more WEEKLY ROUNDUP ADVENTURES!!

Posted in Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 1 Comment »

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