No plans for Star Ocean 4 on PS3

To be fair, that is just a post on a Yahoo message board. It’s not an official Yahoo news story. It might well be an official email, but… y’know. It’s the internets.

It’ll still outsell the 360. In fact, I reckon if MS bought exclusive rights to every game from now on until Christmas, people will still buy the PS3.

Yeah, but hopefully it would be a bloody enough battle that it would force Sony to smarten up. Not holding out hope for that though.

Sony don’t have to. That’s tragic thing. They can continue to go about things in the way they have, lose exclusive etc. and still win.

Time for MS call it a day soon, I reckon.

It will be in the US. Europe (other than the UK) and Japan are a bust though.

Still… MS and Sony will get utterly thrashed this gen anyway. MS may beat the number of xboxes they sold and make a profit but it wont be what they intended. Sony will be lucky to sell half as many PS3s compared to how many PS2s they sold.

Morriss: lol… why would they do that? They’ve made the division profitable, they sell an ungodly amount of games and they’re selling more 360s than they did last year. It’s a business at the end of the day, not a fanboy race. =)

What I mean is, is that Sony hasn’t even really got started yet and it’s outselling it. Although I agree the it’s a business etc. and MS are making money, at the same time I reckon they’d rather “win” than come 3rd and turn a profit.

So the question is what can they do? They’ve got all the games, a wider range of titles, a better on line service and it’s cheaper, and it’s losing.

All imo., of course.

So my summation is, is that it doesn’t matter what they do, people will buy Nintendo or Sony and I don’t think MS is in this race to be last.

Imho, Microsoft has the unlucky position of being neither “core gaming” nor “casual”, but both.

They try to feed both markets, and fail at that: The PS3 has the more “hardcore gaming” feel to it, and there’s no stopping Nintendo on the “gaming for fun” side.

Bad luck, MS. If you just stopped talking BS about your demise.

wz: However, most PS3 owners see that X360 as “too hardcore”. Funny old world innit.

morriss: Of course they’d rather win, but there’s no way realistically they ever thought they could.

Yeah, but it was theirs to lose, and they lost it. That’s gotta hurt. 10m headstart and they blew it.

I mean, they couldn’t've had a better start, everything was in place. I couldn’t've envisage a better platform for them to start on and now considering the opposition (Sony only within this argument) has only just released it’s first major title I reckon it’ll only get worse and worse.

You’re making far more of it than there actually is. They couldn’t predict the Wii but I think they did exactly what they wanted to do with Sony. They couldn’t predict the RRoD either.

What have they really done with Sony, though? Seriously. What have they done?

Sony haven’t shown any signs of desperation or pressure to catch up. I mean in-game XMB (something absolutely bog-standard) has taken them nearly 2 years to implement (Japanese release) and still it’s outselling its rival.

And RroD is all their own fault. If they didn’t test their console, that’s their own fault, innit.

Sony haven’t shown any signs of desperation? Massive price cuts, ripping out BC to cut the price of the console (going against a core value of the PS brand), dumping the 20gb model as soon as it hit the market because it was costing them too much. Desperately trying to get Europe to buy their surplus of non rumble controllers. Releasing 3 different colour PS3s in Japan (and untold different bundles everywhere else). Bundling the two most popular games on the system…. etc etc.

You sound like a fanboy panicking morriss. What’s funny is that it’s over the US where the PS3 has outsold the 360 three months out of nineteen and for a combined total of 75k over those three months. LTD totals of 4.4m vs 10.2m there.

I hate that word fanboy Psycho, and I really thought more of your idea of what I was about than to simply brush me off in that way.

I also, don’t think I’m the only one to think the 360 iz teh dommed either. Analysts have been saying it for ages, even Pat said a couple of months ago and now I’m just beginning to realise it.

I’m not a “fanboy”, I’m a fan of the console and its games. I don’t want it to “win” anything, I just want it to continue. Just as I do with the Wii (although there’s no doubt it will continue) and the PS3 (despite its many faults, I didn’t buy it for a laugh).

Still a bit disappointing I need to explain that to you but there you go.

I wasn’t referring to you as a fanboy, but the way you’re talking about it does come across as someone thinking the sky is falling in because their favourite company just got outsold.

As I’ve already said… they’re selling more than they sold last year, they’re making profit, the console’s owners buy games by the boatload and there’s a ton of stuff in the pipeline. It’s about as far from doomed as I can picture. Let me put it further in context… they just sold 20k less than a competitor’s machine that costs just £25 more than theirs, is the follow up to a 120m+ selling machine, has blu-ray playback, free online, includes wi-fi and a rechargeable controller out of the box. Assume they do that every month and they’ll catch the 360 in the US in something like 20 years.

My predictions for this gen still stand (and I’m confident of them). Wii: 125m, PS3: 60m, 360: 45m. Whether or not you think that means they’re doomed is entirely up to you. =)

You’re going to be horrified when you see next month’s sales difference btw.

Oh, and this is all a bit in depth for a comments page. Feel free to email me if you want to discuss it more!

Fair enough. I guess I “reacted”, yeah. Fair point.

Hand bags, gentlemen!

We cool?

/offers fist

Just to pitch in with my thoughts here, I think “doomed” is a complex concept for the 360.

It could be doomed if Microsoft (or more like, Microsoft shareholders) start questioning why this very profitable company is blowing quite so much cash supporting a product that – over the course of the whole Xbox project – is loss-making.

It could also be doomed by gamers and the fact that outside of the US and UK, no one in the world really bought into the brand.

It could be doomed by the persisting and still not fully resolved reliability complaints.

I don’t dispute the fact that the 360 has been great for gamers (in the UK and US), but it really hasn’t been great for business. That’s where Microsoft differ from Nintendo and Sony. Nintendo exists for games and designs its consoles around the software and play experiences they want to make. There’s no way they’re bowing out, especially now after the twin gambles on the DS and Wii have paid off so handsomely.

Sony – I think that even in spite of the horrible mess that was the PS3 launch, the company still acknowledges how much it owes to the Playstation brand and there’s still the belief that the PS3 will come good in time. Playstation is part of the Sony heritage and they’re about as likely to drop that as they are to stop making consumer electronics generally.

Microsoft just don’t need the Xbox – they’re a software business and whilst they may need to broaden beyond Windows and Office, Xbox is – I think – still more of an indulgence than a bona fide core business for them.

Psycho, of course we’re cool. Just because I get all emo over one comment you make, I’m not stupid enough to attribute it to “who you are”.

This numbers game is your area, so to speak, so I’ll take your word for it.

Erm.. is this the comments section for SO4 on the 360? Because I’m struggling how people got from 360 exclusive to 360 is doomed.

It’s morriss being emo.