Why do Sony keep on ignore their greatest asset?

N

Neferpitou

Stand User
I am talking about their amazing back catalog of Playstation 2 and Playstation 1 games. If you can pick up a cheap DVD player from supermarket for less than £10 pound why aren't Sony Re-releasing Playstation 2 for £50 which would at least break even for them. At the same time undercuting the price of the Wii by 3 times the price. So you can try and make the ps2 as common as dvd player in any home.

Its hard to even to find Brand New Playstation 2 in the shops theses days at their full RRP of over £100 value. It not like there no demand for ps2 title any more when titles like Ico, Shadow of the Colossus & Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence are going for £30 Second hand. Persona 4 which was not long ago was £15 Brand New is selling twice that price second hand, It frankly crazy. Not to mention some of the silly second hands prices some ps1 games go for.

If they don't want to go with the solid copy selling method and instead go with downloads for ps3 then that would be OK, but they making a fine mess of that too. You can't download any ps2 titles (while xbox live are offering xbox & xbox 360 titles for sale) while selection of ps1 titles in uk are awful.

An example what's wrong with ps1 title selection choices:

Sony won't release Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in the UK even though its going to insane prices on ebay but are happy to release it in both Japan & USA. But instead release titles like Reel Fishing & The Little Mermaid II on the UK shop , who the hell want these titles?
 
They'll no doubt release PS2 games on PSN soon enough, not very likely they would ever re-release PS2 games on retail unless there was an extremely high demand for it.

Symphony of the Night is on XBLA anyway, so it's not like it's not possible to get it, at all.
 
I like Sony's products but they are incredibly stupid at public relations and marketing. They can't use the PS2 still selling well as an excuse to let developers make games on the cheap if they're not making PS2s any more.
 
^This. Sony aren't stupid, they want people to buy a £250 console and £40 games, not a £50 console and £10 games. I don't want developers making any more PS2 games either. I'd like to try Persona 4 but I bought a PS3 damnit, I expect new games to come out on the new platform.
 
Of course they wanted people to buy more PS2s and PS2 games. They were trying to recover from their poor early PS3 sales and losses made on simply manufacturing them. You can't make a profit from something by selling more of it when it makes a loss from just producing it.
 
Lupus said:
They'll no doubt release PS2 games on PSN soon enough, not very likely they would ever re-release PS2 games on retail unless there was an extremely high demand for it.

Symphony of the Night is on XBLA anyway, so it's not like it's not possible to get it, at all.
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Look at the price certain ps2/ps1 games go for on eBay there certainly a demand for them.

Indeed is on Symphony of the Night is on xbla, but I have no problem with xbox live service as I think they are doing a good job with retro game downloads. Ps3 on the other hand is frankly awful with no PS2 games yet (true they maybe there eventual but when?) and awful ps1 selection. Just look how awful euro ps1 download selection is compared with USA or Japan its disgusting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PSOne_Classics

fabricatedlunatic said:
I don't think Sony want people buying PS2s and playing PS2 games. They'd rather people spend their money on the PS3.
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ayase said:
^This. Sony aren't stupid, they want people to buy a £250 console and £40 games, not a £50 console and £10 games. I don't want developers making any more PS2 games either. I'd like to try Persona 4 but I bought a PS3 damnit, I expect new games to come out on the new platform.
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Well they probably are still losing money on each ps3 sold with the normal practise of making money back from games. The games on these HD consoles cost ridiculous amount to make and need to sell million or more to break just even. With the ps2 games already been produce even been sold at just £10 figure each (I would pay more for certain titles) they would easily make more profit per unit than ps3 game would.

With sony ignore this market people instead are going to pay inflated eBay prices or just illegally download copy for themselves. Its pure madness as people are going to trying to get these games anyway so sony could at least be making some easy money out of it.
 
With productions costs having lowered signifcantly over the last couple of years, Sony are now thought to be making profit on the console.

I doubt there's much profit margin in a £10 game. After the retailer's cut and VAT, there's not going to be much left. They'll get a far bigger return on a game that retails for £50, and it's precisely because modern games cost so much to develop that Sony aren't keen on the idea of keeping the PS2 in stores.
 
fabricatedlunatic said:
With productions costs having lowered signifcantly over the last couple of years, Sony are now thought to be making profit on the console.

I doubt there's much profit margin in a £10 game. After the retailer's cut and VAT, there's not going to be much left. They'll get a far bigger return on a game that retails for £50, and it's precisely because modern games cost so much to develop that Sony aren't keen on the idea of keeping the PS2 in stores.
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With lower pound to dollar rate, shipping the units, VAT and retailer cut and keep online service up for it I doubt they will be making any profit on ps3 consoles when they can be pick up around the £200 mark on certain retailers.

If the game is simply a reprint of older ps2 title the profit margin would easily exceed that of ps3 per unit. But you can get more profit on the whole with new ps3 titles if they sell well enough as new ps3 titles are going to sell million compared to the thousands reprint ps2 would get titles.

But there's a massive risk of ps3 titles flopping as they need to sell millions at near full price to break just even. So ps3 may offer greater rewards but extreme risk of losing a lot of money also.

If they don't want to keep the ps2 in store than fair enough but why aren't they putting the games online to download when clearly there a demand for them. They simply losing money to ebay sellers and illegal downloads.
 
I suspect we will get a downloadable ps2 emulator for the ps3 whenever the ps2 stops selling so well in japan. Which would be more than enough to make me happy. I have one of the newer ps3s that doesnt have BC.

Production on the ps2 console and games are still going strong which is why i suspect they discontinued the backwards compatible. But they seem to have left the door open to it for the future.

We already know that software emulation is possible on the ps2 because an older version ps3 had it.
 
Dave said:
Look at the price certain ps2/ps1 games go for on eBay there certainly a demand for them.
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Price only is high because of collectors paying high prices for it. ebay prices for OOP stuff would not reflect the market if given games were re-released. They want games that will sell well for the largest part of their market, not for a particular niche such as collectors. I dare say they would even neglect the collectors mkt all together, because the more you have of something, the smaller it's value for collector.

So, I don't believe that they would make any profit by releasing these games again on the high street. But, I do expect them to re-release a ps2 classics series of sorts on the PSN soon enough.
 
I'm guessing they'll eventually release the games for download via PSN if they're in enough demand. They already have with FFVII/VIII and I'm pretty sure FFVII is one of the most in-demand games from PSX/PS2.
 
chaos said:
Dave said:
Look at the price certain ps2/ps1 games go for on eBay there certainly a demand for them.
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Price only is high because of collectors paying high prices for it. ebay prices for OOP stuff would not reflect the market if given games were re-released. They want games that will sell well for the largest part of their market, not for a particular niche such as collectors. I dare say they would even neglect the collectors mkt all together, because the more you have of something, the smaller it's value for collector.

So, I don't believe that they would make any profit by releasing these games again on the high street. But, I do expect them to re-release a ps2 classics series of sorts on the PSN soon enough.
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A lot of games do sell more because they are rarer games. But other like Ico, Shadow of the Colossus , FF8 & FF9 are not that rare as quite few appear daily on eBay but still sell for lot more than the average used game does.

It common with PC market to re-release old game for £5-10 so why not playstation to flow suit when it actually make more sense than re-releasing pc games anyway. As old PC game quite often struggle on today computers. Good example of this is my PC copy Beyond Good & evil which runs awfully on my computer which has no trouble running Elder Scroll Oblivion LOL.

There are more PC's around the world than there are ps2 but how many actual PC's are used solely for as gaming plaform. As many today computer are used for work and social. Also online game is moving towards 360/PS3 these days taking huge of gamer away fromk PC's. I would argue with 140 million deciated gaming PS2 platform sold worldwide which don't have the compatibility issue that PC's with old games is a better market to re-release games for than PC is.

You can't argue that it would not be be very profitable to re-release ps2 games cheaply as PC gaming has been demonstrating this for years. It would actual cost more for PC's games to be re-releasing games because of the support and patches required for modern PC's.
 
It'll all go digital. That's where legacy PC gaming, if not PC gaming as a whole is going, and where the PC leads, the consoles usually follow.

However,
It common with PC market to re-release old game for £5-10 so why not playstation to flow suit when it actually make more sense than re-releasing pc games anyway. As old PC game quite often struggle on today's computers. Good example of this is my PC copy Beyond Good & evil which runs awfully on my computer which has no trouble running Elder Scroll Oblivion LOL.
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Despite the problems old PC games do often have on newer operating systems, the reason that PC games have a longer shelf-life is because APIs like Direct X have established a level of software standardisation that has never been necessary with the consoles (though I think this is probably changing). As you're probably aware, the consoles pick up the slack by use of software emulation, but programming a component to pretend its another component (or maybe, many other components at once) probably requires a level of knowledge I won't pretend to comprehend, and a level of efficiency that I will. Wider support for PS2 emulation on the PS3 probably comes down to the R&D money it's going to take to get it all working flawlessly being prohibitive when people can just go and buy the original console (or be one of the many existing owners) and save everyone the headaches.

But yeah, Skikes is probably right. I think it'll be viable soon and they'll go for it.

edit: I suppose the question is, why when they know there's X amount of PS2s out there don't they push out a few old games. I guess the problem is simply that a) they don't know there are X amount of PS2s out there anyway (sales figures don't tell them squat about how many units are still useable) and b) We're probably grossly over-estimating the demand for old titles. Like it or not, games technology just rolls on relentlessly and only the enthusiasts care about the old stuff.
 
In response to kupocake

When talking about how many machines can run ps2 games you also have take in account the number of first released ps3 which were backward compatibility. If we talking about ps1 games however you could include the ps1 consoles too and that a lot of system worldwide.


Well the fun thing is not long ago the ps2 was actual out selling the PS3 in America:

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/ps2- ... -20090731/

This would not be the case over here in the UK as you can't find them new to buy anyway. The reason for high USA sales is probably because they released an even smaller model with RRP of $99.99 which kinda points towards my point that a cheaper ps2 console re-release would sell well.

There maybe not many ps2/ps1 games that there massive demand for put there still plenty which would sell really well if it re-released now at value prices. Old games do still have a value in todays market as Nintendo showed through virtual console. They are very expensively priced games which you receive no hard copy of but they still they managed to sell 10 million in a year.

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6185358.html

Another example of old game selling is Final Fantasy 7 release on ps3 USA network which sold 100,000 in 2 weeks.

http://www.destructoid.com/final-fantasy-vii-moves-100-000-on-playstation-network-137223.phtml.
 
Dave said:
In response to kupocake

When talking about how many machines can run ps2 games you also have take in account the number of first released ps3 which were backward compatibility. If we talking about ps1 games however you could include the ps1 consoles too and that a lot of system worldwide.


Well the fun thing is not long ago the ps2 was actual out selling the PS3 in America:

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/ps2- ... -20090731/

This would not be the case over here in the UK as you can't find them new to buy anyway. The reason for high USA sales is probably because they released an even smaller model with RRP of $99.99 which kinda points towards my point that a cheaper ps2 console re-release would sell well.

There maybe not many ps2/ps1 games that there massive demand for put there still plenty which would sell really well if it re-released now at value prices. Old games do still have a value in todays market as Nintendo showed through virtual console. They are very expensively priced games which you receive no hard copy of but they still they managed to sell 10 million in a year.

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6185358.html

Another example of old game selling is Final Fantasy 7 release on ps3 USA network which sold 100,000 in 2 weeks.

http://www.destructoid.com/final-fantasy-vii-moves-100-000-on-playstation-network-137223.phtml.
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^on that note it's kind of daft that they're so reluctant to remake VII. So many people want it, it wouldn't be all that hard, the models are already there from AC, so why don't they? =/ It would be printing money.
 
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