New PS2 for less than the Wii

[Kizzume]

I said PS2, not PS3. What's the point of this move?

www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aZSnTAtH6YZs&refer=japan

It just seems like a strange move to me. Do you think there's any advantage to them doing this?

[jq]

I gave up on sony making sense a long time ago. They lost a permanent buyer and fan when they tried to get $600 for their new console when Xbox360 is half that and the Wii even lower. For what its worth, I loved the PSP while I had one, but I ended up taking it back after a week and a half because I realized the price tag was way too much for my current life style.

[Hackfest]

Were did you buy a PSP where you could return it? Most electronics policies are awful is why I ask. And yeah, Sony is repeating Nintendo's downfall from 11 years ago. From #1 to Last Place. Tah-Dah!! (I hate Sony if you can't tell)

[Kizzume]

They may be repeating the situation of a downfall, but how they got there seems to be quite different.

Nintendo had a problem once they proved without a doubt that they wanted most of the profit from every game sold for the system. They wanted to be in control of the companies that actually produce the cartridges. They also wanted to have fierce control over the content. Nintendo wasn't trying to screw the consumer, they were trying to screw the game developers and game companies.

Sony has not been trying to screw over the game developers, they have been trying to screw over the consumers. It doesn't seem to be panning well for them--it's panning out as well as Nintendo's moves of the past, but they definitely aren't the same moves.

Sony has had "superior" attitude for quite a while--Rootkits anyone? Look at their whole marketing schemes. Nintendo didn't have a superior attitude, they had a "we're different" attitude, and it's finally panning out for them after all this time because they put that attitude into their product. Sony continued the old trend of "faster is better and superior so people will be willing to pay the price because we're superior to them all" which got beat out last time by the xBox.

[Hackfest]

Although true about the developers fees, and I do believe that was key in Nintendo's end, it's the rebuttal from Sony that truly escalated it to number one, while all but killing Nintendo. When Sony made games for Nintendo, they came to the big N with a proposition for a CD based gaming add-on for the SNES. Nintendo agreed, it would be called the Play Station, hook to the bottom of the SNES and all would share in the profit. On the morning of the big announcement to to media, Nintendo quietly backed out, enraging Sony. We all know what happened from there. And while the control that Nintendo wanted helped it lose, choosing more expensive cartridge based medium drove yet another nail in the coffin. Cockiness is what ended the reign of both Nintendo and Sony. I guess I thought everyone knew that the reasons were different on how they both got there, but that's probably not the case.

[Kizzume]

I did not know that they had any sort of setup like that. That sure would have been interesting.

Here's a quote from the wikepedia entry for PlayStation:

In 1989, the SNES-CD was to be announced at the June Consumer Electronics Show (CES). However, when Hiroshi Yamauchi read the original 1988 contract between Sony and Nintendo, he realized that the earlier agreement essentially handed Sony complete control over any and all titles written on the SNES CD-ROM format. Yamauchi was furious; deeming the contract totally unacceptable, he secretly canceled all plans for the joint Nintendo-Sony SNES CD attachment. Indeed, instead of announcing their partnership, at 9 a.m. the day of the CES, Nintendo chairman Howard Lincoln stepped onto the stage and revealed that they were now allied with Philips, and were planning on abandoning all the previous work Nintendo and Sony had accomplished. Lincoln and Minoru Arakawa had, unbeknown to Sony, flown to Philips headquarters in Europe and formed an alliance of a decidedly different nature—one that would give Nintendo total control over its licenses on Philips machines.

The 9 a.m. CES announcement was a complete shock. Not only was it a complete surprise to the show goers (Sony had only just the previous night been optimistically showing off the joint project under the "Play Station" brand), but it was seen by many in the Japanese business community as a massive betrayal: a Japanese company snubbing another Japan-based company in favor of a European one was considered absolutely unthinkable[citation needed] in Japanese business.

After the collapse of the joint project, Sony considered halting their research, but ultimately the company decided to use what they had developed so far and make it into a complete, stand alone console. This led to Nintendo filing a lawsuit claiming breach of contract and attempted, in U.S. federal court, to obtain an injunction against the release of the PlayStation, on the grounds that Nintendo owned the name.[citation needed] The federal judge presiding over the case denied the injunction. Thus, in October 1991, the first incarnation of the new Sony PlayStation was revealed; it is theorized that only 200 or so of these machines were ever produced.

By the end of 1992, Sony and Nintendo reached a deal whereby the "Sony Play Station" would still have a port for SNES games, but Nintendo would own the rights and receive the bulk of the profits from the games, and the SNES would continue to use the Sony-designed audio chip. However, at this point, Sony realized that the SNES technology was getting long in the tooth, and the next generation of console gaming was around the corner: work began in early 1993 on reworking the "Play Station" concept to target a new generation of hardware and software; as part of this process the SNES cartridge port was dropped, the space between the names was removed, and the PlayStation was born.

I wonder if that would have eventually caused a merge between Sony and Nintendo if that product would have been released.....