Editorial - Predicting the Winner, Years Before the Race
An editorial by
Sam Altersitz published on 3.21.2004
Recently, the
the BBC decided to report on The Informa Media Group’s report; which states that they believe the PlayStation 3 will sell more than 30 million units in Europe by 2010. The Informa Media Group’s report also states that Informa Media believes the Xbox Next will sell 10 million units by 2010, and the N5 will sell 5 million units by 2010. All of these figures are for the European/PAL markets only.
Now, while these sorts of predictions are fine and dandy, reporting these sorts of predictions, years before the products in question will even hit the market place, as news, is not.
Now, the blame isn’t solely on the BBC. After all, I’m sure the Informa Media Group is considered a pretty reliable media research group. But, honestly, making predictions on hardware that is two or more years out? Well, that’s counting your chickens before they are hatched.
After all, we don’t know how things are going to turn out with the PS3, Xbox Next, or N5 yet. They aren’t out, and almost everything we know of them is speculation. All we really know is that IBM is working with each of the three major console manufacturers to produce the CPUs for the next generation of their machines, and that ATI is working with Nintendo and Microsoft for the GPUs of their next generation machines.
That’s it. Nothing else is known, for sure, about how these machines will work; other than knowing they will all play games.
Now, while predicting the success of one product that is the sequel to a currently successful product is normally a safe thing; when it comes to electronics, especially consoles, this isn’t always a sure thing. After all, Nintendo held the top spot for two hardware generations, but was then dethroned by Sony with the PlayStation. Is it conceivable that Sony might also fall from grace with their third console? Yes, but it is also possible they won’t.
We first need to realize, as I’ve already mentioned, that none of these consoles has yet been released, and, again, we know very little about them beyond speculation.
When it comes to how things will be done in the next generation of consoles, we have to remember that when it comes to the processing abilities of them, Sony is going with an entirely new architecture; one that no game developer has, to our knowledge, yet seen.
Remember, developers need to know how to work with processor architecture in order to make games. We already have seen how the new architecture of the PS2, when it was unveiled, caused a lot of developers to moan about how difficult it was to program games for. We also saw that a lot of first generation PS2 games simply didn’t live up to any expectations given to us from Sony’s hype machine.
In fact, it took nearly a year before really worthwhile games came out for the PS2. In Japan, more people bought the PS2 as a DVD player than a console, simply because it was cheaper than a stand alone DVD player at the time in Japan. There were more than a few people in North America who did the same at the launch of the PS2 here.
The multiprocessor setup of the PS2, with the Emotion Engine, Graphics Synthesizer, and Vector Units, made many developers feel that the PS2 was simply too hard to effectively code for, especially with Sony’s apparent lack of documentation and support for third party developers.
Now the buzz is that the PS3 will be even more coprocessor dependent with as many as four, or more, Cell processors rumored to be in the PS3. This even greater dependence on co-processing, coupled with the fact that the Cell architecture is completely brand new (and not ready for production yet), means developers may need more than the year head start they are going to possibly get for the PS3 to develop games to the standards Sony hypes up.
This means we may not see games really worth getting on the PS3 for quite some time. And until developers gain the ability to know the architecture of the Cell chip set, good games will be few and far between for at least a good year into the life of the PS3. This could adversely affect sales, at least until those good games start coming out.
Another thing to remember is that we don’t know what other non-gaming features the next generations of consoles will have. Rumors abound of the PS3 and Xbox Next having digital video/personal video recording features (DVR/PVR), like a TiVo; DVD playing abilities; etc. Depending on how big the hard drives are, if the companies decide to go this route, will in the end raise prices. It’s not like you can buy Sony’s PSX for $179 right now.
So the analysts at Informa are neglecting to take into account any major differences in price. The NeoGeo didn’t sell all that great at its over $500 price tag, even though it offered exact ports of the SNK/NeoGeo arcade games.
Will the PS3 sell a huge amount if it comes out at over $300 US? We don’t know yet, but my money is on people waiting for price drops and such if the unit is more than $300 US at launch.
These may seem like trivial issues to some people; but, in reality, they are important issues that have to be looked at before any sort of true market analysis can be made. Seeing as the report from Informa doesn’t really seem to take these things into account, from what I can tell, and just bases their predictions on the success of the PS2... well, let’s just say I can’t take any sort of prediction, especially one that is for 6 years down the road on unreleased hardware and software, with more than a grain of salt.
I find it appalling that Informa Media would release this analysis, let alone charge however much money they charge for their reports (market research groups typically charge large sums of money for their research) and try to pass it off as any sort of fact.
I’m also disappointed in the BBC for not only buying this report, but also reporting on the report as if it was already factual news. It isn’t becoming of a news agency.
So, remember, folks, whatever Informa Media Group has said is pure speculation at this point. Unless they have a time machine and can travel to the future, I wouldn’t count on this report being factual from such a long way off as much as I’d count on me winning a bunch of state and nationwide lotteries based off of a hunch I have with lucky numbers.
