Ballmer: Xbox will capitalize on PS3 delay
Microsoft CEO says Playstation 3's November launch gives Xbox a shot to be the top gaming console.
By Telis Demos, FORTUNE reporter
March 17, 2006: 11:58 AM EST


NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - After Sony announced on Tuesday that the Playstation 3 won't launch until November, the Xbox 360 is in a better position to become the top gaming console, says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

"In every other generation, the first guy to 10 million consoles was the number one seller in the generation," Ballmer told FORTUNE in an interview on Thursday afternoon. "Did we just get an even better opportunity to be the first guy to 10 million? Yeah, of course we did."

But Microsoft (Research) will not formally revise its projected market share for the Xbox 360, and it will not speed up production to capitalize on Sony's delay, because it's already producing the Xbox as fast as possible. "We've been saying 'make them faster' before yesterday," says Ballmer.

When the Xbox 360 launched last holiday season, Microsoft had its own missteps. Shortages led to sales of only 600,000 systems from the debut on November 22 through December 31, far fewer than Microsoft and market analysts expected.

There is still a production bottleneck because of problems with a component vendor, whom Ballmer declined to name, but he expects Microsoft to sell 5 million systems by June. "We're sort-of on track," he says, "though it would've been nice at Christmas to have one for everyone who wanted one."

Previous generations of the Playstation outsold the Xbox by a wide margin. Worldwide in 2005, Sony sold 101 million Playstation 2 units, while Microsoft sold 24 million Xboxes and Nintendo sold 21 million Gamecubes, according to UBS. Even during the 2005 holidays, after Xbox 360 had debuted, Playstation 2 sold 1.4 million units in December, according to The NPD Group, which tracks sales of video games and game platforms.

Microsoft plans "major pushes" of the Xbox 360 in France, Italy, Spain and Japan -- markets where the first generation Xbox didn't perform as well as Microsoft hoped.

"I am palpably optimistic," Ballmer says. "I think we are absolutely in the game for the market position it would be nice to have."

Ballmer dismissed Sony's (Research) expectation that Playstation's Blu-Ray DVD player will give it an advantage over the Xbox, which will feature an HD-DVD format player. "Sony's going to try and define that as a fundamental battleground, but I don't think it is a fundamental battleground," he says. "I don't care whether it's Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, there's not going to be a lot of content in either format this year."

For now, Ballmer says, the timing advantage is all that matters. "It's not going to be that way forever," he says, "but we're clearly in the phase where it's about how fast we can make them."

Confirmed: PlayStation 3 will ship with 60 GB HDD

Posted Mar 17th 2006 3:45PM by James Ransom-Wiley

PlayStation 3To clear any confusion, a Sony representative, speaking with Yahoo! Games, has confirmed that the PS3 will ship with a 60 GB HDD, with an option to upgrade. No PS3 bundles will be sold without a hard drive. However, it's unclear if by upgrading, purchasers will have the option to buy the console with a larger hard drive, or if they'll be forced take the 60 GB HDD and buy an additional, larger drive separately—we guess the latter (at least, at launch), but aren't ruling out the possibility of two bundles with different sized hard drives (for example, 60 GB and 100 GB bundles).

Overall, standardizing the consoles to include a hard drive benefits both developers and consumers. But we're still left wondering if the asking price will be out of the range of a significant percentage of potential buyers.

Sony will lose the not so impressive "boomerang" controller design

Much to the chagrin of boomerang enthusiasts, Sony’s president of the Computer Entertainments Worldwide Studios devision Phil Harrison announced today that the PS3 controller will see a design before launch come this November.

Apparently the design which most of us have come to develop a serious dislike for has been ditched for a band new design which is expected to be unveiled at the E3 in May.

So now the question remains, what will the “new” controller look like? Well we see Sony revert back to a more traditional controller similar to the PS2, or could Sony possibly go the Nintendo route with something new and completely innovative?

In most likelihood we wont find out until the E3 in May.

GDC 2006: Sony Conference Report

Harrison puts PS3 and PSP on stage.

by Garnett Lee, 03/22/2006

Speaking at the 2006 Game Developers Conference in San Jose this morning, Sony Computer Entertainment President, Worldwide Studios, Phil Harrison is delivering one of the most anticipated keynote addresses in recent memory. 1UP reporters are on hand providing live updates as they happen.

10:40 a.m. PST

Harrison opened his talk by reviewing the powerful presence of Playstation in the global gaming community. This report card included the fact that more than 100 million PS2s have been sold worldwide to date. He went on to add, "we are still selling Playstation 1 software in many markets around the world."

Joining him on stage then was God of War creator David Jaffe, for a sneak peek at God of War II on PS2. Before showing it off Jaffe noted of the PS3 that, "it seems to be incapable of rendering three-way sex scenes in real time." That disappointment aside the demo showed Kratos in full swing again, ripping heads off a three-headed monster one at a time and ended with a scene on the back of a God-like tremendous bird in the air.

10:50 a.m. PST

From there Harrison moved on to talk about some intriguing new hardware accessories. First up was a video/still camera add-on for the PSP. He stated that this should arrive in September of this year. Next came the announcement of a GPS unit for PSP coming right after, due to be on shelves in October. In keeping with the PSP theme he then showed a demo of Loco Roco, which is now scheduled for a worldwide release in summer.

And finally, PS3 took center stage. It began with a reprise of the rubber ducky tech demo used in demonstrating the PS2 years ago. This time, though, the camera pulled back dramatically from the bathtub full of ducks to reveal that they were at the bottom of a living, fully realized ocean. Harrison quipped that a little practical joke was played on him where he had been unexpectedly showered in real rubber duckies while giving the same demonstration internally at Sony.

Harrison then confirmed what everyone most wanted to hear: that the worldwide launch was coming in "early" November. He reiterated the other details that had been passed along last week in Japan including that production would be running at 1 million units per month and that studios would have final development kits in June.

11:00 a.m. PST

With the housekeeping out of the way, the demos got underway in earnest. Ninja Theory's Heavenly Sword was used to show off what can be done with the Havok physics engine. Groups of enemies blew up, flying everywhere fluidly, and then the scene zoomed way out to show the same event with literally hundreds of enemies.

The second demo started with an Audi in the desert from an unannounced forthcoming game (though, considering it was "an action game" from the team behind The Getaway, one could assume it was the sequel - the desert background just there to throw people off). Bullets striking the car slowly dismantled it, bit by bit. And then the much talked about Warhawk went up for a real-time demonstration. Lighting effects were fantastic in the sunset scene allowing for what the developers are terming "ambient warfare". The most impressive part of the display was the real, volumetric clouds. You fly through them and they exist in 3D. And even better, we'll be able to bring you hands-on impressions of the game from this year's E3!

11:10 a.m. PST

With the visual demonstrations complete, the subject of the PS3's online gaming service came next. The PlayStation Network Platform is simply the company's internal name and shouldn't be thought of as what to call it. The driving principles behind the service are content, communication, community and commerce, and all of it from a "basic service free of charge," Harrison added.

The service, co-developed with SOE has infrastructure by Sony, but allows third-party servers to be connected independently. This they see as "key." All of the big features should be in there, including: video chat, voice chat, friends lists, stores to sell content online, micropayments, transactions, subscriptions, etc.... Video Chat windows will be able to overlay in-game while you're playing, and you'll also be able to send email and requests from in the game. Developers will be receiving the first roll-out of the system next week.

11:20 a.m. PST

Examples of network play began with a demo of Formula 1 racing. Following that Motorstorm was used to demonstrate how you can buy stuff in the game. In action the HDR lighting looked sharp, but the poor framerate made it clear this was still an early build. While the texturing looked nice, it was a significant step down from the jaw-dropping pre-rendered demo shown at last year's E3. We'll also have more for you on Motorstorm from E3 in May.

Ted Price took the stage next to show, "an internal demo finished a few months ago." He called it Resistance: Fall of Man. It had the look of a cross between Call of Duty and Half-Life, complete with the real world physics modeling. Ratchet & Clank followed next in a non-interactive first look at its PS3 debut. The camera panned out from a corridor to outside and then started to explore a massive futuristic city that looked very much like the early stuff shown for Final Fantasy XII. And nowhere was there anything to say it was Ratchet, except for a logo on an airship at the end and the style.

11:30 a.m. PST

The final piece of the puzzle is the PS3 general business model, and it's a doozie with packaged media, network sales, episodic contents, in-game ads, subscriptions, mobile gaming, game object auctions and finally merchandising. And it includes an e-Distribution initiative that will have some games only available by download. Small game developers can contact Sony about these types of games at www.playstation.com/beyond.

Along with the social networking, multimedia figures into the PS3's plans. There's the potential for going beyond the game with downloadable songs or videos from the games.