ActiVIsion makes big threats to Sony.

Now, I didn't see this coming that's for sure, but I have been saying for a long time that with the cost of the console itself, the amount of money Sony are, or were, losing per unit, and the cost to develop games that the Playstation 3 might not be all that much of a business success.

And, Bobby Kotick being an asshole aside, this is yet more evidence that what i've been saying is the case. Yes, Bobby Kotick is a douche, but unless he actually had reason to make threats like these (IE, PS3 games were not returning money at a decent rate) he wouldn't be making them.

This doesn't really matter to consumers, but the bottom line is that regardless of which console you prefer, if you are the least bit educated in video game business, you should have been worried for the PS3 since it's release, and I have been. Games cost way more to produce for the PS3, the install base is much smaller, Sony fees are higher than other console manufacturers (Anyone seen how much a fucking Sony devkist costs? A fuckton, and thats after they lowered the price, way more per devkit than microsoft or nintendo) and it's becoming harder and harder to get back the investment on Playstation 3 games.

Now, lowering the price of the console is not the answer, especially if Sony have not managed to make the box itself profitable, it wouldn't do them any favors. What they do have to do however is put more effort, and more money into supporting developers, consumers can think/say what they like about developer 'laziness' but coding for the PS3 when you've never done so before is like turning up for work as normal, except everyones suddenly speaking french, or moon language. It really is that different to what developers are used to.

Sony need to put more support forward to developers otherwise there's going to be serious fireworks.

Edit: Source: http://kotaku.com/5296566/activision-threatens-to-stop-supporting-sony-consoles

Well luckily i can speak french!

I still have alot of love for sony carried over from the PS2 days but seriously, even publishers are beginning to bash Sony in public. They've really got to suck up their gut and step up their game by the end of this year.

"Well luckily i can speak french! "

Fireworks are bad?

The PS3 is easily the best piece of hardware this generation.  Now I have that off my chest, I will also say that Sony tried too hard to be the leader and it is biting them back.  I want a PS3, but at $1000 on release, it wasn't going to happen.  2 years later at $700, it still isn't gong to happen.  Maybe in another 3 to 4 years when it is under $400 (all prices Australian), I will pick one up and get a good library of games cheap.  That won't help Sony.

It's ironic that a company whose bread and butter is made by releasing over-priced peripherals should threaten Sony with lowering the price of their hardware.

Honestly, from a business stance I do totally understand their concerns. But it really isn't like the PS3 is faltering -- I'm using Wikipedia as a source here so excuse me -- with an install base of 23 million systems. That's a lot of people to ignore -- even if their games do sell more on the 360 they must be looking at IN THE VERY LEAST 30% of their multiplatform games selling on the PS3. Which when you look at something like CoD4 which has sold, what, 10 million [figures pulled out of my ass for easy maths] -- that's 3 million copies of the game sold. Can they really ignore 3 million games? I don't know.

Needless to say this probably won't happen, and I think it's pretty obvious Sony are going to announce the Slim at TGS in time for the holiday season. They might do well to tell Activision about their plans mind - just in case.

EA must be rubbing their hands together though -- 23 million consoles without Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk and CoD; leaves them a lot of room to make deprived gamers purchase the "alternative" Rock Band, Skate and Battlefield franchises.

Certainly an interesting threat, but I don't see anything coming from it, even though I do understand where they're coming from.

What with this and Ghostbusters it's like Christmas time all over again when virtually everything was negative Playstation news. We've had a good six months of nice press. I knew it was too good to be true.

" @kitsune_conundrum: The Cell chip (the main source of the difficulties) is developed by STI, which consists of a working alliance between Sony, Toshiba and IBM. So it's hardly just Sony's. "

" The PS3 is easily the best piece of hardware this generation.  Now I have that off my chest, I will also say that Sony tried too hard to be the leader and it is biting them back.  I want a PS3, but at $1000 on release, it wasn't going to happen.  2 years later at $700, it still isn't gong to happen.  Maybe in another 3 to 4 years when it is under $400 (all prices Australian), I will pick one up and get a good library of games cheap.  That won't help Sony.

Sony assumed way too much coming into this generation, but I am still confidant it will stick around and will also overtake the 360.  I wouldn't overly concerned if I was a PS3 owner.

"

" @kitsune_conundrum: I don't think they're neccessarily citing problems with the Cell although they do mention it costs a bit more to develop on PS3.I think they're worried the PS3 is losing steam and as such will result in lower attach rates and less of their games being sold. Alas his point is moot - the PS3 has pretty much plodded along since release. Nothing has particularly slowed from what I've read/seen/heard.It's true what the Sony exec said though when he said "everyone wishes we'd just give it away for free". Activision are simply worrying about people not buying their games. I'm not entirely sure how threatening to stop supporting the Playstation brand helps their cause.I will say this in terms of hardware pricing this generation - you really do get what you pay for. "

I wrote a blog post somewhere shortly before or after the release of the PS3 claiming it would go the way fo the Dreamcast, i'll have to dig it up actually, i'll curse myself for predicting it if it does actually happen.

" I wrote a blog post somewhere shortly before or after the release of the PS3 claiming it would go the way fo the Dreamcast, i'll have to dig it up actually, i'll curse myself for predicting it if it does actually happen. "

This could be really bad news for Sony.  This is the same reason why the Dreamcast died with lack of support from EA (back then the largest third party pub.)

Sammy rightly mentions that 23 million or so units are out the.  That is 2 & 1/2 years into its life.  Can we have some perspective on whether this is a good number or a failure?

"

@get2sammyb:

Well, Grand Theft Auto IV for a start, as well as Bioshock hitting the PS3 (and seeing as the main development cost for Bioshock would have been in the previous years figures, it stands to reason this would boost them disproportionately) Not to mention very few Wii releases from them that year, and those competing with some very good releases, Carnival Games managed to account for a huge amount of profit though.

You also have to realise that revenue is different from profit, I guarantee you Carnival Games on the Wii made a bigger percentage of net profit than even GTA IV did, it cost next to nothing to product. The other issue is that Take 2 released a fair number of new games for the PS3 that year which were ports of Xbox 360 games from the previous year, which boosts the revenue numbers as those games (at that point in time) are selling for a fresh 60 bucks, whereas their xbox counterparts are now in the bargain section.

That aside, you cannot post one companies experiences and claim that no problem exists, there are always blips, boosted earnings figures, etc etc. Also, you will notice that due to the PS3's delayed release in Europe, that will also factor in (Wasn't released until march 2007, so of course it will be a major number when companies release sales figures in 2008, not to mention it gained speed in europe quite significantly after christmas as we saw a number of quality releases around that time, further boosting the 08 sales figures)

For me, the most shocking number in that whole article was that out of 1.5 BILLION revenue for the year, only 97 million of that was profit.

"@kitsune_conundrum: Just out of curiosity - do you consider the inclusion of a free PSN a "bloated feature"? I'm curious which part of the PS3 you consider to be an unneccessary addition. The blu-ray enables it to be future proof even if you don't watch movies on it. As does the interchangable hard-drive.I'm not trying to defend Sony or the PS3 here as I know people will assume when they read my posts. I'm just curious about this "overpriced" mentality -- the hardware is some of the most realiable on the market and it's also by far the most future-proof system on the market.I understand when people say it's expensive. It's the overpriced thing I don't get.I kinda have the opinion that when you drop £300 on a PS3 yes it's expensive, but it's worth it. I understand that a lot of games are playable on XBOX 360 (and very rarely actually better) -- but in XBOX 360 you do have to figure in the costs of maintaining an XBOX Live account (regardless of whether it's better or not you still have to pay for the priveledge), batteries for the controllers or a Play-And-Charge kit, hard-drive which is non-standard meaning you can't just go out and buy a 1TB HDD, etc.I'm just curious exactly what people describe as a "bloated feature" on the PS3. From my point of view the PS3 just gives you more out of the box. Would people prefer a cheaper console with a £20 yearly subscribtion on PSN, a 5GB hard-drive and a higher failure rate?Again I'm just curious - no disrespect to other systems intended."

"@The_A_Drain: But this is standard fare for a lot of industries. Tesco is the largest supermarket in the UK (maybe Europe too) with revenue of around 60 billion and overall profit of around 3 billion. That's a whopping difference.It would be interesting to see the numbers as profit opposed to revenue but I'm just putting it out there."

" @kitsune_conundrum: Just out of curiosity - do you consider the inclusion of a free PSN a "bloated feature"? I'm curious which part of the PS3 you consider to be an unneccessary addition. The blu-ray enables it to be future proof even if you don't watch movies on it.

" @kitsune_conundrum: I think he means the inclusion of free online play. Personally that doesnt matter to me as I only pay for Xbox LIVE when I'm in the mood to gather achievements, otherwise I dont really do multiplayer. But I know a lot of people who do like multiplayer are envious of the PSN's free multiplayer. "

" @The_A_Drain: I agree. It's just a shame the "value-added" strategy hasn't worked out for them. I bought the PS3 because I understood -- but sadly I'll admit Sony have done a terrible job communicating such things to less savvy consumers. Likewise Microsoft have done a good job in making their system appear cheaper than it really is. "

They may not get as large of a return on the PS3, but it's still profitable. The margins are just smaller than on the 360. It would be a stupid move and they've got shareholders to worry about. They should just invest more in multi-platform development tools.
The fool wascomplaining only recently about console makers not cutting prices, so now he's resorting to hyperbole.

I think the major problem isn't necessarily that i's overpriced but that its just fucking expensive...

" @kitsune_conundrum: Well Microsofts strategy has worked better obviously - but still, when I look at the monthly NPDs and see Microsoft selling just 44,000 more systems than Sony in a region where an XBOX can be bought at approximately half the price - I still don't see the wonderful domination that a lot of people like to tout. Alas, I appreciate we're talking attach rates here and also that they're increasing their lead on the PS3 over time.I'd be really curious to see what happened if the PS3 cost $200 though. I know it would never happen, but I'm just really interested to see what impact it would have. "

" @get2sammyb said:

" @kitsune_conundrum: Well Microsofts strategy has worked better obviously - but still, when I look at the monthly NPDs and see Microsoft selling just 44,000 more systems than Sony in a region where an XBOX can be bought at approximately half the price - I still don't see the wonderful domination that a lot of people like to tout. Alas, I appreciate we're talking attach rates here and also that they're increasing their lead on the PS3 over time.I'd be really curious to see what happened if the PS3 cost $200 though. I know it would never happen, but I'm just really interested to see what impact it would have. "

Any idea on global figures? I'm not american so those mean jack all to me. "

According the VG Chartz, Europe has PS3 at 11 million and 360 at 12 million.  Pretty even, but Europe has been pro Sony, so it is a concern.

OOOOOOO it's sooo awful!!!!!   You mean I won't get another carbon-copy guitar hero game?  Or a shooter that plays better on pc anyway?  THE HORROR!!

" Now, lowering the price of the console is not the answer, especially if Sony have not managed to make the box itself profitable, it wouldn't do them any favors. What they do have to do however is put more effort, and more money into supporting developers, consumers can think/say what they like about developer 'laziness' but coding for the PS3 when you've never done so before is like turning up for work as normal, except everyones suddenly speaking french, or moon language. It really is that different to what developers are used to.

" I wrote a blog post somewhere shortly before or after the release of the PS3 claiming it would go the way fo the Dreamcast, i'll have to dig it up actually, i'll curse myself for predicting it if it does actually happen. "

" This could be really bad news for Sony.  This is the same reason why the Dreamcast died with lack of support from EA (back then the largest third party pub.) "

This is not good for Sony OR the consumer for one reason - Activision is a big publisher. With that being said, if Activision is unhappy with the PS3, they may decide to just stop supporting it all together. The only way I could see Sony surviving a hit like that is if they step up their first party developing. It will be interesting to see how this turns out.

Ya know what? I really couldn't care less. I love my PS3 just fine, and if Activision stops making PS3 games, that's A-OK with me. Yeah, Sony would be even deeper in the hole, but Activision is a terrible company. The last good game they made was Modern Warfare, and before that, I really can't think of anything. If Activision wants to be flat-out imbeciles and threaten to pull support, I think Sony should let them.