Sony Settles Out Of Court

[judge0]

http://www.ps2settlement.com/

Got wierd email, had the above link in it.

Funny thing is, I haven't had any read errors on my system ever.
Evidently is a problem with a lot of PS2 owners.

Email only went out to registered owners ( my wife registers EVERYTHING)

 

[Alpha2]

Sweet! Although I have my doubts that I can collect anything personally it's nice to see them own up to a mistake once and a while.

 

[aQwaBlaz3]

I sold mine, but yeah...it had major disc read errors...I bought Family Guy Season 1 and I put it in my PS2, it skipped like hell. I popped it in my Xbox and worked perfectly...

...Im tellin ya, Micro$oft may be the lesser of the two evils...they know how to make a damn good console, if I do say so myyself. At least Microsoft gives to charity...and Ive never heard of $ony give to one...shit...they might at well put a rootkit CD in a hospital PC and make it get that damn virus...greedy, disgusting bastards.

 

[Magus 86]

The closest thing to a disc read error I've ever gotten from any of Sony's supposedly notoriously crappy disc-reading devices is every time I put a non-copied disc into my PSX... For some stupid assed reason it no longer plays anything that a modchip isn't normally required to play... but at least it still plays those, and I have my PS2 to play regular PSX discs. So it doesn't really bother me, but it is weird as hell. And I don't know why everybody has trouble with their stuff.

 

[Alpha2]

Sony's problem is their need to lower production costs on all their tech. So they use the cheapest equipment and resources to build things. The up side is it makes the price a little cheaper for us but the down side is that there's likely going to be a production problem or two. Some people will see the problem and some won't.

M$ donates to charity because it's tax deductable. Also donating computers to schools with the Windows OS ensures early on that kids are dependant on windows products. Sony is like an autonomous faceless corportate entity, I expect what they do because it's what corporations do in the effort to continue existing, M$ though I concider the greater evil because much of what they do is directed by the Overmind like direction of the constantly smug and overbaring Bill Gates. when you hate on MS you arnt really hating the company, you're hating what the company is an avatar of, that man that controls it.

 

[Magus 86]

But if they're trying to keep production costs down, then how can they be losing money on every system they sell, as has been suggested several times by several different people to me, a few from this forum?

 

[judge0]

The big console manufacturers don't make money off the actual console.

They charge developers a percentage of game sales, also accessories manufacturers pay a percentage as well.

The units are engineered to minimum production spec to lower cost of production, but they are still sold at a loss. For example the Playstation 2 only has 32 MB of ram, and no hard drive by default.

They also make money by selling the SDK's for their platform to the developers.

It is a little confusing, but makes sense if you look at companies like ARM.
They make very few of the actual ARM chips out there, but make a lot of money from licensing the chip design to companies like MagicEyes, Samsung etc, and licensing fees for their Development Suites.

Hoped that helped . . . :blink:

 

[Alpha2]

Indeed.

If you make 1 buck on every game you sell for a system that cost you 20 to make and sell it for 15, then you sell 1000 games that loss becomes a very insignifigant issue... but it's only costing you 20 if you use cheaper materials otherwise you spend a lot more and your profit shrinks, even though you might still make a lot of money on the game sales with a more expensive system you risk selling fewer if youre selling it for 25 as opposed to 15.

That Sony knowingly uses these materials and then had their system come down with issues that stem from that fact than then they charged many people for repairs is a possible reason for the classaction suit and the reason they're settling out of court.