@MikeB

As you said it's hard to tell with such small numbers. The big numbers come Sept-Dec timeframe. This is the period which will better establish the future of all consoles. That's why Microsoft has to shore up their problems (supposedly in process), extend their warranty (they did), cut their price (appears to be coming) and push their fixes along with their games huge this Christmas (don't know but they likely will do this.)

@BrianK

Some more food for thought, apart from the PS2 having outsold the XBox 360 for every month so far since the XBox 360 release. The XBox and XBox 360's by far most successful market has been the US, but according to research firm Nielsen:

42 % of game time in June for the US was on the Playstation 2.

And only:
17% was on the original XBox console.
8% on the XBox 360.
4% Nintendo Wii

Sony Playstation gaming is still King with regard to console gaming by good margins, even in the US.

Last edited by MikeB on 01-Aug-2007 at 09:34 PM.

If 640K wasn't already enough for you here's another brilliant statement from Microsoft's Bill Gates:

"hey we're not a one-product company. Many of our competitors were one-product companies. Now they're not one-product companies, but Sony's just in video games, Nokia's largely just in mobile phones, IBM's largely in enterprise type software situations"

http://news.spong.com/article/13339?cb=736

So Sony is all about video games? I thought Sony has doubled its profits as a whole while its gaming devision reported losses... How can this be?



Does he even realize that Sony employs over twice as many people than Microsoft does?

Last edited by MikeB on 02-Aug-2007 at 01:07 AM.

@MikeB

Quote:

Does he even realize that Sony employs over twice as many people than Microsoft does?

Microsoft employes way more people then Sony. Imagine what would happen if Windows was stable and easy to use. Lan adminstrators and desktop support would be living on the streets. There's be millions unemployed around the globe.

@BrianK

Nah, I think millions of additional jobs would be created within just a timespan of a couple of years, Investing in alternative fully commercial operatings systems, word processors, webbrowsers, media players, etc, etc would finally become viable again. IMO it would open up a currently locked down market. We may have seen a return of innovative competition like we had in the 80s.

Actually I am pretty amazed by the lack of operating system technological innovation we saw since Windows became a monopoly. If there would have been no Windows, I think we would have had far stronger open standards across operating systems today. IMO the main PC advances we had this last decade were realized by 3rd party hardware manufacturers.

Microsoft also heavily funded Mr Bush's presidential campaign (many of the people in the US are very much influenced by marketing, brain washing), such a thing with Shell, Unilever or Philips sponsoring political parties here in the Netherlands is pretty much unthinkable and even illegal. Microsoft likely did this to prevent the break-up of the company due to the government antitrust lawsuit against them, but potentiallly over a million lives could have been spared. Not to mention the many millions of additional people now living without sanitation, drinking water and electricity!

/rant

Last edited by MikeB on 02-Aug-2007 at 11:31 AM.

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @BrianK Quote: And best competition. Microsoft's Live service is forcing Sony to catch up with their online interactivity and gaming presence. I think Sony will go far beyond XBox Live and I think it would happen nomatter if there would have been any XBox or not. We Amigans already played null modem connected games like Battle Chess, Stunt Car Racer and Gravity Force during the 80s. IMO online gaming on consoles was just a matter of time dependent more on the mainstream uptake of broadband internet rather than anything else.

What do we Amigans have to do with that? The PC market was always way ahead in the online play department. All Xbox Live did was unify the interface and charge a fee for it.

Consoles being more PC-like is inevitable. To me, the only thing that has separated the two is the expandable and modular design of the PC motherboards compared to the un-expandable design of consoles. However, different markers require different designs. You could call those economy boards that contain a gpu and sound chipset - a console-like design.

Since you mentioned Japanese sales:
Quote:

(Last week's rank) This week. Platform - Title - Publisher - This week's sales (Total sales) - Weeks on sale ( - ) 01. Wii - Mario Party 8 (Nintendo) - 265,000 (NEW) ( - ) 02. PS3 - Hot Shots Golf 5 (Sony) - 152,000 (NEW) ( - ) 03. NDS - Taiko Drum Master DS (Bandai Namco) - 94,000 (NEW) ( - ) 04. NDS - It's a Wonderful World (Square Enix) - 77,000 (NEW) ( - ) 05. Wii - Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 (Bandai Namco) - 46,000 (NEW) ( - ) 06. PSP - Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (Capcom) - 45,000 (NEW) ( - ) 07. 360 - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Spike) - 40,000 (NEW) ( 4 ) 08. NDS - The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo) - 37,000 (668,000) - 7th week ( 1 ) 09. PS2 - Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 14 (Konami) - 34,000 (187,000) - 2nd week ( 5 ) 10. Wii - Wii Sports (Nintendo - 32,000 (1,943,000) - 35th week Total top 10 sales: 822,000 (down 339,000 from last week) Last week's sales: 483,000 More: 11. Wii - Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors (Square Enix) - 3rd week 12. NDS - Flash Focus: Vision Training in Minutes a Day (Nintendo) - 9th week 13. Wii - Wii Play (Nintendo) - 35th week 14. PS2 - Metal Gear Solid Collection (Konami) (NEW) 15. PS2 - Pachi-Para 14: Wind, Clouds, and the Super Sea in Okinawa (Irem) (NEW) 16. NDS - New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo) - 62nd week 17. NDS - Brain Training 2 - Nintendo - 84th week 18. PS3 - Wangan Midnight (Genki) (NEW) 19. PS2 - King of Fighters Maximum Impact Regulation A (SNK Playmore) (NEW) 20. Wii - Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball Wii (Konami) - 2nd week For reference: Last week's sales

courtesy of www.gamesarefun.com

...atleast Oblivion managed a top 10 showing. It could have some staying power in the top 20 if words spreads amongst Japanese 360 owners...

Last edited by Lou on 02-Aug-2007 at 01:09 PM.

@MikeB
What an idiot... I thought sony did more various stuff than microsoft ever did.
They make tvs, they make stereos, they make computers, they have record companies, consoles, make cell phones and much more..

What do microsoft do? They make software, they sue, made two consoles, one mp3 player and a tablet pc.

@MikeB

Quote:

Microsoft also heavily funded Mr Bush's presidential campaign

Some evidence ofthis would interesting, and another thread.

@BrianK

Google is your friend.

I find it worrying US citizens know so little about their own country. Microsoft is the second largest Bush adminstration donator just after Altria (Tobacco company), "donating" over 3 times as much as any other tech company to US congressional and presidential candidates.

In other countries this would be illegal and looked at as potential bribing.

@MikeB

The USA stopped being "for the people" and started being "for the corporations" a long time ago.

PS,
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6653&Itemid=2

Sony has been quietly shipping rumble-enabled controllers...basically giving the middle finger to early adopters...

Last edited by Lou on 02-Aug-2007 at 05:23 PM.

@Lou

Quote:

The USA stopped being "for the people" and started being "for the corporations" a long time ago

Circa 1981.

Quote:

Sony has been quietly shipping rumble-enabled controllers...basically giving the middle finger to early adopters...

Hopefully Sony issues an immediate recall on all controllers because after all it's just not possible to include rumble.

@BrianK

Oh well, giving up on the on-topicness and just commenting on this...

Quote:

Hopefully Sony issues an immediate recall on all controllers because after all it's just not possible to include rumble.

Yes, I think that would be the only reasonable solution. They must also purchase back all my PS3 games and ship me rumble enabled versions as replacement! (An "inside" joke for anyone who didn't understand.)

Seriously, a good thing I didn't purchase that second controller on launch - I was waiting for something like this because of the rumble. If the motion sensing is also improved I guess the old controller will become pretty much useless soon, so I'll be buying one of these new controllers. Bummer for those who just bought the two controller Euro kit... but controllers are not THAT expensive, so I don't mind in general.

Finally we get this SO LAST GEN tech!

It would be a good PR move for Sony to offer somekind of upgrade campaign for non-rumble controllers. Who knows, maybe they will.

@BrianK

To be serious, Sony merely stated "the vibration would interfere with motion-sensing", not that it would be impossible. Which is of course a reasonable statement. Apparently Microsoft tried to maliciously prevent a settlement between Sony and Immersion by demanding payments to be made to Microsoft if there would ever be such a settlement.

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/116859.asp

IMO Microsoft should be punished for making such malicious anti-competitive contracts.

Personally in general I prefer vibrationless gamepads about as much as I prefer a vibrationless mouse and keyboard. Most definately not worth the battery-life for me.

@BrianK

Quote:

As you said it's hard to tell with such small numbers. The big numbers come Sept-Dec timeframe

Worldwide sales last week (XBox 360 vs PS3, according to VGChartz)

Japan:

PS3 - 37,524
XBox 360 - 3,555

North America

PS3 - 43,498
XBox 360 - 34,174

Rest of World (incomplete data, but equally incomplete for both platforms):

PS3 - 29,750
XBox 360 - 18,655

So a good week for the PS3, selling about 54,388 more units than the XBox 360.

IMO very bad figures overall for the XBox 360 considering where they should be in the second year (first year was pretty good overall).

@MikeB

Quote:

To be serious, Sony merely stated "the vibration would interfere with motion-sensing", not that it would be impossible. Which is of course a reasonable statement.

Well, that is not really complete - their spokesman also said rumble was "last-gen" and thus made a strong statement that it is not needed. It probably wasn't an unreasonable conclusion by consumers on launch to believe that a rumble-enabled pad would not be forthcoming since Sony publicly felt it wasn't needed, in fact even more so, it was just a last-gen remnant...

Please don't try to pinpoint this to Microsoft. It was Sony's problem and they chose to handle it their way - Microsoft settled with Immersion long before. Sony also chose what public statements to make and those were theirs. Just like we criticize Microsoft for spewing crap on the quality issue before, why not just say the same of Sony's public comments on rumble? Because that is what they were.

They just tried to downplay the importance of rumble because they didn't want to pay Immersion. Now they are working with Immersion and we'll get rumble, great, but the old PR was crap.

Last edited by jtsiren on 03-Aug-2007 at 12:29 PM.
Last edited by jtsiren on 03-Aug-2007 at 12:28 PM.

@jtsiren

Quote:

They must also purchase back all my PS3 games and ship me rumble enabled versions as replacement!

@MikeB
Quote:

IMO Microsoft should be punished for making such malicious anti-competitive contracts.

IMO if it was bad for Immersion then Immersion shouldn't have signed the damned contract.

@jtsiren

Quote:

Well, that is not really complete - their spokesman also said rumble was "last-gen" and thus made a strong statement

Which IMO isn't a bad statement, it just clarified we may not see rumble back in Sony next generation Playstation product.

@BrianK

Quote:

IMO if it was bad for Immersion then Immersion shouldn't have signed the damned contract.

Money talks and Microsoft has lots of this. Of course the deal wasn't bad for immersion, it was an anti-competitve contract against Sony. Let's imagine you own a company which has much less money to spend than Sony. If Microsoft would make a deal inhibiting your company's progress like that, IMO it's anti-competitive as well.

IMO it's similar to Microsoft making contracts inhibiting PC makers to deal with Be Inc to use BeOS in products or preventing companies like Gateway to release a new Amiga computer.

Last edited by MikeB on 03-Aug-2007 at 03:10 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

Quote: IMO if it was bad for Immersion then Immersion shouldn't have signed the damned contract. Money talks and Microsoft has lots of this. Of course the deal wasn't bad for immersion, it was an anti-competitve contract against Sony. Let's imagine you own a company which has much less money to spend than Sony. If Microsoft would make a deal inhibiting your company's progress like that, IMO it's anti-competitive as well.

There's no inhibiting of progress. MIcrosoft enabled Immersion's progress. Microsoft didn't stop Sony from paying the patent owner as they rightly should have. Had Microsoft signed an exclusivity which allowed only them to use rumble then we might be talking anti-competitive. Had Microsoft not rightly paid the patent then likely Immersion would have gone bankrupt and Sony would have effectively stolen rumble technology and caused a company's downfall, how anti-competitive is that!