Format Battle General Discussion Thread: Discuss it here! - Page 4  

Originally Posted by d3code

xbox360 as hardware numbers arent a good indicator. i never understand why people use a number of consoles sold as indicator.

fact is on the xbox360 it is possible to play copied games. this is a fact. and lot of people specially in europe buy xbox360 to play copied games. those games wont make any revenue for the studios. same as in china. were 400.000 people bought a xbox360.

so imfportant is to know the number of xbox360 sold, that people use for their orginal games.

if out of those 8 million units sold. only 4 million actually use it to play orginal games. then revenue is much lower. ofcourse this is just an estimation and could be completely wrong. but you have to take that in account when you start using numbers for how many units sold.

same for nintendo DS, Ps2, xbox etc. but PS3 aint hacked yet, you cant play copied games on it.

so revenue wise bluray has sold more then hd-dvds. simply because games are also on bluray. and that is where the bluray effect come kickin in.

people are butchering sony so much for including the bluray drive in the PS3. why? do you want to be stuck in the past or you want to go into the future? i love the bluray drive in my ps3. and i am very happy that i have 1 unit that i can play next generation games on it and watch next generation movies.

i find the hd-dvd addon on the xbox360 and including 1080p on the xbox360 firmware update an indication that sony was right. why would microsoft otherwise do the firmware update and sell the xbox 360 add-on?

microsoft screams murder and death for sony to include such an expesive NExt generation drive in it. if so then why is the xbox360 stuck with a dvd drive from the past, while they release the hd-dvd addon. i would have glady paid 600 bucks as well for a xbox360 with hd-dvd drive inside from the beginning and you wouldnt have me heard complaining at all.

dont get me wrong i like it that i am able to play hd-dvds on my xbox360, but i have to give this to sony. they were right. including the bluray drive was essential. if not so. then microsoft should not had released the xbox360 hd-dvd addon at all.

Originally Posted by d3code

edvedder.

ask everybody over 50? the target market for both bluray and hd-dvd at this moment is between 18 and 36.


at this moment both hd-dvd and bluray are going for the gamer market so to speak. for a new format to succeed you first need a strong basis. once that is done. then you can start marketing the older generation.

yes the older generation have money. but to turn them from dvd to hd-dvd or bluray will be very hard to do.

Originally Posted by kjack

Any unsupported features wouldn't show up in the user interface. And somehow I really doubt the Toshiba players can decode HD secondary video for PIP. Do they support WMA Pro audio decoding without a software update? No player can fully support all possible features out of the gate -- they are too complex to develop for.

Originally Posted by Talkstr8t

Wishful thinking. In spite of their huge R&D costs and subsidies, Sony has still been consistently profitable the last few years and will be (barely) this year. The PS2 is incredibly profitable - continues to be the best-selling game system by a wide margin. You think they're subsidizing that? The PS3 will provide the same franchise, but pull in even more revenue since it ensures the success of Blu-ray and will be a tremendous home media center. Very high costs to start with, no question, but great rewards as well given how terrific the hardware has turned out. Compare this with Microsoft, who has reportedly lost $6B on all of their hardware efforts (Xbox/Xbox 360, Zune, Windows Mobile, etc.). They've spent many, many years trying to profit from these efforts and they are still years away from actually doing so.
And a red-laser HD DVD player (DivxHD or WMV-HD) is far cheaper than both, yet there is virtually no consumer interest. Just being cheaper is certainly not sufficient for market success. Incidentally, when is the last time you saw a one CE company format be successful?

Originally Posted by Talkstr8t

The fact that a very specific class of bonus feature may not work certainly doesn't make a player obsolete.

- Talk

Originally Posted by Talkstr8t

I don't disagree that there hasn't been much transparency around the profiles and what each player supports. The BDA could probably be more proactive in describing the profiles, but ultimately it's up to each player manufacturer to describe what features they support or don't support. I don't think this will be an issue by next Fall, when I expect virtually all players in the market will support BD-Live. Given that the standalone market today is really targeted at well-educated early adopters who are probably more willing than most to upgrade equipment frequently and probably will number less than 100K sales of 1G players, I think this early period of uncertainty won't be a major issue going forward, especially since the PS3 would appear to be capable of full BD-Live support.
I believe so (Keith and Tom or Google can likely answer that question quickly). If not, it's probably a trivial amount of peripheral hardware needed to do so.

- Talk

Originally Posted by kenliles

Yes - that certainly blows my theories. Sure makes me wonder then why they are releasing on BD then. If I'm a stockholder I'm wondering why are they incurring the loss? Without the PS3, there aren't enough BD players in existence to justify the expenditure and won't be for a long time, if ever... Same is true on the HD-DVD side as Xbox addon doubles the number. Why would the attach rate for PS3 be any different? In fact, given the PS3 IS the low cost player for BD, the attach rate would be higher in theory since HD-DVD has other low cost options to the XBox add-on.....

In the end, he's the CEO and I'm not; guess I'll go fishing.... lot more fun anyway; at least I'm smarter than most of the fish....

ken
I think I will make a note though to avoid Time Warner stock; just in case this AOL company might be wrong here....

Originally Posted by theforce8686

I personally have never owned any form of Play station as I dont play much video games but Im pretty sure PS2's sold a tremendous amount more than xbox or xbox 360s. Anyone know the exact numbers. Anyone know why the PS3 wouldnt do the same thing? People werent camping out 3 and 4 days in advance and spending 2000 on ebay for a dying system or company. What was the starting price of the XBOX 360? wasnt it only like 100 dollars cheaper? And anyone who doesnt think in a few years when a new XBOX hits it wont be 600 dollars or more is crazy?

We are all suckers. We all want the newest and best and exciting technological advances and we want them now.

Originally Posted by scaesare

Is WMA Pro a supported HD DVD audio format? I don't recall ever seeing that, and as a matter of fact I'm pretty sure I've seen Amir comment on "losing" that portion of the effort to get their tech in the spec.

Given that the Toshiba decks thus far have dedicated hardware decoders, do you know of any chip specs that indicate they wouldn't be able to handle those secondary streams?

Originally Posted by 2Channel

Sony can't make as many PS3s as they could PS2s. Some people think this is a normal startup challenge for a new device. If you dig into the details of blue laser production you start to realize the magnitude of Sony's problem. They could get lucky and fix blue laser yields soon....or not. I think not, but either way, they messed up their launch and missed Christmas 2006 as a prime opportunity to gain market penetration with the PS3.

Take a look at the current global sales numbers for the new consoles.

http://nexgenwars.com/

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

WMA Pro is an optional codec for secondary audio. It hasn't gotten much use, of course, as non-mandatory audio codecs don't get much use in general.

It would have been nice to get it in there, but it's not a killer given the relatively small portion of bitstreams compressed audio takes up (PCM is the obvious exception here). WMA is around 2x as efficient as Dolby Digital for typical 5.1 use. Our new low bit rate implementation is about 4x as efficient in the 32-96 Kbps range (you get great 2-channel music at 48 KHz at 64 Kbps).

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

Any HD DVD compliant player needs to support full spec PIP decode. Getting back to the whole complexity/value issue, by using a more constrained PIP spec, it was able to be mandatory, and used from early titles, where BD's more grandious spec has kept PIP from being universally playable or used much.

Sony muddied the waters with the trojan horse strategy. (1) PS3 does not equal (1) HD-A2 as far as disc sales. Only a percentage of PS3 players will be used for movies.

Let me clarify. 100 HD-A2's will sell more movies than 100 PS3s. The PS3 can overcome with sheer numbers, but that's where the blue laser shortage comes into play.

Originally Posted by wco81

People are getting PS3s without Talledega Nights, which would indicate they've hit 500k already.

Originally Posted by b2bonez



Sony {has/hasn't} {will/won't} {can/can't} _____________ (fill in the blank... )



b2b

Originally Posted by wco81

People are getting PS3s without Talledega Nights, which would indicate they've hit 500k already.

For all you Rob Enderle lovers out there.

This weeks article where he states: "...Why did Sony Fail?


http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback159_page3.html
http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback159_page3.html


Discussion continued in the Format Battle thread....
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=769114

Originally Posted by Kosty

Probably that many have been shipped already and soon will be sold. But its already Dec 17th and console sales that are not done by Dec 24 drop like a rock. Tick Tock Tick Tock.

Finally, in what was clearly a slap at Sony, Microsoft came out with a $200 HD-DVD option and promptly sold out in many markets. While considered a movie only player, this virtually nullified Sony's perceived advantage in the battle for the follow on to DVD for movies and enhanced the Xbox as a media device.

Microsoft however, has made three mistakes. The most critical, and similar mistake to Nintendo, was not having enough consoles on the market last year. They could have sold between 3x and 5x the actual volume (maybe even more) and left 2005 with such a resounding win that neither Nintendo nor Sony constituted a real threat.

...
Finally they dramatically under-marketed in 2006 and will likely fall short of the projected 10M installed base numbers they have forecast as a result. This last point is also a traditional Microsoft mistake, Microsoft does good launch marketing but doesn't do well sustaining demand generation marketing for some reason (often makes me wonder if folks there skipped a critical marketing class). With shortages for the other players, Microsoft is benefiting but probably about 50% of what they otherwise would have had they executed a strong demand generation campaign.

Microsoft's biggest strengths are that they fight as a company (a very big company) and are experts in software (read game) development tools; and their weakness is poor sustaining marketing and uneven (both Nintendo and Sony are typically more consistently good) hardware designs. Sony's strengths are marketing, and technical and industrial design competence; their weaknesses include corporate dysfunction (they don't play well with themselves), a misplaced belief they can (or should) drive industry standards, and the resulting inability to create winning plans they can execute.

Originally Posted by theforce8686

Yes, youre right the PS3 will probably not sell another one after Dec 24. They should just stop making them now.

Originally Posted by AnthonyP

but no one thinks it is 1:1. Let me ask you this, let's keep it simple

Originally Posted by AnthonyP

what do you think about 500k PS3 by Jan 1? how about 200k HD DVD players? 1/3 of the PS3s would be equivalent to 167k, the other players make the difference.

Originally Posted by AnthonyP

The added benefit of the PS3 is that even if you assume the attach rate is less you still have more players. In other word even if (over all) the disk sales are less for BD, it is easier to sell 100k copies of a popular title.

Originally Posted by AnthonyP

but shortage is happening because there are so many more players, the shortage would also be for HD DVD if HD DVD could make and sell that many players in such a short time.

Originally Posted by AnthonyP

also let's say in a given neighbourhood there are 100 HD DVD players and 300 PS3s , let's also assume everyone buys local. The store sells the same number of BD movies as it does HD DVD. What is the theoretical max of a particular movie in HD DVD? how about BD?

Originally Posted by Rio

One thing I can point out is, current most biggest blue LD supplier in the world is Sony. Not Nichia, nor Sharp. Sanyo? Toshiba? Forget about them.

What I saw innards of players from both camps, I found Toshiba's (both A1 and A2) looked much expensive to manufacture than BD players. Look, how many "chips" on the mainboard, how big the mainboard is, and so on...

Originally Posted by theforce8686

Yes, youre right the PS3 will probably not sell another one after Dec 24. They should just stop making them now.

Originally Posted by Kosty


Overall, this article seems fairly balanced to me, taking swipes at all three console makers.

What am I missing here, any comments?

a near 20x installed base advantage against Sony in terms of next generation consoles by the end of 2006.

Originally Posted by amirm

First, Sony is not a "supplier" as they are not selling them to others. Second, they may be able to produce more because they spent millions of dollars installing multiple parallel lines, to compensate for poor yields. Others can do the same, should the business call for such high capital equipment expenditure. So any additional capacity they might have, does not position them as being ahead in this respect.........

Originally Posted by 2Channel

Hi Amir. You bring up a good point regarding Sony compensating for their yield problems by building more production lines. Can you shed any light on why we haven't seen the benfits of such measures yet? It would seem that Sony should have ramped their capacity appropriately earlier this year in anticipation of the PS3 launch.

Originally Posted by theforce8686

Some how the PS2 outsold the 360 in 2006. Who doesnt think the PS3 cant do the same?