7 ms·

There is a known strategy in politics to intentionally book rooms for speeches that are too small for the number of people who will show up. That way the next d

by jxcole 10y ago

There is a known strategy in politics to intentionally book rooms for speeches that are too small for the number of people who will show up. That way the next day the newspapers will talk about how people were standing in the aisles just to see the politician. You have to wonder whether Sony is using the same strategy to generate more long term interest in a product that was "sold out" and "scarce".

AlphaSite 10y ago
A million sold is a lot for a $300 peripheral.
- SeanBoocock 10y ago
  $400 actually. Also most(?) people probably had to buy the $500 bundle as PSVR requires a Sony Playstation camera to function and many games utilize the bundled Move controllers as input devices.
- haydenlee 10y ago
  A million sold is a lot for a $300 gen 1 peripheral without a proven content lineup.
- MegaButts 10y ago
  It's enough to make me think it could go either way, but I still think VR will grow slowly over a period of several years before finding its niche in the market. To put things in perspective, Microsoft sold tens of millions of Kinect devices before abandoning it - within the first 60 days they had sold 8 million. http://www.businessinsider.com/why-microsoft-xbox-kinect-didnt-take-off-2015-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-microsoft-xbox-kinect-did...
- kabdib 10y ago
  Sheer quantity shipped is not a guarantee that a platform will be viable. The Kinect sold ten or twelve million in the first couple of months. (That may have been the number manufactured, but it still sold in the many-millions on launch). That didn't help it succeed. There are a bunch of reasons why it didn't, and why it was eventually all but deprecated from the Xbox One. I believe that user interaction design driven by management-imposed ideology, rather than user testing, was a big factor.
  - dageshi 10y ago
    As you say, Kinect was dumb for a whole host of reasons, PSVR on the otherhand is broadly compatible with Oculus and Vive in the sense that the games made for one can be adapted to the other that means the potential market isn't just limited to PSVR only. I think that fact moves it firmly out of kinect territory. I also agree and said at the time, adding $100+ to the price of the xbox one for a peripheral which most people wouldn't use was incredibly fucking dumb.
    - MegaButts 10y ago
      > PSVR on the otherhand is broadly compatible with Oculus and Vive in the sense that the games made for one can be adapted to the other This is actually one of the big problems in developing content for VR, because it's not true. There are different levels of immersion in VR, and you cannot take a game that is full immersion which includes 360 roomscale tracking with hands, to the most limited VR which is front facing tracking without hands. One is being able to walk around and touch things with your hand, the other is sitting in a chair and not being to touch things. Yes, you can use the most basic immersion on any VR system, but my understanding is most people don't want to bother with it because it's boring. One thing the Vive did correctly in my opinion is offering the highest immersion to every buyer - there were no optional wands, they were included (whereas you have to buy them separately for the Rift). 360 tracking is out of the box, whereas with the Rift you need to buy a 3rd sensor for that to work (and they're still having so many problems Facebook has even admitted it's not working properly). The PSVR does not support 360 tracking at all right now, it's intended as a sit down experience. I see a lot of potential in VR, but I'd say it's 2 generations away from becoming "mainstream" in the sense that there is an active community for it and it's profitable, but it's always going to be a subset of the gaming market (talking solely about VR for gaming, the focus with Facebook is clearly to focus on mobile). Right now it's way too expensive, the resolution is bad, it requires high end video cards to just barely eke out 90 fps when you want 120 fps, and most importantly there is a serious lack of content. Like another commenter said, VR right now is in the Palm Pilot stages. It's cool and there are early adopters, but it has a long way to go before we're in the iPhone era.
iamdave 10y ago
You have to wonder whether Sony is using the same strategy to generate more long term interest in a product that was "sold out" and "scarce". How do you mean? When I went to buy my PSVR there were four store trips (Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and two GameStops), all sold out before I finally came home and just ordered one online-and even on Amazon I saw a notice that supplies were limited.
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  That's exactly the point! You, and the media, perceive all these stores being sold out as implying that the product is super-popular and special. Someone who didn't plan to buy the product will see this scarcity and think that it's incredibly popular, and maybe want to jump on the bandwagon. However, there's not necessarily a scarcity at the source - they could have a large number of units in Sony warehouses. Then, a week after they sold out on initial launch, and people are hearing stories from their friend iamdave and from the Times that the PSVR is incredibly popular and hard to find, they can ship those warehouse units to the stores and suddenly even more people can purchase a PSVR.
  - karmelapple 10y ago
    It could be the case. And if so, hey, if it's working to sell more, kudos to their PR department. But as someone else posted, selling a million in a short time frame certainly seems like success. Whether there's artificial pent-up demand or not, they've sold quite a few considering the price of it all.
  - iamdave 10y ago
    You, and the media, perceive all these stores being sold out as implying that the product is super-popular and special. I can only speak for myself here, so take it however you want to, but going to four stores and all of them being sold out-honest to God my only thought was-oh okay, they're out, on to the next store. Legitimately the "hype" factor for me was playing a space dogfighting game at a friend's house, falling in love with the experience (as I'm a longtime fan of the EVE Online series, and Valkyrie was made by the same production team) and deciding "Hey, I want one of these for myself". So I somewhat get your point, but I'm not entirely sure I'm convinced enough of how true it is to agree with it. And even if that's what Sony did...it appears to be working for them. The appeal to PSVR is that it doesn't require the investment of some PC-oriented gaming rigs necessary to render games twice for a functioning VR experience; the PS4 is already a successful and popular platform; Sony rolled the dice and got lucky 7's with PSVR.
fny 10y ago
There is a known strategy in business to underestimate and test demand in new markets. That way you're not stuck with excess inventory, excess manufacturing capacity, and angry shareholders. Any related marketing buzz is a bonus, of course. ;)
taurath 10y ago
Nintendo does this to drive up demand - Sonys problem is even 1mil peripherals is only going to drive 200-400k sales of a big title - not big enough for the investment of any third party to do a real AAA game, which could get big momentum for the platform. So you have to invest a lot in first party games to sell the platform on a relatively tight budget. Thankfully they have the money to throw around now, unlike the PS3 days.
- Waterluvian 10y ago
  Sometimes. Sometimes Nintendo just can't actually deliver. Missing holiday season with your NES Classic is definitely not to drive up demand. So I wonder how often their inability to deliver is mislabelled as an intentional move.
- zeta0134 10y ago
  This might make sense if we were talking about actual exclusives, and if we're talking about VR-only games, you're absolutely right. But AAA studios can approach VR as something of a hybrid experience. It requires some development, but can be retroactively applied to a lot of existing games and engines without a huge amount of additional effort. They can budget VR more like a port, and less like an entirely new game from scratch. The PC community is helping out a lot with this by retroactively patching older games with VR support, and in the process very rapidly iterating on control schemes and camera parameters to make it "work" in games that weren't originally planned for the platform. Games which support VR can also support traditional controls and regular televisions, which expands the market for those who just want to play the game, and don't want to pay for the immersive headset. It's an interesting space to be sure. I definitely think Sony was wise not to over-produce headsets initially for such a new, untested platform, but at this point it's pretty clear that VR is going to continue to be a thing. I don't know if it will ever hit actual mainstream / casual gamers, but there's enough passion in the product from the hardcore customer base to keep the momentum going.
  - taurath 10y ago
    Yes, you can do that, just like adding support for say the PlayStation Move or 3D TVs. That doesn't equal a good experience though necessarily. So many game experiences suffer in VR if you're not designed for it at the start, and jutter/motion sickness is a real concern in VR. VR generally wants you to have a slower paced first person view, if the player isn't in a cockpit of some sort and in a "natural sitting" position. Racing and flying games have this and are naturally good VR experiences if the engine will allow for it (not all do). But all 3rd person games are out. Most FPSes are out. Thats a good chunk of the industry.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
Not disagreeing that under delivering is a tactic, but in this case I don't think that is at plat. The company is outselling all other VR units combined. I think it was a legitimate calculation to forecast on 1 million units over six months (and even that would be 'best VR product sales of any brand'.)
pvg 10y ago
They aren't. No business mass-producing consumer electronics is deliberately going to turn away people wanting to give them $300 just so they can make an impression on someone else who might want to give them $300. There's advertising and marketing for that and it's costly enough without not-selling product.
Someone 10y ago
So, what do you want them to do? Scale up their manufacturing to fulfill the projected initial demand peak, hope they got it right, and scale it down afterwards, or pile up a few weeks or months of production before starting selling it, increasing the amount of money they need to invest before getting money from sales? Scaling production up and down may be easier than it used to be, but it still can be fairly costly. I think the advertising of 'we sold more than we can make' is just a nice extra.

by jxcole 10y ago

AlphaSite 10y ago

A million sold is a lot for a $300 peripheral.

SeanBoocock 10y ago
$400 actually. Also most(?) people probably had to buy the $500 bundle as PSVR requires a Sony Playstation camera to function and many games utilize the bundled Move controllers as input devices.
haydenlee 10y ago
A million sold is a lot for a $300 gen 1 peripheral without a proven content lineup.
MegaButts 10y ago
It's enough to make me think it could go either way, but I still think VR will grow slowly over a period of several years before finding its niche in the market. To put things in perspective, Microsoft sold tens of millions of Kinect devices before abandoning it - within the first 60 days they had sold 8 million. http://www.businessinsider.com/why-microsoft-xbox-kinect-didnt-take-off-2015-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-microsoft-xbox-kinect-did...
kabdib 10y ago
Sheer quantity shipped is not a guarantee that a platform will be viable. The Kinect sold ten or twelve million in the first couple of months. (That may have been the number manufactured, but it still sold in the many-millions on launch). That didn't help it succeed. There are a bunch of reasons why it didn't, and why it was eventually all but deprecated from the Xbox One. I believe that user interaction design driven by management-imposed ideology, rather than user testing, was a big factor.
- dageshi 10y ago
  As you say, Kinect was dumb for a whole host of reasons, PSVR on the otherhand is broadly compatible with Oculus and Vive in the sense that the games made for one can be adapted to the other that means the potential market isn't just limited to PSVR only. I think that fact moves it firmly out of kinect territory. I also agree and said at the time, adding $100+ to the price of the xbox one for a peripheral which most people wouldn't use was incredibly fucking dumb.
  - MegaButts 10y ago
    > PSVR on the otherhand is broadly compatible with Oculus and Vive in the sense that the games made for one can be adapted to the other This is actually one of the big problems in developing content for VR, because it's not true. There are different levels of immersion in VR, and you cannot take a game that is full immersion which includes 360 roomscale tracking with hands, to the most limited VR which is front facing tracking without hands. One is being able to walk around and touch things with your hand, the other is sitting in a chair and not being to touch things. Yes, you can use the most basic immersion on any VR system, but my understanding is most people don't want to bother with it because it's boring. One thing the Vive did correctly in my opinion is offering the highest immersion to every buyer - there were no optional wands, they were included (whereas you have to buy them separately for the Rift). 360 tracking is out of the box, whereas with the Rift you need to buy a 3rd sensor for that to work (and they're still having so many problems Facebook has even admitted it's not working properly). The PSVR does not support 360 tracking at all right now, it's intended as a sit down experience. I see a lot of potential in VR, but I'd say it's 2 generations away from becoming "mainstream" in the sense that there is an active community for it and it's profitable, but it's always going to be a subset of the gaming market (talking solely about VR for gaming, the focus with Facebook is clearly to focus on mobile). Right now it's way too expensive, the resolution is bad, it requires high end video cards to just barely eke out 90 fps when you want 120 fps, and most importantly there is a serious lack of content. Like another commenter said, VR right now is in the Palm Pilot stages. It's cool and there are early adopters, but it has a long way to go before we're in the iPhone era.

iamdave 10y ago

You have to wonder whether Sony is using the same strategy to generate more long term interest in a product that was "sold out" and "scarce". How do you mean? When I went to buy my PSVR there were four store trips (Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and two GameStops), all sold out before I finally came home and just ordered one online-and even on Amazon I saw a notice that supplies were limited.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago
That's exactly the point! You, and the media, perceive all these stores being sold out as implying that the product is super-popular and special. Someone who didn't plan to buy the product will see this scarcity and think that it's incredibly popular, and maybe want to jump on the bandwagon. However, there's not necessarily a scarcity at the source - they could have a large number of units in Sony warehouses. Then, a week after they sold out on initial launch, and people are hearing stories from their friend iamdave and from the Times that the PSVR is incredibly popular and hard to find, they can ship those warehouse units to the stores and suddenly even more people can purchase a PSVR.
- karmelapple 10y ago
  It could be the case. And if so, hey, if it's working to sell more, kudos to their PR department. But as someone else posted, selling a million in a short time frame certainly seems like success. Whether there's artificial pent-up demand or not, they've sold quite a few considering the price of it all.
- iamdave 10y ago
  You, and the media, perceive all these stores being sold out as implying that the product is super-popular and special. I can only speak for myself here, so take it however you want to, but going to four stores and all of them being sold out-honest to God my only thought was-oh okay, they're out, on to the next store. Legitimately the "hype" factor for me was playing a space dogfighting game at a friend's house, falling in love with the experience (as I'm a longtime fan of the EVE Online series, and Valkyrie was made by the same production team) and deciding "Hey, I want one of these for myself". So I somewhat get your point, but I'm not entirely sure I'm convinced enough of how true it is to agree with it. And even if that's what Sony did...it appears to be working for them. The appeal to PSVR is that it doesn't require the investment of some PC-oriented gaming rigs necessary to render games twice for a functioning VR experience; the PS4 is already a successful and popular platform; Sony rolled the dice and got lucky 7's with PSVR.

fny 10y ago

There is a known strategy in business to underestimate and test demand in new markets. That way you're not stuck with excess inventory, excess manufacturing capacity, and angry shareholders. Any related marketing buzz is a bonus, of course. ;)

taurath 10y ago

Nintendo does this to drive up demand - Sonys problem is even 1mil peripherals is only going to drive 200-400k sales of a big title - not big enough for the investment of any third party to do a real AAA game, which could get big momentum for the platform. So you have to invest a lot in first party games to sell the platform on a relatively tight budget. Thankfully they have the money to throw around now, unlike the PS3 days.

Waterluvian 10y ago
Sometimes. Sometimes Nintendo just can't actually deliver. Missing holiday season with your NES Classic is definitely not to drive up demand. So I wonder how often their inability to deliver is mislabelled as an intentional move.
zeta0134 10y ago
This might make sense if we were talking about actual exclusives, and if we're talking about VR-only games, you're absolutely right. But AAA studios can approach VR as something of a hybrid experience. It requires some development, but can be retroactively applied to a lot of existing games and engines without a huge amount of additional effort. They can budget VR more like a port, and less like an entirely new game from scratch. The PC community is helping out a lot with this by retroactively patching older games with VR support, and in the process very rapidly iterating on control schemes and camera parameters to make it "work" in games that weren't originally planned for the platform. Games which support VR can also support traditional controls and regular televisions, which expands the market for those who just want to play the game, and don't want to pay for the immersive headset. It's an interesting space to be sure. I definitely think Sony was wise not to over-produce headsets initially for such a new, untested platform, but at this point it's pretty clear that VR is going to continue to be a thing. I don't know if it will ever hit actual mainstream / casual gamers, but there's enough passion in the product from the hardcore customer base to keep the momentum going.
- taurath 10y ago
  Yes, you can do that, just like adding support for say the PlayStation Move or 3D TVs. That doesn't equal a good experience though necessarily. So many game experiences suffer in VR if you're not designed for it at the start, and jutter/motion sickness is a real concern in VR. VR generally wants you to have a slower paced first person view, if the player isn't in a cockpit of some sort and in a "natural sitting" position. Racing and flying games have this and are naturally good VR experiences if the engine will allow for it (not all do). But all 3rd person games are out. Most FPSes are out. Thats a good chunk of the industry.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

Not disagreeing that under delivering is a tactic, but in this case I don't think that is at plat. The company is outselling all other VR units combined. I think it was a legitimate calculation to forecast on 1 million units over six months (and even that would be 'best VR product sales of any brand'.)

pvg 10y ago

They aren't. No business mass-producing consumer electronics is deliberately going to turn away people wanting to give them $300 just so they can make an impression on someone else who might want to give them $300. There's advertising and marketing for that and it's costly enough without not-selling product.

Someone 10y ago

So, what do you want them to do? Scale up their manufacturing to fulfill the projected initial demand peak, hope they got it right, and scale it down afterwards, or pile up a few weeks or months of production before starting selling it, increasing the amount of money they need to invest before getting money from sales? Scaling production up and down may be easier than it used to be, but it still can be fairly costly. I think the advertising of 'we sold more than we can make' is just a nice extra.