PS3 Q&A Thread

[Sky]

Haemmy brought it up. Apparently some folks can't find a comfortable solution. I've been fine for years. *shrug*

[Strazos]

And I'm perfectly comfortable at my desk. /shrug

[StGabe]

As far as I can tell the "selling PS3's for $200 less than cost" is all just rumor and probably incorrect at that.

http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/141/is-sony-losing-their-shirt-on-each-ps3/

[Triforcer]

As far as I can tell the "selling PS3's for $200 less than cost" is all just rumor and probably incorrect at that.

http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/141/is-sony-losing-their-shirt-on-each-ps3/

I’m not an expert in component pricing and manufacturing costs

...and then he proceeds to prove it by quoting prices and saying "LOL! No way can it cost that, it just doesn't sound right".

This guy needs to go back to what the blogosphere is best at...rating the taste of various brands of cat food.

[Sky]

http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=14483

[Roac]

...right, that's just a summary of the exact same iSuppli article that the blogger was objecting to.  It offers nothing new, and both sites reference back to the same data.  Which is what was in dispute.

[Sky]

I was just supplying the numbers I saw. I really don't give a shit what some blogger makes of them.

[StGabe]

Phil has produced a number of games (he did Railroad Tycoon 2 and 3 and Tropico, for example) and his comments seem reasonable if not infallible.

I was just pointing out that someone was claiming a $200 difference as FACT when actually it is just one particular groups OPINION and one that other people have disagreed with (Phil's not the only one, just the one I remembered reading most recently).  You can claim $200 as fact when Sony publishes that number.

[Strazos]

I'm still not sold that the PS3 can outperform the 360 by as wide a margin as these techie types seem to be masturbating to.

[murdoc]

I'm still not sold that the PS3 can outperform the 360 by as wide a margin as these techie types seem to be masturbating to.

Supposedly, the biggest difference is that the PS3, no matter what "version", has a HD. From what little I've read of it.

[Trippy]

I'm still not sold that the PS3 can outperform the 360 by as wide a margin as these techie types seem to be masturbating to.

Ignoring the output issues and lack of blue laser storage for games, the 360 has the better architecture, on paper. Three identical cores rather than the 1 main core, 7 "coprocessor" design, unified memory rather than separate system and graphics memory, and the unified pipelines in the ATI GPU rather than separate vertex and pixel pipelines in the NVIDIA one. The wildcard is whether or not programmers will be able to figure out how to 1) effectively use the 7 SPEs as intended and 2) use them in interesting and novel ways.

[Trippy]

Phil has produced a number of games (he did Railroad Tycoon 2 and 3 and Tropico, for example) and his comments seem reasonable if not infallible.

I was just pointing out that someone was claiming a $200 difference as FACT when actually it is just one particular groups OPINION and one that other people have disagreed with (Phil's not the only one, just the one I remembered reading most recently).  You can claim $200 as fact when Sony publishes that number.

This is similar to the Merrill Lynch estimate that came out in February -- i.e. another wild ass guess at the cost of manufacturing a PS3. Now of course iSuppli presumably knows more about this stuff than ML does but on the other hand they have stupid stuff like $148.00 for "Other Components and Manfacturing" without explaining WTF that's all about and they almost certainly have the GPU and CPU costs swapped -- it's extremely unlikely Sony is coughing up that much money to NVIDIA though we'll hopefully find out more when NVIDIA releases their 4th quarter earnings in February.

[Miasma]

Father of the Playstation switches jobs, new guy is in as president of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE).

The article also says Sony has forcast a 1.7 billion dollar charge in March, if they believe they will hit their target of shipping six million PS3s by then that would make the loss per unit almost $300 unless some of the loss is accounted for elsewhere, and since you have to assume they are still making money from the PS2 they might be losing even more.

[StGabe]

if they believe they will hit their target of shipping six million PS3s by then that would make the loss per unit almost $300 unless some of the loss is accounted for elsewhere

The thing is, as Phil points out, a lot of the costs are top-heavy.  That is, you do R&D, you build fabs, etc., when you start.  And that costs a lot.  And then the true cost is really amortized against the 5 year life of the product (although on the books it shows up as an immediate expenditure).

Basically I'm content to not give a shit about how much they are under- or over-charging because I don't think that anyone really knows or is likely to know anytime soon and it doesn't really seem to make that much difference.  Of more immediate concern to me is whether the product is worth the price tag that's attached to it.  Personally, I don't think it is right now, no matter how much the parts cost Sony.

[StGabe]

Said differently:

$1.7 billion / 6 million units shipped by March = $283/unit
$1.7 billion / 100 million units shipped by 2012 = $17/unit

The actual loss per unit depends on how much of the overall loss that was actually part of the per-unit manufacture of the device and how much of it was infrastructure (including stuff like developing the Sony Online client and servers, marketing, creating/updating the dev kits, doing last minute BC testing and development, etc., etc., etc.).  $283 is the maximum loss per unit but the actual number is probably much less.

[Roac]

Said differently:

$1.7 billion / 6 million units shipped by March = $283/unit
$1.7 billion / 100 million units shipped by 2012 = $17/unit

The second bit is only true if the cost charged per unit is identical to cost for each unit, for every unit built after unit number 6,000,000. 

[geldonyetich]

I can spare $20.  Where's the nearest PS3 manufacturing plant?  Hard working people don't need to eat as badly as I need to game. 

[Sky]

Merry Xmas.

[schild]

It's funny because Gran Turismo is a killer App for me. You can be damn sure I'll be downloading that.

[Velorath]

Neg. I'm on the fence about upgrading my PSP until they release the PS1 games for downroad in America. The list of PS1 games available on day 1 is phenomenal. It kinda makes the (wii) virtual console look sorta...weak.

Resident Evil Director's Cut
Konami Antics MSX Collection Vol. 1
Konami Antics MSX Collection Vol. 2
Bishi Bashi Special
Arc The Lad
Jumping Flash!
Everybody's Golf 2
Silent Bomber
Tekken 2

Each title should cost about $5. If Sony can pull this off, well. Yea. A 4GB Memory stick can be gotten for less than $60. I'd say they've made the PS1 the killer app for the PSP.

From what I've read, they put their first five games up for download today ($5.99 each).  The list apparently differs from the one you posted though:

CoolBoarders
Crash Bandicoot
Hot Shots Golf 2
Syphon Filter
Tekken 2

[schild]

Well, that's a goddamn terrible list. Why the hell aren't there any Square, N1, or Atlus titles. THE GENRES MOST LACKING ON THE PSP.

Fucking Sony.

[Velorath]

Well, that's a goddamn terrible list. Why the hell aren't there any Square, N1, or Atlus titles. THE GENRES MOST LACKING ON THE PSP.

Fucking Sony.

I don't see Square or Atlus letting any of their good titles go for $5.99 any time soon when they know that if they wanted to they could slap them on UMD's and sell them for $20 each.  Besides I would think that you'd have to do some tweaking for FF games or any other games that were more than one disc, plus I don't think Sony wants to start things off with large downloads (Tekken 2 is the largest right now at 535MB) so that would cut down possibilities a bit.

[Trippy]

I don't see Square or Atlus letting any of their good titles go for $5.99 any time soon when they know that if they wanted to they could slap them on UMD's and sell them for $20 each.  Besides I would think that you'd have to do some tweaking for FF games or any other games that were more than one disc, plus I don't think Sony wants to start things off with large downloads (Tekken 2 is the largest right now at 535MB) so that would cut down possibilities a bit.

The PSP supports H.264 video playback which means you could squeeze down the FF prerendered videos to a much smaller size than they were on the original CDs, plus the resolution of the PSP is less than a standard defintion TV making the files even smaller.

[Yegolev]

I tried to read through this thread again for the answer to my question.  I really did.  I don't have it in me to get past page one.

The PS3 isn't connecting to my wireless net properly.  There don't seem to be any first-page-of-a-google-search guides on this.  Anyone else have their PS3 set up on a wireless?  I seem to have a b network.

[murdoc]

It's funny because Gran Turismo is a killer App for me. You can be damn sure I'll be downloading that.

Is that the version where you have to buy the cars and tracks? If so, free download my ass.

[stray]

They canceled it. This is a concept version. 'Tis why it's free.

I doubt they'll introduce microtransactions for what basically amounts to a demo. They'll just save that idea for GT5.

[Velorath]

I've got a bit of a question about the downloadable PS1 games.  Now according to a Gamespot article:

To play the games, customers will need to first download the games to their PS3s from the PlayStation Store, then transfer them via a USB cable to a PSP with a memory card that contains enough free space. The games range in size from 157MB (Hot Shots Golf 2) to 535MB (Tekken 2). Once downloaded, each game can be copied for use on up to five different PSP systems before it locks itself.

So my question is, if you delete a game off your memory card (which you're likely to do at some point unless you've got tons of 1GB sticks lying around) and then put the game back on your card later when you feel like playing it again, does that count as one of the 5 times it can be copied?  Or does it check to see if a license file for the game (which I read about in a different article somewhere) is already present on the memory card before it counts as one of the 5 copies you get?

[schild]

Counts against the license file, or so first reports...report.

[Yegolev]

I actually expended some effort after giving up on the wireless connection and now have the PS3 using Ye Olde PS2 Componente Cables and optical sound.  I'll try a copper ethernet cable, but if that doesn't work, I'll just play some more Resistance.  Or Vagrant Story.

[Yegolev]

Copper worked and updating from 1.10 to 1.11 fixed the wireless problems.

FFXII looks like ass on the PS3.

[Yegolev]

Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland boots right up, unlike in my aged PS2, and I can't really say it looks like ass since it was pretty much drawn that way in the first place.  So I might get some play on the blue PS2 discs.

SMT: DDS also looks like ass.

I am almost ready to complain about the controller behavior with PS2 titles.  Just a little more annoyance should do it.

[Yegolev]

I broke down and watched Taladega Nights last night.  Picture quality is amazing.  Still mad about that PS2-game problem.  Sent an email to Sony support.  I look forward to giving myself a "keke".

[schild]

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/ps3/clip-ps3-bc-issues-popping-up-221492.php

I WANT TO FIGHT HIM.

NOW. FUCKING BARE KNUCKLE.

LET'S THROW DOWN YOU SON OF A BITCH.

CAN'T SEE A DIFFERENCE? WHAT? DIE.

Edit: Btw, the video in the post does a great job of showing the difference between composite and component. Everything out of any output on the PS3 looks like composite if it's PS2 or PS1. The PS2 stuff on the right is most DEFINATELY component. Oh, and if that guy had actually shown gameplay. Whooooo wee. Fucking night and day.

Edit: Nevermind. I just figured out the only possible LEGITIMATE reason Crecente can't see a difference. He's fucking blind.

[Trippy]

Okay that looks like the PS2's Full Screen Anti Aliasing (FSAA) routines simply don't do anything on the PS3 (or more accurately they don't do any supersampling) -- it's not a question of output filtering or deinterlacing or anything of that nature. If you watch Tidus's hair at the end you can see the strands "jumping" around which is a clear indication that the FSAA stuff isn't working. Testing with a driving game would give more obvious examples since you should see poles and other slender objects popping in and out of existence. It don't know enough about how the emulation stuff is setup to know if this is something that can be fixed in software/firmware but I'm guessing it is a very difficult problem to solve, otherwise Sony would've had such a basic feature working from the start.

Edit: typos, clarification

[Sky]

I didn't think it was possible to make PS2 games look shittier. Nice job, Sony.