I guess my main point was (and is) that big business is big business. Sony will do anything underhanded that they can to cut the throat of the competition just like MS will do and Nintendo will do. People seem to forget that Nintendo took total advantage of developers with the N64 by using their propriatary media that they FORCED developers to pay premium bucks for up front! If I remember correctly the price of a game to be made on the N64 was 3.3 million before it even got started in development due to the cost of the carts and the amount that Nintendo forced developers to buy regardless of sales. It was something like $33 for a cart and Nintendo made the developer purchase a minimum of 100,000 carts.
Back to my point. I don't think it matters who is #1 as long as #2 is still fighting. If MS jumped into the top spot and Sony bailed completely then we would have a mess on our hands as we would be completely at the mercy of MS. This would not be good. If MS drops from the game then we will be at the mercy of Sony and this too would not be good. As long as the competition is there then we will be fine.

I think no matter what Sony does as far as technology goes to the PS3, MS will top it. Do I think that it will make MS win the number 1 spot? No I sure hope not!!

I mean just face it, MS is the "Daddy Rabbit" of technology and companies like Sony are always buying technology from MS. They always look to see what MS has come up with. MS isn't the richest company in the world for nothing.

But like I said earlier. I don't want either one winning. I actually would like to see Sony stay on top so that my Xbox hardware and software are priced the way I like it due to the fierce competition.

It's a wonderful time to be a gamer. Just think about it. Have you ever seen past E3's as exciting as this one!!

I think that sums it up quite nicely.

In every generation, the competing consoles are pretty much equal. This generation is something of an exception as most PS2 games don't look nearly as good as X-box or GC games. I don't think Sony will make this mistake next generation and graphically all three systems will likely be very similar.

One system may pack more extra crap, but as I've already stated more than ones, IMO that won't be a selling point.

As for securing exclusives, I've already stated the reason MS can't do it.

Sony has a much larger market, and they will get off to a faster start next generation simply because of the hype advantage and "brand name" status. They own the casual gamer market.

So Sony can offer third parties money and a huge market to get their games as exclusive. MS can only offer money as the size of the X-box market is tiny in comparison to Sony's.

As for who's number one, I could care less. I hope MS finds a way to make a profit and sticks around long term regardless of whether they gain any ground on Sony. Same with Nintendo. It keeps the prices down and puts pressure on all three to put out good games.

MS doesn't have to be #1 this generation or the next. They just have to have enough market share to seriously hurt Sony's profits. Most of Sony's profits are from Playstation and the entertainment division. If they can do it with the next generation X-Box against the next generation PS3, then they hurt Sony enough to probably gain an advantage for the X-Box 3 vs PS4 match up.

The great thing is that MS won't have to do much design work for the next generation X-Box's since Intel, Nvidia and IBM will be doing most of it for other customers. Sony on the other hand designs and manufactures all of the PS components internally and the competition may hurt them at the PS4 point in time. They may have to rethink investing a lot of money into R&D and manufacturing in light of reduced profits.

It will be a selling point if you want to get people who have not been buying games all along. You get in one hand a tivo/karaoke/media center/email and browser/online gaming/great game machine and on the other hand you get a great game machine.

You stated why you don't think they can do it. M$ can do anything they really want becuase they have the pockets to do so. Just look at the Rare deal. If they can't sign them to exclusives, they can buy the companies.

Again, speculation on your part. If they all come out of the gate at the same time there is no way you know right now that Sony will take the lead right away. M$ has shown that they are putting out the best hardware so far and Sony has shown that they like hype. When it comes time to buy another system who do you believe hype or proof?

M$ can offer third parties a lot more money than Sony and IMO they will right off the bar next gen to ensure they have AAA exclusives. If they can't secure the exclusives through deals they will buy companies to produce them. This is all so similar to how they became number one in computer OS market.
edit: Also, we do not know what the ps3 and xbox2 marketshares will be when they are released so you can't really say that Sony can offer a larger marketshare at this time. As preorders begin being counted we could look at these numbers but previous performance does not indicate future performance.

when you say entertainment, you're including the movie, music, and all of the other media related divisions? i know that the PS2 has been one of the most profitable divisions, but Sony is a HUGE company. they'll probably be fine even if the ps3 doesn't do so well.
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"Sony recorded consolidated annual sales of over $62.3 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2003, and it employs 161,100 people worldwide. Sony's consolidated sales in the U.S. for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2003, was $20 billion."

Microsoft (Fiscal Year ending June 30, 2002)
Net revenue: US$28.37 billion
Net income: US$7.83 billion
50,621

My previous retort to this is people that aren't into games aren't going to buy a gaming machine for extra features. They'll just buy the extra stuff seperately, and get the added advantage of it being higher quality. All-in-one machines (the dvd player/receiver/speakers sets are a good example) are always of lower quality and offer fewer options that dedicated stand-alone equipment.

They don't have bottomless pockets and not many companies (especially good developers with hit franchises) are for sale. Rare is a poor example because they only put out a game every couple of years, hardly enough to sell consoles. Also, the only reason MS got them was because Nintendo decided they weren't worth buying. Rare offered themselves to Nintendo first and Nintendo declined.

We're talking about the future, so we are all speculating. Sony will take the lead because they have the hype, name recognition, and the biggest exclusives (namely GTA and Final Fantasy). Those are what got casual gamers to buy the PS2 and they will, IMO, get them to buy the PS3. MS and Nintendo have to this point offered nothing to entice masses of casual gamers to buy their consoles (as evidenced by their dimunitive sales next to Sony) and it's unlikely this will change by 2005.

MS can offer more money now and haven't been able to secure any big games beside Halo. The reason is MS can't offer them enough money to offset sony's offer plus the millions of additional sales possible with the PS2's much larger user base.

The market thing going into next generation will be based on this generation. Developers have no reason to think the PS3 won't sell like the PS2 and that the X-box2 and Gamecube2 will sell like their counterparts. Initial exclusivity deals will be based on the current market shares. Thus sony will get the big exclusives in the beginning. Couple this with their name recognition and hype that will sell PS3s to casual gamers and they will again take a big lead further enabling them to secure exclusives.

But of course, we are both just speculating. I stick with my speculation because it is based on as solid as possible reasoning when dealing with the future.

Time will tell which of us is right, but I stick by my assertion that MS and Nintendo will be unable to gain much, if any, ground on Sony unless Sony makes some major mistakes. They just have all the advantages, and only screwing up themselves can negate them IMO.

We do know that Sony will have a huge market share with the release of the PS3. Look at the PS2 for example. PS2's were impossible to find for 6 months and they were selling like crazy. At the same time, the DC was a better console, better games, and a complete better value. This did not matter to consumers who just wanted that Playstation name. They knew that Playstation meant great, must have games, so they bought the console with nothing but a dream of what to come.

The same thing will happen with PS3, though I think Sony is planning more on a dynomite set of release games. People will buy the PS3 because of the Playstation name, knowing that even if there is no game they want for it yet, there will be one soon. This is the same reason X-box owners will buy the X-box without question, because they know that game on the original X-box will be on the X-box 2 in a better context. Hell, the only reason people bought GC was because of the Nintendo name and knowing that Mario and Zelda would be on there soon.

this is very debatable. but probably impossibly w/out console bashing.

Exactly. Next generations marketshare will be initially determined by the past.

People bought the PS2 at the beginning of this generation because of the success (i.e. great exclusives) on the PSX. This enabled sony to get even more big exclusives, and expand market share.

Next generation, people will buy the PS3 based on the success (i.e. great exclusives) on the PS2 and PSX. This will again enable them to maintain exclusives and garner more and again expand their market share.

This cycle will continue indefinitely unless they make some huge mistakes IMO.

MS and Nintendo will stick around. People will buy the X-box 2 because they liked the X-box, halo, x-box live etc. People will buy the next Nintendo offering because they love Nintendo's games. The problem is these populations are miniscule compared to the loyal playstation fanbase.

All they can really hope to do is learn to make a profit in second and third place and at least keep some competitive pressure on Sony and hope they make a mistake somewhere down the line IMO.

At least this way their is still competition meaning lower prices and more great games for us gamers.

I am argueing this fact for "at PS2 release time". I think it is easy to see that at the time the PS2 was released, the DC has a library of must have games while the PS2 launch was weak. I'm not trying to compare the consoles now, just at the time of PS2's release, when the PS2 was most fragile. I think I made a fair comment without console bashing.

Not really that debateable. The DC had been out for a year and had a solid library of games that got very good reviews (Soul Calibur, Sonic Adventure, NFL2K, NBA2K etc.).

The PS2 had pretty much nothing at launch. What, Tekken Tag and a couple of other games.

To top it off, the PS2 launch games didn't even look as good graphically as the DC games. In all honesty, I can't think of a single PS2 game to date that looks as good as Soul Calibur.

Sony launched a technically inferior console, with no system selling games, and still totally wiped out the DC.

The reason is hype. Sony had tons of positive hype after the success of the PSX, while Sega had tons of negative hype after the 32X, Sega CD and Saturn Debacles.

The PS3 won't wipe out the X-box2 or GC2 because neither Nintendo or MS has the level of negative hype that Sega was shackled with. But the huge hype advantage (coupled with likely a better launch lineup and knowledge that the biggest games like FF and GTA will be exclusive in the future) will allow them to maintain their huge marketshare lead.

I agree with this. I got burnt on the 32X (and somewhat on the SegaCD), and I was not about to shell out money to Sega after I fell in love with the PSX.

i meant that I couldn't debate this w/out bashing the DC. not that you're comment wasn't fair.

Man, you took the words right out of my mouth. Thanks for saving me all that typing.

can we archive this for posterity?

After reading this thread I realize it must be said.....None of us know what this new Multi-Function Entertainment box will be able to do. Sony and M$ are going that way. Don't you think they know better if it will be accepted than all of us sitting back here speculating what it will do? All we know is what technology can do for us right now and in the very near future. When M$ first started people probably wondered why they would try to compete against Apple when computers couldn't really do anything useful for the common user. Back then if someone explained...well soon you will have mp3 players, internet fees, DVR's etc....and we'll make money that way, you would have said..."Huh?" Just like now you think that System that M$ is so desperately trying to get in front of us in 3-5 years is going to use today's technology and be limited by what we can do today? Let's be realistic and say the technology we have today is a stepping block for the amazing technology of the future just as it always has been. We don't know what it will be able to do, but in the very near future we will be looking back and saying...remember when we thought PS2/Xbox was the greatest thing ever? I don't know how we lived with out this (insert name of future system/gaming machine/do all box set here).

The two competing companies only make it better for us the consumer...so if you like PS2 - go out play GTA and thank M$ for pushing RockStar to make the next one even better. If you like Xbox play Halo thank Sony for pushing Bungie to make Halo2 even better.

If you own both play whatever games you want and remember back to when Atari and Odyssey where going head-to-head and we were all amazed by the amazing graphics of Pitfall.

This has been the goal of all console makers since the Nintendo and the NES. Microsoft isn't really in a hurry to become all of that just yet.



Microsoft is actually really tight with money. You would be surprised. They aren't just going around buying up every 3rd party developer and they aren't even very smart about cutting deals to key developers which is why they pissed off EA this year and a few others. Microsoft is a company with alot of money, sure... but that doesn't mean they're willing to spend it all on the games division. Sony has deep pockets too... so does Nintendo. It doesn't really mean anything.



Sony will likely take the lead right away - even if they don't release any games for the system. It happened with the PS2 in Japan - selling quickly without having much in terms of software. Even if Microsoft and Sony release systems at the same time and Microsoft has lots of launch games and Sony has none, I think Sony will sell more right away... especially in the Asian market. Sony runs their business much better. Microsoft does everything the American way and isn't flexible enough to compete in foreign markets. In the US, it will probably be a really tight race, but that's not enough to become number 1 in this business. Microsoft runs everything out of Redmond and only one or two people get to make all the decisions while everyone else's hands are tied. Sony has different heads of different divisions and they each have enough decision making power to properly run the company.



Microsoft doesn't offer third parties more money. They also do really stupid things. Like they'll give alot of money for a title to have a little bit of exclusive content on their machine, but nobody will even care about it in the end. They also refuse to cut deals to key developers like EA... they make all developers pay the same fees no matter what and Sony will give a huge discount to certain key developers - that's how they stole them all from Nintendo in the first place.

Calling microsoft "M$" is just petty and juvenile console-maker bashing and it pretty much undermines anything intelligent you have to say.

Microsoft is still losing money on the hardware because they made really stupid contracts with nVidia and Intel and they're paying too much for the hardware still. They're new to the console industry, so these kinds of mistakes are forgiveable. I'm quite impressed with what they've done in spite of how many mistakes they've made. So far it doesn't look like they're ever going to be anything over in the Asian market. PS1 and Dreamcast still outsell the Xbox in Japan. I have a little faith that they'll change their policies a little to be more flexible. Until then, they'll just have to settle for second place.

Again - if everyone could just stop with the M$ garbage, that would be fine... same goes for Nintendough and $ony. Go back to the IGN boards to do that stuff.

Eventhough he uses M$, S{}ammer has an X-box and has been defending Microsoft in this thread. Not sure why he uses the M$ abbreviation though, I thought it was odd myself.

It wasn't just him - I've noticed alot of people doing it in this thread. Everyone knows Microsoft makes a popular operating system and basically has a monopoly on home computers and they have alot of money, but that doesn't really mean anything with regard to their video games division and it's just a flame bait thing to do.

Oh, I agree, it's annoying as hell.

The PS2 had Madden 2002 which looked awesome at the time and got many new users (mostly sports fans) to get a PS2. Sure Madden 2002 isn't a AAA title in the same league as Metroid Prime or Metal Gear but it sold. A lot.

You mean Madden 2001.

Sony launched in Japan with one game - Ridge Racer V. It sold 3 million units in the first 6 months in Japan. The tie-in ratio was 1.6/1. Not very impressive. The US release wasn't much different - they released only a handful of games... mostly facelifts to old titles... Ridge Racer, Madden, and Tekken Tag Tournament. Add to that the devious tactic of generating a hype machine by purposely making console units relatively unavailable at stores. Pre-orders became back-orders and store owners were left shrugging their shoulders at customers since they had no idea when the next shipment would be. Sony knew this would generate a hype because people would see empty shelves and assume it's even more of a must-have than it actually was... also, they knew that their launch titles were weak. If Madden 2001 sold well, it was pretty much only because there wasn't anything else to buy for the system apart from PS1 titles. Fantavision?