Global Game Industry News Blog

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

PS3 to Win by 2010... With no Games

I'm not really quite sure how this works. So Screen Digest finds that the PS3 will win the "console battle" but that most publishers are going to lose their shirts, "if they aren't careful." So either publishers are going to get careful in the next three years, or the PS3 is going to win with no games... Or SD is just wrong.

The thing that either they're not paying attention to or ignoring deliberately is that right now the production costs for the PS3 are the highest of the three consoles. The Wii is the lowest. So, if I'm a publisher the Wii and the 360 look good right now. I don't have to "be careful" because we've already pretty much figured out these consoles, we just need to get better at them. On the other hand we're more likely to lose our shirts on a console that is really expensive?

Seems a bit ... confused if you ask me. I suspect the correct answer to this conundrum would be that either publishers are going to get smarter and handle all three consoles better, or they're going to do the same ole and the PS3 is going to suffer the most because of the added cost for producing for the PS3. We've also seen numerous reports from Sony at the moment that price on the PS3 will not come down for two years or so, which means that apparently in 2009 to 2010 a whole boatload of cheap PS3's are going to get sold. Perhaps.

I think more likely Sony will realize their pricing mistake and lower the price. More will sell, however production costs aren't really going to change, so the real issue is publisher intelligence increasing dramatically within the next year or two.

Oddly enough this years IGDA sponsored GDC Developers Rant is actually stacked with publisher types. It will be interesting to see what they've got to say on this.

Report: Small Portion of Next-Gen Titles to be Profitable
If publishers aren't careful, they could be left with empty pockets on most next-gen game projects. A new report from Screen Digest has found that a tiny proportion of next-gen titles will achieve profitability. Also, Screen Digest believes Sony's PS3 will win the console battle by 2010.

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