Playstation 5: Thread 01

[Team Andromeda]

I think there's a balance in these things. The XBLA limits were very much of their time, but as Asura mentioned were an example of a platform holder enforcing some kind of limit for them and the consumers benefit. It can feel at times that the balance has skewed too far towards devs/pubs.

It wasn't for the consumer benefit (well not quite) It was all down to MS having the 360 Arcade system, all games needed to be made with no hardrive and its launch Memory cards not being big enough to handle large downloads a result. It was a silly move, that held back to many 360 Arcade games (never mind 360 games) I'm sure MS 1st had to increase the limit for Castlevania Symphony of the night on Live Arcade.

Same too, if not for that we could have had the best home version of the likes of Outrun 2006

[Digfox]

Perhap, but it had a benefit in the consumer not having to download a 20GB (i.e. huge for the era) messy port or something, and at least MS did keep increasing the limits. In an age now where some game's delta is you reloading the whole game (TESO and FO76 have done this recently) or QA has gone out the window it's hard not to side with the view that some publishers or platform holders could be doing much, much better.

[Team Andromeda]

Perhap, but it had a benefit in the consumer not having to download a 20GB (i.e. huge for the era) messy port or something, and at least MS did keep increasing the limits. In an age now where some game's delta is you reloading the whole game (TESO and FO76 have done this recently) or QA has gone out the window it's hard not to side with the view that some publishers or platform holders could be doing much, much better.

I very much doubt most early 360 games were more than 5gig. It was a silly move on MS part IMO

[wakka]

It was just a judgement call. It enabled them to deliver a version of the machine that was a mindblowingly cheap £220 at launch, and ensure every user who bought it had access to all available games.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Was it only £220 at launch? I remember getting one on launch day.

[Team Andromeda]

It was just a judgement call. It enabled them to deliver a version of the machine that was a mindblowingly cheap £220 at launch, and ensure every user who bought it had access to all available games.

Of which hardly even the casuals bought and the constant streaming must have worsened the TROD issue

[wakka]

It streamed constantly whether you had the hard drive or not. Hardly any games could be installed at first.

MS chose to aggressively pursue a low pricepoint with the 360 and made sacrifices to get there. I think it was a great move, although I agree it was a shame early on that some XBLA games were held back by it.

@Cassius_Smoke yeah, £220 for the Core machine at launch! Got to be one of the cheapest launches ever. Cube came in at £180 from memory, as did the Wii, so they were a little cheaper. What you got with the 360 for the money was bloody amazing really.

[teddymeow]

Was it only £220 at launch? I remember getting one on launch day.

The Core was £209.99.

The Pro was £279.99.

[teddymeow]

Of which hardly even the casuals bought and the constant streaming must have worsened the TROD issue

How so? 360 games didn't install to the HDD.

[wakka]

Oh wow, £210. I forgot that. What a steal.

If only the PS5 and XSX could be offered at that price

Unfortunately it's gonna be more like £450.

[Deuteros]

With the Xbox 360, Microsoft had another policy that, while well-meaning, proved to be detrimental in a few cases.

A game's initial title update was free but subsequent ones cost a fee of, reportedly, $40,000.

The idea was to have games be released in as polished a state as possible, with the possibility of a free title update to squash whichever bugs slipped through. Unfortunately, much as now, 'then modern' game development meant some games were published with a number of problems that were only discovered when their buyers thoroughly playtested them. In one famous instance -- Fez -- that initial patch introduced a game-breaking bug that Phil Fish wasn't willing to pay to have fixed by a subsequent one.

[Neon Ignition]

The GameCube launch price reveal was the king of all reveals for me - £129.99

I nearly choked on my drink when they slapped motion control option on there for Wii and spat out the largely the same machine years later for £179.99

The aggressive price was a great move for X360 but the thing they've never been able to reproduce since is how it had a full twelve month head start on the Playstation 3 to market as well. Going date and day with PS4 was a dumb move even without their reveal stumble and it'll cost them again this year. As much as other things are going on in the world this time no-one but MS themselves are precious about that November weekend they go for every time so they should pre-empt Sony if they can. With loss leading it feels like £349.99 is the very lowest we could expect this time out at best.

[Cassius_Smoke]

I wonder if things would have played out differently if they both released head to head. That years head start just killed the ps3. But then that price! Sony couldn't compete.
The initial launch titles for the 360 actually weren't very good. I think i got king Kong and project Gotham (which is sadly M.I.A this gen), but by the time the ps3 came out I had a bunch. In the end I used my ps3 to watch Blurays and listen to music.
Maybe MS are going to be aggressive with the price this time round, but it ain't going to be £220 with those stats.

[fishbowlhead]

If anyone thinks these consoles are going to be “aggressively priced” thier in for a shock. Aggressive will be £450, minimum.

£500 is the most likely price.

[Neon Ignition]

For the X360 you could have probably knocked at least 10m off its lifetime sales if PS3 had released twelve months sooner, much more if it had been priced sensibly. Sony deserved that early smacking their received. The X360 has little moments that add together in its favour such as all the mistakes Sony made, the head start, the ease of development, being ahead so much with online functionality, the lightning strike of Kinect and getting a hold of the US market early on. Even then Sony managed to turn the tables on them as the mid-gen kicked in, all those advantages for MS are ancient history now though.