What should Sony and XBox's Next Gen Strategy Be?

I think when you look back at the history of consoles the first one out seems to always do the worst. I can think back to the days of Sega getting the Saturn out first, it was a bust.

I think the trick is to be the one to get it out first but have a low price right from the start, which I think Wii did well. You look back and some of them come out with really high prices, I know here in Australia for example the Xbox 360 came out at over $1000 and now sell for around $275 for just the console. What this tends to mean is except for the hardcore fans the sales are not super early and it also lets the rivals judge what is working/not working with the console already on the market and adjust theirs accordingly.

 

I don't think you see the whole picture.

Microsoft offers great development tools, which was unheard of until they came into the picture. They also higher incentives (money hats) at the expense of exclusive or timed exclusives. Basically, they took a page off of what Sony did to dethrone Nintendo and gave Sony a taste of their own medicine. Another area Microsoft copied old Sony is the marketing department. Jump in? Doesn't that sound familiar?

Of course, all of this bull**** is irrelevant. Nothing beats world of mouth and hype. I don't think anyone can truly explain the success that is the Wii.

 

Nintendo consoles have always maintained a $249 launch price. Gamecube, Nintendo64....the low price didn't help those two consoles.

 

But it didnt sell out in the beginning. I remember it was a Saturday or Sunday night and I debated waiting out for it, like I did with the 360. They didn't sell out of Wii's and the rush to get one didnt hit the public until like awhile after (weeks to a month?)

 

PS3 coming after 360 hurt Sony. Almost all the multi-platform games are developed on the 360 then ported to the PS3. For example early adopters wanting their next gen fix for sports titles went out and got a 360. And like Chow Yun Fat mentioned Sony used to be easy to program for but once the tables turned Sony took a hit. All about that 3rd party support... except for Wii.

I think you have to move Wii into a separate category, I mean can something not HD even be considered "next gen"? I don't think so. The next gen Sony/Microsoft consoles will probably just incorporate the Wii technology and offer the Wii style games as downloadable content or something.

 

While I agree Wii is different it is still technically in the market if we are talking about winning market share, they are still taking sales from the other two. While Wii has also opened a new market there is no doubt they hit the other two, I read an article recently about how much they lost to Wii, hence Microsofts push with the motion sensor camera thing. That is another thing we can look for in the new systems.

 

I thought 64 did reasonably well, I know they lost to Sega but I thought that was the system that really got Nintendo going. I have nothing to back that up but I just recall that while they were beaten they were not anywhere near the smashing that got handed to Sega with their Saturn and Dreamcast(Which I still have one and have to say they were very under rated)

 

The 64 lost to Sony eventually, but that had little to do with price. Sony had new tech, a good selection of games, great press/hype... lots of things that oddly enough ended up hurting them this gen.

Who gets out first isn't as big a deal as you might think. If Sony hadn't of launched at insane prices, had more big titles out that first year, and had done something pr/hype wise other than just *expect* everyone to buy it because it said Playstation on it, things might have been different.

MS ****ty build quality (especially on early units) should have been enough in just about any other gen to give the competition an advantage, but Sony never capitalized. Only nintendo did, though to be honest their success this generation was because of a lot more factors.

Then, of course, the games kept coming and word of mouth stayed positive and that was good enough to keep the xbox rolling.

Every gen is a whole new ballgame.

 

Hate to say this but it seems price wins all.

 

If could gaming works out, and that's a big if- then that will be next gen instead of consoles.

Onlive and Gaikai are rolling out cloud gaming services. All of the heavy computing happens in server farms in the cloud. The only thing that has to happen on your end, in your home is 1) sending commands from your joystick/mouse/keyboard to the cloud and 2) decompress the video stream that's sent back from the cloud. Thus Onlive only has to present you with a very cheap device that performs this, and then charge for the service. Gaikai skips the device- they will just stream to your computer.

Ideally, this enables you to play the hottest, most graphics-intensive games at the highest resolutions and play them on your TV or POS computer at low cost. No buying of games- just go online, choose a game and play it. Servers do the rest.

The publishers and developers are all for it, of course- because there's nothing to pirate. It presents a disruptive business model, allowing everyone to generate profit in a new way.

Of course latency will be the main issue. Can they really take the commands from my mouse/keyboard, receive it over the internet, render my perspective in the game, compress it, and send it back to me, decompress it and put it on my screen- in milliseconds? Can they make it feel instant, or close? If they do, then consoles and high-end gaming PCs are done for as we know them. Why pay for top end gaming hardware when all we need is low latency and video decompression?

 

Microsoft needs to make a machine that isn't a piece of crap with a 60+ percent fail rate.

 

Hmm, how about not sucking. Might want to start there.

 

I would absolutely LOVE if Apple decided to make a video game system. Food for thought.

 

I don't know if I would be ready to fork out $1k for a game system

 

Apple hasn't even really supported gaming on their computers in the past.

 

I know it's pretty far-fetched. I just think they would make an awesome system. Imagine...touch-screen game remotes (like an iPhone), awesome graphics, more competition for Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc...I just think it they'd make a great system lol.

 

Inserting the obligatory Pippin picture:

 

I cant see the next gen going to great to be honest.

If graphics get better, will they really be so much better than they are now that it will blow people away?

Games are already being limited by how much they now cost to produce and with the Wii style controllers now coming into play and working great, that was probably the next big step in my opinion and thats happening now.

When I play the systems I have, I'm not wishing for something a whole lot better like ten years ago for instance.


I think this gen of consoles will go for a long time.

 

Here is a more serious post...

Not really. PS2 was MUCH worse than the PS3. Of course, at the time, it wasn't radically more difficult than anything else on the market I guess. The Xbox finally offered something much more friendly to developers, but it was too late for it to make a difference (especially with the Xbox being a first attempt).

Not sure Sony platforms have ever been easy to program for. Maybe the PS1..and the PSP isn't too bad I guess. But not anywhere near on par with something from Microsoft.

It is a nice model I think (theoretically anyway), but I think it is too early to start thinking about it replacing consoles.

I do agree that this gen will last a while (or should). Although I also think that next-gen could still be pretty nice...especially since I think it could be a bit cheaper in general. Or maybe that is more of a hope. I think graphics will still be much improved, although I do agree that the game industry needs to do a lot more work on the software side to help make this a lot easier (and cheaper).


As for my thoughts on the big 3:

Microsoft - Pretty much just need to repeat their plan from this generation, outside of the hardware failures of course. Investing more in 1st party studios could really help out I think (maybe casual studios at least?). Maybe more "ownership" of their hardware designs. In fact, their hardware choices in general will be interesting. I think I read that they were trying to design their own CPU, although I don't know if that will actually work out.

Sony - Lots of changes, although some were going to happen by default. Don't expect any major hardware shifts (Blu-ray, XDR, Cell, etc.), although that's not to say it can't be powerful. Assuming Cell will continue to be in their plans, it will be a great benefit to reuse the architecture again for another console (and/or any other Sony systems). That can help out a lot when it comes to getting developers used to the hardware...not to mention, it should be cheaper and allow for some spec increases elsewhere (e.g., more RAM). Marketing department needs the biggest changes, and some of their internal non-game software could be much better.

Sony/Microsoft (things both should/will do) - Leverage backwards compatibility. I'm tired of just hoping for support. We should have great enhancements next-gen too (e.g., playing 360/PS3 games with better AA, resolution, framerate, etc.). Basically the stuff the PC emulators do.

Don't know whether they'll push to include motion controller technology, but I bet their recent announcements are a way to help them decide. They could decide not to push the tech specs (ala the Wii), but I don't think that is all that necessary. Should be able to put together a nice console for ~$300.

Nintendo - I guess do the same thing twice, but that's easier said than done. I think they could be a bit riskier and push the hardware a bit. Maybe not to the levels that Sony/MS will, but they can still put in something nice. If Sony/MS have graphics chips that support Shader model 6.0 (assuming that's in the works), then Nintendo can put in SM5.0+ (as opposed to SM2.0). Shouldn't break the bank, and this could allow for some extra support from developers since there won't be such a gap in hardware.


Kind of alluded to this earlier, but I expect it to be a little while before we get any new consoles. 3-4 years in, and I don't really know of anybody that is ready for new consoles. Seems like things are just getting started actually.

(possible exception would be an upgraded Wii of course)