Comments on: Good News for PS3 Fans in Korea

By: taxman

taxman — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 03:35:13 +0000

jdog2050, Don’t pick up one just yet. I think this 400$ (or 350 here) is fixed till the next holiday but Sony will introduce rumble later (either end of this year or beginning of next year). Unless you don’t care about rumble, you will end up buying more controllers than you need.

By: jdog2050

jdog2050 — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:33:15 +0000

also, I’m extremely surprised that this PS3 is only $300. That’s insane…insane enough for me to pick one up, despite the horrible games on PS3 right now.

By: jdog2050

jdog2050 — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:32:30 +0000

@bipolar

Yes, actually the PS3 was losing a shit-ton of money when it first came out because of the production of the blue-ray laser. There was a rate of something like only 1 out of 100 of the lasers being viable after being cut from the mold because it was such a new technology.

The Wii has been profitable (hand over friggin fist, good job nintendo) because it’s seriously just a gamecube. The tech was there, they repacked it, added a hot new control scheme, ???, profit.

By: Brendon Carr

Brendon Carr — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:15:24 +0000

But the Wii is profitable from the get-go. It’s engineered to make money for Nintendo even on the console itself.

By: Bipolar Mindscrew

Bipolar Mindscrew — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:45:22 +0000

The idea that consoles are sold at a loss is a myth perpetuated by the console-makers themselves to guilt-induce us into buying more games… Do you really think that $ony or Micro$oft would risk losses on such expensive pieces of hardware? In reality, startup costs (such as building factories) do cause red ink on the books for 2-3 years but that should not be interpreted as a “loss” but rather the cost of doing business.

And the Wii has been introduced in Korea. Search around the Internet and you’ll see that only recently did Nintendo finally opened “Nintendo of Korea.” Until recently, Nintendo holdings were managed by a crappy company that had no interest in promoting Nintendo products. And I think that the Wii is simply not going to be popular in Korea due to its interactive nature. Korean gamers are more interested in online gaming rather than interpersonal interaction… and the Wii requires a great deal of living-room space to play…

By: Brendon Carr

Brendon Carr — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:35:45 +0000

“BC” = “backwards compatibility”.

By: taxman

taxman — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 05:44:05 +0000

The 1st batch of PS3’s that hit the US and Japan was the only ones with complete BC(which is very important considering a lot of great games on the PS2 and abysmal ones on the PS3). But Sony was losing more than 300$ per consoles sold. So in other to cut down the cost of production, they removed the HW BC for PAL territories and this is what was in productions for the last few months. Now they announced a 40GB version for the holidays which would retail for 400$(No BC, a couple of USB ports short etc). The 60GB version is still in the market but they have probably stopped production of those. Add to this, the release of the new controller (with rumble) in Nov for Japan and next year in US, Sony has no intention of sticking with a standard console.

The price in Korea is 50$ less than the US price which is not bad but the Japanese version is probably a little cheaper. The 360 does have a decent install base in Korea (Around 150,000) and with a second price drop this Christmas, they could retail for as low as 250,000 Won. New 360 games are only 40,000 won here (60$ in US,75 in UK) and PS3 games are around 50,000 won (60 in US). So console gaming, in general, is cheaper here than almost all other parts of the world.

By: Brendon Carr

Brendon Carr — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 04:46:27 +0000

Game consoles hit Korea late because there’s no market for the games. Initial sales of consoles are generally at a loss, which the manufacturers make up on sales of games at $50 apiece. Since nobody in Korea buys software if it can at all be avoided, there’s little interest in shipping consoles here until the console itself can be sold for a profit.

By: WangKon936

WangKon936 — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 04:26:53 +0000

Game consoles tend to hit Korea late due to the fact that PC games rule supreme here. What I meant was more akin to this:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/0.....on-razr-2/

However, Korea did get the improved version of the PS3?

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/g.....byte_N.htm

or is it just vapor ware?

By: taxman

taxman — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 04:11:17 +0000

PS3 came out in korea 6 months after it was released in US and Japan. Wii is yet to hit Korea. Not to mention all the best games take a while to get here as well. So Korea doesn’t get the gadgets as fast as one would expect.

The Nov 11th release is probably the dumbed down 40GB version which doesn’t support backward compatibility.