Console Wars V

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Verto
So I just got my hands on a copy of GTAIV and I've got to ask...what was all the hype about? I've played it for a few hours, along with watching my roommate's progress, and really I haven't found the game to be all that amazing. The driving, the combat, the missions, all very average. The game environment is huge, and there's a lot of cool stuff like the TV shows, but as a whole the game falls short of the über-hype 10/10 reviews.

Granted this may change as I progress further into the game, but not by much. It seems like a lot of the reviews hyped stuff like car chases or flying helicopters, etc.

I had a similar reaction - but I'm not really a fan of the genre and I did get into the game after the first few disjointed 'training' missions were over.

I'm starting chapter 3 now, and I think overall the game is worth playing. It's not 10s across the board though.

[Asher]

Price cuts confirmed.

http://kotaku.com/5045074/xbox-360-price-slashes-hit-us-on-sept-5

You knew it was coming, but Microsoft has made it official: the Xbox 360 is officially going to drop to as low as $199 starting Friday, September 5 in the U.S. The three currently offered SKUs will get a price drop in North America, following multiple retail leaks and a similar pricing adjustment for the Japanese market. The new MSRP for the current line up is as follows.

* Xbox 360 Arcade - $199
* Xbox 360 - $299
* Xbox 360 Elite - $399

Yes, that makes the Xbox 360 officially the least expensive current generation console following an $80 price cut on the Arcade model.

[MJW]

Unless sony follow up with a very high price cut (not likely) I know that the XBOX360 will be the 'PS2'.

I also think that Nintendo's next consule may be a "Dreamcast".

I want you to explain Sega's major problems that made them even worse than Nintendo (before they gave up); Asher. I was not in consoles during that time.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by MJW
Unless sony follow up with a very high price cut (not likely) I know that the XBOX360 will be the 'PS2'.

I also think that Nintendo's next consule may be a "Dreamcast".

I want you to explain Sega's major problems that made them even worse than Nintendo (before they gave up); Asher. I was not in consoles during that time.

You think the 360 will sell 120m consoles? Or rather, an additional 100m consoles over the next 5 years?

[Asher]

Originally posted by MJW
Unless sony follow up with a very high price cut (not likely) I know that the XBOX360 will be the 'PS2'.

I also think that Nintendo's next consule may be a "Dreamcast".

I want you to explain Sega's major problems that made them even worse than Nintendo (before they gave up); Asher. I was not in consoles during that time.

Sega's problem was simply because it was developing largely Japanese-centric games at the time period where Japan was mattering less and less. Additionally, the Dreamcast never had a "killer app" with mainstream appeal and Sony politicked with bull**** hype about the "supercomputer" PS2 coming.

Sega had tons of debt, no cash, and a console with no mainstream appeal.

Nintendo's much different now. They have always focused on selling consoles for a profit from day 1, they've got mounds of cash. With the Wii, they decided to aim for a new market rather than try to compete with MS/Sony.

I don't think Nintendo will be the next Sega, if only because Nintendo has shown that it knows how to get the market to buy underdeveloped ****.

[Asher]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel


You think the 360 will sell 120m consoles? Or rather, an additional 100m consoles over the next 5 years?

An additional 100m over the next 5 years is not impossible, but it is unlikely.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Asher

Nintendo's much different now. They have always focused on selling consoles for a profit from day 1, they've got mounds of cash. With the Wii, they decided to aim for a new market rather than try to compete with MS/Sony.

I don't think Nintendo will be the next Sega, if only because Nintendo has shown that it knows how to get the market to buy underdeveloped ****.

You mean Nintendo showed the foresight and vision to move into a new area rather than compete with Sony/MS on the old ground where they were weaker.

[Asher]

I said that, you economist*.

With the Wii, they decided to aim for a new market rather than try to compete with MS/Sony.

* Sorry, I don't intend to be mean but someone has to say it!

[El_Cid]

Sega had also had a rather expensive war with nintendo on the older systems(master/superNes etc), and I think that had stretched it to breaking.

Then Sony came on the scene with the PS1 and that probably had a big effect in finishing Sega(as a home console manufacturer), as many people that had PS1 moved on to a PS2 later.

Still the dreamcast was a decent system:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcast

True it didnt have a wealth of titles to compete on, but a few of it's key titles were as good as anything else out there(and some would argue better). In a way the dreamcast was like the sinclaire C5:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5

Ahead of it's time, and that wasn't the right strategy at that time I guess?


Back to the future, and well the Wii is looking like being a PS1 for nintendo, in that I expect many of the Wii's fans will move onto a Wii2(whatever....a Poo?) when that comes out. It's aimed at different people compared to the 360+PS3. It's neither worse nor better, just different. clever nintendo.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Asher
I said that, you economist*.

Great, so you agree that Nintendo showed foresight and vision. I'll remember that one.

[Asher]

They had the same foresight and vision behind the man who created the Pet Rock.

[El_Cid]

very un-amercian?

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20121

[Verto]

Dean Takahashi, one of the most respected tech journos around, spent years putting together this mind-blowing expose that reveals the truly epic scale of the problems that lead to millions of dead Xbox 360s. It really is one of the most stunning flustercucks in gaming history. According to his account, Microsoft willfully ignored deep, systemic problems in the console's production that reached from chipmakers—initially, only 16 out of every 100 of its IBM-made processors worked—to production lines, where just before launch, an unbelievable 68 percent of consoles made were clunkers.

Here are a couple of the more jaw-dropping excerpts:

Most of the problems pointed to as the cause of the epidemic of Red Rings of Death showed up way before launch, naturally:

In an Aug. 30, 2005 memo, the team reported overheating graphics chip, cracking heat sinks, cosmetic issues with the hard disk drive and the front of the box, under-performing graphics memory chips from Infineon (now Qimonda), a problem with the DVD drive, and other things.
The test machines were not properly debugged, due to an ill-advised cost-cutting initiative that shaved $2 million from $25 million paid to Cimtek, a test machine maker in Canada. The Microsoft team decided not to pay the consulting fee to Cimtek to build, manage and debug the test machines. Sources familiar with the matter said there were only about 500 test machines at the time of launch, a third of the 1,500 needed.

“There were so many problems, you didn’t know what was wrong,” said one source of the machines. “The [test engineers] didn’t have enough time to get up and running.”

The shortages at launch were in fact largely a product of the Xbox 360's low yields—in Spring 2006, this was the situation:

Microsoft had more than 500,000 defective consoles that sat in warehouses. They were either duds coming out of the factory or they were returned boxes, according to inside sources. The yield was climbing, but far too slowly. The company stood by its statement that returns were within “normal rates for consumer electronics products.”
At that time, the yield rate was still only "an abysmal 50 percent on the first pass. When the bad machines were reworked within the factory, the yield went up to 75 percent –- hardly acceptable." It's gotten better now, but still not amazing. As of the beginning of 2008, it's still only 85 percent—meaning for every 100 Xbox 360s produced, 15 don't work.

The Falcon revision, which used smaller 65nm chips and had a bunch of other tweaks, like more expensive, better quality heatsinks, alleviated some of the problems, as well as made them cheaper to produce—as many had suspected with their introduction. The latest, the Jasper board, takes that a step further, which Takahashi reports is what allowed them to steeply cut console prices last week.

All of this is just a small cut of Takahashi's dense, extremely well-reported feature. If you own an Xbox 360, you owe it to yourself to read. [Venture Beat]

http://gizmodo.com/5046314/the-shocking-inside-story-of-the-epic-defects-that-killed-millions-of-xbox-360s

[Asher]

The full article is a pretty good read, though to the uninitiated some of the claims they make sound outrageous but are normal. For instance, initial yields of CPUs/GPUs are always extremely low -- 16% for the IBM CPU yields initially is actually quite normal, if not good. IIRC the first Nvidia NV40 yields were in the low single digits, which is bad...

The Gizmodo summary also says 68% of the initial consoles were clunkers, which isn't the case. 68% of the assembled motherboards before actual production had issues before launch, which is a bit high but not that unusual -- it's precisely why all consoles have low initial availability. The 360s that left the factories were not clunkers, but only 32% left the factory in the initial runs.

While Dean is a good journalist usually (I've read one of his books before), he kind of drops the ball on blending together different issues. Problematic initial yields have absolutely nothing to do with the RROD, and he focues a lot on it and pretends that it does. The RROD's true problem, which he only touches on briefly, was the lead-free solder that the EU demanded before it was industry-tested. Combined with the 360's initial lackluster cooling heatsink, it resulted in lots of popped GPUs from the motherboard. It's a classic example of using largely untested components in extreme situations on a massive scale.

The result is an overly sensational story, curiously timed with the latest Xbox 360 price cuts. It seems to me like he's just milking this for the notoriety and book sales. He doesn't provide the baseline as to what is acceptable initial yields and that's precisely because when he does, the story isn't half as interesting as it is.

Edit: And the Gizmodo summary doesn't talk about the current yields, it's currently 92% -- which is quite good.

[CrONoS]

WoW! At 299CND$ for an XBOX360(60gb) it's a bargain; also futureshop are giving two games (Gear Of War & Dead or Alive2).

Wii is 269$!! The price, IMO, is way too high.
I would buy a wii, tomorrow morning, if the price would be below 200$.