posted
You'd think word would have gotten around by now that corporate edits are traceable by the masses, and that this stuff looks pretty bad in the press.
I wonder if it was just some overzealous employee who thought he was helping out, or if someone with actual authority made the decision. Probably the former. But it smacks of desparation from a company that has seen a lot of marketshare evaporate over the last half dozen years.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
also remember Microsoft had also hired goons to edit pages, also the sign of desperation?
Sony's doing fine, Microsoft has lost some 10 billion $ on the 360, the PS3 only 1.4 billion and some very major conglogmotates have signed on to use blu ray exclusively, Sony has some fairly expensive bumps for them now but will reap the profits within a few years.
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posted
Blayne, I'm amazed your head doesn't explode from the cognitive dissonance of being a Sony fan and a Halo fan at the same time! Impressive.
However, I'm certain that your $10 billion figure is incorrect. If the original estimate of US$126 loss per Xbox 360 sold at launch was accurate, if every Xbox 360 sold was the "standard" package and not a Core or Elite, if Microsoft had taken that US$126 hit on every single one of the approximately 10 million Xbox 360s sold worldwide to date rather than reducing its costs, and finally if absolutely no Microsoft-developed or Microsoft-published 360 software had been sold to recoup those losses -- that is, in the absolute worst possible scenario for the 360 that can be imagined based on anything remotely resembling facts -- Microsoft's loss on the 360 would be US$1.26 billion, plus an additional US$1 billion for the "red ring of death" warranty extension, for a total loss of US$2.26 billion.
At the very least, your figure is off by a factor of 4.
For Sony, the worst loss-per-console estimate I could find was US$306, again assuming only the version with the greatest loss is being sold, times about 4 million PS3s, gives US$1.2 billion.
Of course, neither number actually reflects reality -- both are inflated. The actual losses to Sony and Microsoft stemming specifically from the PS3 and Xbox 360 must necessarily be lower than these figures.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Unless contrary evidence surfaces, I'd bet on overzealous employee. I honestly don't think upper management would be foolish enough to give that kind of order.
posted
lol, I swear I totally missed that until you pointed it out. I'm so used to reading Blayne's posts that my eyes just run over the words and extrapolate his intended meaning.
Blayne, their situation isn't nearly so rosy. In the 90's they were on top with everything from the walkman (Yeah, remember those?) to the massive sales of the PS2. Now the walkman and all associated personal music device sales have almost evaporated in the face of the MP3 revolution.
Microsoft may have lost a lot of money on the 360, I don't know for sure, but they've sold millions more of those things than Sony has of the PS3, which will mean bigger profits in the long run, to say nothing of the fact that Nintendo, a year after it's release, still can't seem to get enough Wiis on the shelves. That right there is insane.
And bluray? Come on, be serious. Bluray players are insanely expensive. The cheapest one out there is probably the damned PS3, but not many people seem to really want those. Bluray is currently, and for at least the next few years until price comes down, waaay down, a medium purepy for the rich. It won't always be that way, but people not only need to buy the super expensive bluray player, they need to buy the super expensive HDTV.
They can get all the conglogmotates they want on their side, but if people don't buy them, it won't much matter will it? Price has to come way down, HDTV needs to become much more prevelant than it already is, and people need to be convinced that making the expensive upgrade from DVDs, which are by far and wide the standard medium, is really worth it. HDDVD and Bluray is a fight that's only happening in the media and board rooms, the people literally can't afford to care about it yet.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
To be fair, Microsoft had a year's head start on Sony. However, in the continued interests of fairness, Microsoft also had a year's head start on Nintendo, and Nintendo have certainly closed that particular gap extremely quickly.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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Given that the contributions before include changing the meaning of "Michael" from "Who is like God" to "Who can't jockey" and a change to the position of a football team member I think we can rule out an organised campaign.
Amusingly enough, the user also edited Mike to include a "[[Mike M]], Notorious games tester for being both inhumanly angry and yet capable of jockyism at the same time, rocks are his biggest foe as well as somebody called "Jessica"."
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Originally posted by James Tiberius Kirk: Unless contrary evidence surfaces, I'd bet on overzealous employee. I honestly don't think upper management would be foolish enough to give that kind of order.
--j_k
"Will no one rid me of this meddlesome wiki page?"
Posts: 2437 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I flatly refuse to buy HD or Blu-Ray until it gets settled or someone produces an inexpensive dualdeck player that does both.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: I flatly refuse to buy HD or Blu-Ray until it gets settled or someone produces an inexpensive dualdeck player that does both.
Me too. And if it were settled or a reasonably-priced dual-media device were available, I'd buy a player today.
I'm really kind of pissed at everyone involved for not agreeing on a single format. I want to buy an HD player, but I'm not going to buy two at the current prices.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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posted
Can someone explain to me why I need to pay $30 for a movie on blue-ray/hd I can get for $15 on DVD when I am perfectly happy with the quality of my DVDs?
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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By the time one of the two becomes mainstream, the price will be in line with normal DVDs (and it wasn't that long ago that new releases on DVD were consistently $30), and the quality will be better (presuming one has a TV that can handle it).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
The new format war is over anyway. Blu-ray is toast: the porn industry supports HD-DVD almost exclusively.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
PS3 4.28 million as of June 30, 2007
1,143,798 Japan 1,498,800 NA 1,300,000 PAL
Xbox 360 11.6 million units
NA: 5,400,000 Japan: 450,000
quote: The high manufacturing costs meant that every unit was sold at a loss of approximately $250,[36] contributing to Sony's games division posting an operating loss of ¥232.3 billion (US$1.97 billion) in the fiscal year ending March 2007.[38] In April 2007, soon after these results were published, Ken Kutaragi, the head of gaming at Sony, announced plans to retire. Various news agencies, including The Times[39] and The Wall Street Journal[40] reported that this was due to poor sales, whilst SCEI maintains that Kutaragi had been planning his retirement for six months prior to the announcement.[40]
Since the system's launch production costs have been reduced significantly as a result of phasing out the EE chip[41] and falling hardware costs.[42][43] The cost of manufacturing Cell microprocessors has fallen dramatically as a result of moving to the 65 nm production process[44][43] and Blu-ray diodes being around $100 cheaper to manufacture.[42][45]
The cumulative reduction in production costs is as follows:
* Blu-ray (cost reduction: US$100) * Cell B.E. (cost reduction: US$29 – US$40) * EE removal (cost reduction: US$27) * Chipset Modifications: Sony have removed a CXD9208GP, 2 RDRAM chips (US$5), and some passives and are planning on moving the RSX graphics chip from 90 nm to 65 nm production process and "the unification of separate smaller ICs — such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi — into single chip solutions and a change to a more specialized Southbridge." (cost reduction: unknown)
This brings the total cost reduction to at least $156 excluding the chipset modifications. [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53]
quote: However, despite these sales figures, Microsoft's gaming division is losing money. Up to 2005, the Xbox gaming division had lost over $4 billion dollars.[93] However, Microsoft expects the console will start making money in 2008.[94] The losses are due to the market strategy of selling consoles below cost in order to obtain market saturation and turn a profit on software and peripherals that have a much higher profit margin.[95][96] Also notable is that Microsoft expects it needs to spend one billion dollars for repairs or replacements of bricked Xbox 360s.[82]
Hmm, 4 billion then, don't know why my brain farted and said 10.
Halo is purely awesome but I do not own a 360 or the normal Xbox I am purely a PC gamer with concoles for either Super Smash Bros. or RPG's and Zelda games.
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quote:Originally posted by erosomniac: The new format war is over anyway. Blu-ray is toast: the porn industry supports HD-DVD almost exclusively.
Due to the widespread availability of broadband internet, I really doubt that porn industry support will matter as much for this format war as it has in the past.
Posts: 2437 | Registered: Apr 2005
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HDDVD sounds like DVD. DVD is a familiar technology. Bluray sounds like something that makes me shuffle through the ocean waves to keep from being stung. I do not want to do the Bluray shuffle.
But even then, I just don't have a large enough television to make high-def an issue to begin with. I'm happy with DVDs.
posted
There is no reason for a format war. There are players that can play both. Right now the players are just too expensive, so I won't be watching HD movies anytime soon.
Posts: 1287 | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:Originally posted by erosomniac: The new format war is over anyway. Blu-ray is toast: the porn industry supports HD-DVD almost exclusively.
Really? Huh. I'd heard that they were against both because if there's a lot of detail, the models' more subtle blemishes and other things of the sort would become vividly clear. So they were liking that with lower quality it kinda blends things together so you miss a lot of the unattractive details.
Then again, I've never checked up on that.
Posts: 1831 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote:lol, I swear I totally missed that until you pointed it out. I'm so used to reading Blayne's posts that my eyes just run over the words and extrapolate his intended meaning.
I do the same thing! But maybe that is because I work for a company that uses Optical Recognition hardware.
I too am on the wait until one of the DVD formats implodes bandwagon. It's stupid to buy either format now unless you possess some insider info that nobody else is aware of or if your prophetic gifts are well developed.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Nick: According to CNET Dual-layer does not mean double-sided.
Correct. Also, wasn't it porn industry support that killed Sony in the last format war? History can't be that repetitive, can it >_>
Posts: 349 | Registered: Jul 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: PS3 4.28 million as of June 30, 2007
1,143,798 Japan 1,498,800 NA 1,300,000 PAL
These numbers do not sum to 4.28 million. Where else is the PS3 available?
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Xbox 360 11.6 million units
NA: 5,400,000 Japan: 450,000
Does PAL make up the difference here?
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley:
quote:However, despite these sales figures, Microsoft's gaming division is losing money. Up to 2005, the Xbox gaming division had lost over $4 billion dollars.[93] However, Microsoft expects the console will start making money in 2008.[94] The losses are due to the market strategy of selling consoles below cost in order to obtain market saturation and turn a profit on software and peripherals that have a much higher profit margin.[95][96] Also notable is that Microsoft expects it needs to spend one billion dollars for repairs or replacements of bricked Xbox 360s.[82]
Hmm, 4 billion then, don't know why my brain farted and said 10.
The games division lost US$4 billion up to 2005. Following the reference (I correctly guessed that you were citing Wikipedia as your source) to the original Forbes article, that's the losses on the original Xbox, not on the 360.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:Originally posted by ricree101: "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome wiki page?"
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: You don't. Why do you think you need to?
By the time one of the two becomes mainstream, the price will be in line with normal DVDs (and it wasn't that long ago that new releases on DVD were consistently $30), and the quality will be better (presuming one has a TV that can handle it).
Assuming the whole thing doesn't go laserdisc on both their houses because, like theamazeeaz, people are pretty satisfied with the quality of the cheaper and more widely available earlier generation.
I'm still curious how the whole business with PC-based players is going to turn out. The HD-media companies made the media really hostile to PCs, and perhaps partly as a result their encryption got hacked remarkably fast.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote: Correct. Also, wasn't it porn industry support that killed Sony in the last format war? History can't be that repetitive, can it >_>
True, Sony never did win a format war. I also recall reading an article which stated that the porn industry was staying out of this format war. Reason as previously stated here as the widespread availability of broadband. They are making a killing off of internet sales.
I personally don't care. I'll just download my movies and save them to blank dvds.
quote: The whole Bluray thing reminds me of betamax. Am I far off?
I was thinking Laserdisc, .
Posts: 2208 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:Originally posted by ricree101: Due to the widespread availability of broadband internet, I really doubt that porn industry support will matter as much for this format war as it has in the past.
More to the point, due to the widespread availability of broadband Internet, this format war is moot. Shiny metal discs are all but obsolete.
(Though, for the record, while HD-DVD is a more common porn format, Debbie Does Dallas... Again has been released in both formats.)
Posts: 884 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I don't think that's necessarily true. The U.S. broadband is far worse than a lot of places, The ability to download gigabytes of information isn't always possible on broadband.
Posts: 2489 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
By the time Bluray or HDDVD are cheap enough for the masses to consume, technology will have advanced to the point where storage is cheap enough, and downloads are fast enough to make them moot. Wild guess, but given how new the tech is, we're at least, at least five years away from those formats being cheaply available for the masses, same thing for cheap HDTVs. In that five years, you're going to see some breakthroughs in infrastructure and tech advances that'll greatly speed up downloads, and storage likewise will increase. Amazon and Best Buy are already selling 1TB external hard drives, and I expect that to steadily increase as well, as I'm sure compression techniques will as well.
It might not be that dramatic, but Bluray and HDDVD will have to offer some insanely good advantages to make people pay the hefty price to switch from tried and true DVDs to a new format. Remember how well those Minidisc things were when they came out? The things that were supposed to replace CDs? There's been a ton of formats that have failed along the way that were touted as the big game changers that fell flat because people liked the simple, friendly thing they already knew.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I have a good HDTV. I also have a computer attached to that HDTV. Since my computer upscales everything to 1080p, I find myself perfectly happy with DVD-quality video.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I have a good HDTV. I also have a computer attached to that HDTV. Since my computer upscales everything to 1080p, I find myself perfectly happy with DVD-quality video.
I can tell the difference between epsiodes of Rome that I watch on my 720p HDTV from my upscaling LG DVD player and 720p-encoded (compressed) video from my computer. The DVD looks a little fuzzy. The difference isn't dramatic, but it's enough that I'm not buying The Fountain on DVD now, so that in the future I can procure it in whatever hi-def format (HD-DVD, Blu-ray, or download) wins the format war.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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