Game Development Giant

Sony's explanation cannot be said to be unreasonable.

First of all, no one except Sony itself knows why they established a new hardware development team.

It’s not necessarily the development of PS3. Maybe Sony has some new hardware to develop, such as a handheld console. Sony has said it before, they will not give up the handheld console market, but there are more important things to do. Do it, now is not the time for them to enter the handheld market.

Now that the PS2 is on the market, everything is on track.

So isn't this the time to enter the handheld game? As long as Sony doesn't admit it, no matter how others guess, they can only guess.

Moreover, Sony finally defended itself with Mars Entertainment. As a hardware manufacturer, the prices of accessories are actually about the same. After all, they all use accessories provided by third-party manufacturers for assembly.

Therefore, when they saw the performance of Dreambox 3, people at Sony knew how much this machine would cost. Yes, Jester was right at the press conference. The performance of Dreambox 3 is indeed better than that of PS2. There are a lot of them, but here comes the problem. The price is definitely going to be high. It will be released a year later, so the price won’t be ridiculously high, but there is still a price difference of fifty dollars.

Wizard dollars are sometimes fatal.

For example, the competitiveness of US$199 and US$249 is different, and the competitiveness of US$299 and US$349 is also completely different.

The public price of Sega's Saturn and Sony's PS2 is $299.

This price is actually the highest among previous game consoles. The previous two consoles were priced from US$199 to US$249, but this time it has been directly raised to US$299.

Of course, there are research and development costs involved, and there is also room for price reduction in the future.

However, the price of US$249 cannot be said to be expensive. In about three to four years, with the reduction of production capacity, efficiency and accessory prices, the price of the host may be reduced from US$249 to around US$200. Generally speaking, the price of the host machine may be reduced from US$249 to around US$200. There will even be a second or even third price reduction for this console, but the price reduction will not be as large as the first time.

But it will be a few years before it can be reduced to $200.

In the beginning, even game console companies that did not rely on consoles to make profits. It is also impossible to sell takeaway hosts at this price.

As soon as the graphics effects of Dreambox 3 came out, Sony and Sega executives immediately asked their game designers and hardware designers whether their consoles could achieve this effect.

The answer is obvious.

But immediately, these engineers and the company's senior management calculated that the price of Dreambox 3 must be higher than their console. It's almost fifty dollars higher. Otherwise, Mars Entertainment wouldn't be able to bear the loss of selling consoles at a loss.

Moreover, Jester is a firm believer in the strategy of never selling a console at a loss.

The announcement of Dreambox 3 this time can be said to be comprehensive, from the appearance of the console, to the controller, and even to the game demonstration.

But there is only one thing that Mars Entertainment seems to have forgotten and has not announced to the public. And this thing is almost the most important thing for a host, that is the price.

For players, it is important that the performance of the console is excellent and the games on the console are fun. These are all major factors that can influence their purchase of the console, but the price of the console is, for most players, important. Especially important, even the most important.

Sony just didn't see this back then.

The PS3 developed by Ken Kutaragi with great efforts was very powerful. When they announced the price at the E3 conference, the price was more than 500 US dollars.

Everyone on Microsoft XBOX in the background immediately burst into tears of joy.

Because the moment they knew Sony decided the price. They won because their console was $200 cheaper than Sony’s console! And does PS3 have a $200 advantage over XBOX360? Of course not.

However, after the launch of PS4, many players said that the potential of PS3 has not been fully exploited.

Especially Sony first party. Naughty Dog, who is also the leader in exploring the performance of Sony consoles, also recognizes this, but PS3 games are too difficult to develop. Although they know that the PS3 still has potential that can be tapped, they want to tap its potential. In terms of time and energy, it is not worth the gain.

Jester knows this.

However, he believes that the price of fifty dollars will not make players feel that what we spend more money to buy is not worth it.

On the contrary, it will make them think that we spend more money and buy better things.

The reason why the PS3 was so badly beaten by the XBOX360 at the beginning was that in addition to the initial price being too high and Sony itself overestimating the influence of the PS2, there was also the fact that the PS3 had no Several companies have mastered how to develop games on this console, even Naughty Dog. If you look at the Uncharted 1 they developed in the early days of PS3 and the Uncharted 3 they developed at the end of PS3, you can see the end of the United States. come out.

For a game company, the early and late stages of this console are almost equivalent to two completely different consoles.

There are no outstanding games, and the price is so much more expensive.

If the PS3 doesn’t lose in the early stages, that would be unreasonable.

This is purely the result of Sony's own hard work, and it also has something to do with Microsoft's success in the XBOX360 strategy. Just like the competition between PS4 and XBO in the next generation, Sony's first-party camp is indeed stronger than XBO, but The problem is, if Microsoft hadn't committed suicide in front of players at first, then Sony would slap it in the face several times.

Then XBO's initial sales won't be that bad. In fact, it's just that players are disgusted with Microsoft's behavior towards players.

Of course, the success of PS4 is also inseparable from the strength of PS3 in the later period.

Let many players who have never bought a PS3 choose to buy a PS4.

Once Sony's external explanation was explained, it immediately attracted the attention of players. They seemed to be immersed in the shock and excitement that Mars Entertainment had once again changed the gaming industry, and forgot the most realistic thing.

How much does Dreambox3 cost?

Regarding this question, after Mars Entertainment was silent for a few days, Jester Lee took the initiative to answer it.

He accepted an exclusive interview with GAME.

The main point is to talk about some things about Dreambox 3 and the game Heroes that he just said at the Cologne Exhibition. Only GAME could get Jester's interview invitation at this time, after all, this magazine. It was founded by Jester back then. In the industry, GAME is also jokingly called the official media of Mars Entertainment by many people.

In fact, the content is still about some things he talked about in Cologne.

Of course, there are new things, but not much.

The most talked about. There is still the issue of the price of Dreambox 3. Since Sony specifically pointed out this issue, players are also very concerned about it.

Dreambox3 is indeed better than Sega's Saturn and Sony's PS2, and its games are even better than these two machines.

But what about the price?

If the price is too high, they are unlikely to buy it.

In the interview with GAME, Jester did not avoid talking about this issue.

Actually, when talking about this issue, I think it is necessary to talk about why we develop a new console first. Jester likes to talk a lot of nonsense before answering a question. For example, it's like this now.

How should I put it? The console is a carrier. The games we develop run on this carrier. Let me use an example. You can think of the console as a ship. It can carry one ton of cargo. The games we developed before are This boat can fit within this one meal, so there is no need to develop a console. And the game we want to develop will weigh ten tons, so at this time, this boat is obviously not suitable for use.

And our game is a whole. It cannot be divided into ten parts and loaded by ten ships. Then we can only develop a new ship that can carry ten tons of cargo.

“Just like this time, when the games we develop require more powerful hardware to run, we will develop new consoles. Not only us, but many other manufacturers have this need, including When players have such clear demand for new games, the emergence of new consoles is inevitable.

So, the console with what functions we want to develop is not something we imagine out of thin air, but is developed based on the games we want to make.

I think this time's Heroes is a very good example. When I conceived the framework of this game, I went to the hardware development team to discuss it. The reference game we used in developing Dreambox 3 was Quake, the standard we set at the beginning was a console that could run Quake 2.

Originally we were very optimistic about this standard, but as the idea of ​​Heroes emerged, I discussed it with the hardware team and felt that our initial Dreambox 3 standard was a bit low, and there was no way to run it perfectly. The idea of ​​The Hero.

So, we re-developed the console based on my Heroes and used it as a standard.

When he said this, Jester also smiled.

Actually, I am also privileged. I am afraid that I am the only one in the world who can let a hardware team that has completed development develop a new console based on my game. Now that I think about it, it was indeed It’s wayward, but if it happens again, I think I will still make the same choice.”

“After saying this, it’s much easier to talk about the price.”

The performance of our Dreambox3 is much better than that of our competitors. This is obvious. At the Cologne Exhibition, we announced our parameters. You only need to compare them to know.

Moreover, we conducted two developments. Although the second development was based on the first, we still wasted a lot of development costs. For us, this is a very big cost pressure. Jester did not He directly talked about the price of Dreambox 3, but first talked about some difficult situations they faced, but judging from his tone, it seemed that the price would not be very friendly.

Of course, players may be dismissive of this. They will say that this is the matter of the game company and has nothing to do with us. We will ask how much Dreambox 3 costs. Is it more expensive than PS2 and Sega Saturn? If it is expensive, I will not Bought it! Jester smiled and then changed his tone.

Yes, I have also read their discussions on the Internet, or in some gaming magazines and newspapers. What makes me happy is that there are still majority of sane players.

The price of Dreambox 3 is indeed more expensive than PS2 and Sega Saturn. This is not something we can stop, because its performance is much higher than those two consoles. As many people know before, I will never sell it at a loss. As a supporter of consoles, many players have scolded me many times because of this, calling me a vampire. However, I firmly believe that compared with the healthy growth of game companies, it is very dangerous to forcibly increase the console share by selling consoles at a loss. The example of Nintendo’s actions is here.”

Many people know that Nintendo's previous console was the FC, but I'm afraid many people don't know that their first TV game console was another one. I can't remember the specific model. It was basically a reference to the Atari 2600. For copycats that are not very successful, they use the method of selling consoles at a loss. If they want to seize market share, they will lose thousands of yen if they do not sell a console.

And their games have no way to fill the hole where they lost money on the console. Because of this incident, Nintendo almost went bankrupt. If they had gone bankrupt at that time, there might not be FC and there wouldn't be those fun games. - Even though Nintendo and I are rivals, I still have to say something from my heart: Nintendo’s games are really fun, and I was also a fan of “Donkey Kong” back then.”

We have discussed the issue of price internally many times, and we only decided on the final price yesterday. It is not that I deliberately did not announce it at Cologne Exhibition, but we were also discussing the price internally at Cologne Exhibition.

Because it is definitely more expensive than the other two companies. How much more expensive we need to discuss carefully.

The purpose is to make players feel that the price we sell is reasonable, because it is worth that price! (~^~)