11 replies to this topic

[Patticus]

Sony bigwig Peter Dille has explained that the real reason for PS3's slow start was poor levels of stock; the pump was "primed".

"The shortcoming was getting a lot of people whipped up and having them wait in-line and then only having a very, very limited amount of hardware supply globally, which meant that we had a kind of start and stop effect with our launch, which is hard to recover from," Dille told IGN. "It was a speed bump that we had to overcome and we overcame it.

"There is nothing but momentum behind the PS3 at this point," he added. "We're off to the races."

It's not a question of "if" the PS3 will overtake Xbox 360, Dille went on to say, but "when".

"I mean, we've got 31 million [units sold] worldwide right now - they've got 39 million [units sold]. I don't even need to go out 10 years," he quipped.

"I'm not going to make any predictions for your interview today other than we'll pass them, but you look at where we are today and where they are today, and they had an opportunity to sprint as far ahead of us as possible when they had the head start.

"Well, we're breathing down their necks and they can see us in the rear-view mirror and it's not going to take too long to pass them."

Sales of Sony's PS3 overtook Xbox 360 on a monthly basis in the US following the release of the PS3 Slim. There, in the whole of 2009, Microsoft's console finished just 400,000 units ahead of Sony's machine.

In Japan, there's a gulf between PS3 and 360. Sony's console now goes toe-to-toe with Wii, while Xbox 360 sells around 5000 a week alongside the PS2. To date, the PS3 has sold over 4.5m units in Japan, while the 360 has managed over 1m.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/slow-ps3-start-was-down-to-stock-sony

Everyone's already forgotten about the PS3's godawful launch. Why are they trying to remind people of it now? Has it taken them this long to come up with an excuse?

"Hey everyone, remember the shitty PS3 launch? No? $599, riiidge racer, giant enemy crabs etc? Now you do, great... well we finally figured out why it was shit! Stock shortages!"
*Tumbleweed*

[Frozen Nitrogen]

This is amongst the least believable of excuses in the history of the world.

gg Sony.

[SuperLink]

This is the same excuses they used back then too. Nothing has changed. :S

There weren't even stock shortages either.... and the Wii managed to sell stupidly well even though that was actually sold out.

[Mort]

I dunno why they're bragging. The 360 has almost double the market in the American audience and the Wii has almost half of the console market world wide. Its great that its picking up pace though. If Sonic 4 isn't available on the Wii I'll probably get a PS3 just to play that game.

[Patticus]

From NeoGAF.

There will never be a greater GIF than that one right there.

[Mort]

From NeoGAF.

There will never be a greater GIF than that one right there.

Lol.

Anything with Phoenix Wright is win in my books.

[Dobkeratops]

Hahaha what the fuck

No, you have not TRAVELLED BACK IN TIME

edit: oh, "limited amount of hardware supply globally"

He's right in that sense, postponing the EU launch was a pretty big fail.


edit 2: This is a much more interesting tidbit from the interview

IGN: One of the questions our readers really wanted to ask was, why can't we download more PS1 and especially PS2 games on PSN?

Peter Dille: It's a great question. We're working really hard on it. We're pushing the third-party community and evangelizing this as a terrific opportunity both commercially as well as from a brand perspective to keep people interested in some of these older IPs [intellectual properties]. Final Fantasy VIII was the top downloaded game in December -- a real testament to your readers' questions, you know, that this stuff has an audience. From our side, we're going through our own studio organization and trying to make sure all these old games are out there so that we can lead by example, but we're also communicating with all the third-parties about the success of the Final Fantasy games, and other PS1 and PS2 classics. By all means, I think people can look for more of that because once the third-parties see how this works, it's just found money. There's not a whole lot of work that has to go into it and once we can get it up on the network, it finds an audience pretty quickly.

Edited by Dobkeratops, 03 February 2010 - 03:03 PM.

[Sega DogTagz]

Everyone's already forgotten about the PS3's godawful launch. Why are they trying to remind people of it now? Has it taken them this long to come up with an excuse?
*Tumbleweed*

I think it was less about bringing this up again, and more about not giving people something else to moan about. All the trash dude was spewing was in response to the question "And what would you say is your biggest failure?". I would expect the Sony man to bring up something that the company has already been thrown under the bus for, wouldn't you?

Bringing up a problem that is already "fixed" still lets the company save face... at least in the interview. Even if he is still pitching crap.

[-Mark-]

And here I was thinking the PS3 did terribly in it's first few months because it was stupidly overpriced and had no good games. D:

[Hogfather]

I've got to agree with sega dog tags here.... Why are people giving him stick over this? He was actually asked by the reporter

IGN: And what would you say is your biggest failure?

It's right there on page 1 of the interview.

And he answered it. It's the same answer he gave before so what did people expect him to do? Give another? You'd give him stick for that and you know it. What would you like him to do, travel to the future and pick something?

And here I was thinking the PS3 did terribly in it's first few months because it was stupidly overpriced and had no good games. D:

I actually think the real reason for it not doing so well was because it wasn't a worldwide release, So Europe missed out on a Christmas launch, and biggest point still... it got slagged off at every turn by geeks on the internet. Every single time something was mentioned another rumour or bandwaggon got started, Anyone remember at one point the PS3 not being able to play second hand games despite constant releases from Sony saying otherwise? Then you had the desperate geeks coming up with claims like "WHOA! It's got spiderman text on it!" So bloody what?

Edited by Casanova, 03 February 2010 - 06:44 PM.

[Frozen Nitrogen]

I actually think the real reason for it not doing so well was because it wasn't a worldwide release, So Europe missed out on a Christmas launch, and biggest point still... it got slagged off at every turn by geeks on the internet. Every single time something was mentioned another rumour or bandwaggon got started, Anyone remember at one point the PS3 not being able to play second hand games despite constant releases from Sony saying otherwise? Then you had the desperate geeks coming up with claims like "WHOA! It's got spiderman text on it!" So bloody what?

I think you severely, severely, severely overestimate the power of geeks on the Internet.
It's THE INTERNET.
No-one listens to people on the Internet.

[Hogfather]

I think you severely, severely, severely overestimate the power of geeks on the Internet.
It's THE INTERNET.
No-one listens to people on the Internet.

Oh no? then how did movies like the Blair Witch Project get as much money as it did, hyped by geeks on the internet, same with that paranormal movie that was out a few months back, I-pod redesign when it was discovered they scratched too easilly, those laptops that set on fire a few years back.

This was exactly the same... once one person started a joke or a put down, everyone copied it, still to this day people are copying it, heck theres even one classic put down in this very topic!

Edited by Casanova, 03 February 2010 - 07:40 PM.