The creator of Ultima was already a game development legend when he helped define the MMO genre with Ultima Online. In Europe, where the console received a belated launch in March of 2007 and had been selling decently, Sony kept the price the same but let punters choose two games from its underwhelming lineup of first-party titles.Īs a trade site, owes much of its existence to big names in the industry sharing their insights about what the future holds, even though there's no shortage of examples where perfectly intelligent or insightful people with an expertise in an area have gotten things pretty much exactly wrong.
That seemed unlikely, considering Savner estimated Sony was already losing $200 per PS3 sold even at its original price tag.Īfter much pressure, Sony eventually cut the price of the 60GB PS3 by $100 in the US in July, at the same time it rolled out an 80GB bundle at the $599 price point. Savner was convinced a price cut wouldn't significantly improve sales unless it was in the neighborhood of $200. The gaming division was already a significant drag on Sony's financials, a fact blamed on "the sale of PS3 at strategic price points lower than its production cost during the introductory period." At the same time, Bank of America analyst Michael L. SCEA's own Tretton conceded the point, telling Reuters, "There's no question that a challenge."īut to parent company Sony, the PS3 price was still too low. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot publicly complained about it. Beyond anecdotal evidence from gamers who thought paying $599 for a PS3 was absurd, analysts like Michael Pachter and Colin Sebastian zeroed in on the price tag. Other theories aside, the most common assessment of the problem was the one that had been kicking around the longest: Price. Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi said the machine was "tricky" to develop for because of the Cell architecture, adding, "and I don't like Ken Kutaragi." Speaking of "The Father of PlayStation," Kutaragi didn't make things any easier on Sony, as he followed up word of his impending retirement from the company by telling the EE Times he had already laid out the vision for PlayStations 4 through 6. Parappa the Rapper creator Masaya Matsuura dusted off a gem from the original Xbox era and said the console's form factor was too big for Japanese tastes.
A million units one way or another at this point isn't going to worry us."Īs for diagnosing the problem, there were several camps with their own theories. It was so bad that Sony Computer Entertainment America executive Jack Tretton was already in long-term damage control for the system, telling the Los Angeles Times, "We didn't get into PS3 for the first six months of 2007 - we're into this for the next 10 years and beyond.
The PlayStation 2 had been the dominant force of its console generation, but Sony was losing market share to both Nintendo and Microsoft with the Wii's phenomenal debut and the Xbox 360, which launched a year earlier and seemed every bit as capable of running the latest and greatest games. Half a year after launch, the PS3 was in rough shape. So to refresh our collective memory and perhaps offer some perspective on our field's history, runs this monthly feature highlighting happenings in gaming from a decade ago. That said, even an industry so entrenched in the now can learn from its past. The games industry moves pretty fast, and there's a tendency for all involved to look constantly to what's next without so much worrying about what came before.