PS3 Documentary: How Sony Fell From Grace

[Music] in March 2001 IBM Toshiba and she announced the joint development of a superpower processor for the age of broadband networks the project is codenamed Cell processor C is powered by the world most powerful processor as cell with RSX I mean he is a real visionary but I think he was kind of a Japanese Steve Jobs and that he had a vision like the PlayStation 3 makes my life as a software developer much harder he changed the industry taste this and I said he put ahead for the development community out of business PlayStation 3 is the most ambitious project we at Sony Computer Entertainment have ever undertaken in our very short history [Applause] [Music] the PlayStation 3 story is complicated an outlier and Sony's lineup of home consoles one that faced a steady uphill battle for seven years instead of the outgoing landslide victories of the ps1 and ps2 what really happened let's go back to the beginning March 2001 one year after the ps2 launched Sony Toshiba and IBM began a joint venture to develop a cell broadband engine which would become the CPU of the PlayStation 3 this collaborative effort was no small undertaking with all three companies heavily invested in development the Alliance was known as STI and the creation of cel lasted over a four-year period at the Design Center in Austin Texas due to the collaborative nature each company had their own vested interests and while Sony initially started the project for sale to be used in ps3 the chip had more broad applications for the interests of IBM and Toshiba fields like scientific and medical computing blade servers TVs and more were all avenues in which cell would be designed for Sony one public was cell development during their 2004 III press conference at the time CTO massage' Thani detailed the capabilities of cell supercomputing and making it a point to say can be used beyond games our objective is to provide supercomputing for in various digital entertainment application for digital content creation there are so many techniques that require vast floating-point capabilities we believe that it is go beyond borders of this our entertainment to revolutionize technology and business in the future by the end there was no direct reference to PlayStation 3 just a cell based workstation that would be available soon which could be used to start software development by 2005 nearing the end of creating cel Sony's commitment was increasingly clear ken kutaragi the father of PlayStation and at the time Sony Computer Entertainment president CEO had spent four million dollars on the processors development III 2005 would set the stage for PlayStation 3 formal reveal a nearly two hour long press conference that goes over every single detail about the system's capabilities Sony's partnerships and a myriad of tech demos and pre-rendered trailers the message and speeches are all carefully delivered with purposeful intent PlayStation 3 would be an overwhelmingly powerful piece of consumer hardware ps3 is a system to be placed in the center of the living room in homes around the world future is almost here with PlayStation 3 ps3 would be backwards compatible with ps1 and ps2 software features 6 USB ports 2 HDMI ports 3 Ethernet ports and slot readers 4 memory stick SD and compact flash a hard disk drive would be standard and blu-ray discs will be utilized for high-capacity game storage cell processor was explained in great detail and sony goes over the GPU which was created in partnership with Nvidia being called the RSX short for reality synthesizer the tech demo shown are all meticulously crafted to make a use case for what can be accomplished on ps3 with many third-party publishers also appearing on stage to vouch for the possibilities after about an hour and a half actual software is demonstrated with most of it being questionably good-looking the conference ends on ken Kutaragi proudly holding up the console design up in the air coming spring 2006 later on the show floor the controller concept also appears radically redesigned despite Microsoft's Xbox 360 planning to come to market first Sony doesn't even consider them a threat shortly after the conference kutaragi responded to the press stating beating us for a short moment is like accidentally winning a point from a Shihan and Microsoft is still not a black belt with development kits in hand major game studios are now beginning their work on early PlayStation 3 games and complications are setting in in short sell is a 3.2 gigahertz power processor element with two threads and eight synergistic processing elements PPE and SPE for short the PPE would be the general purpose CPU while the 8 SPE would process data in parallel for ps3 development purposes one SPE would be disabled to increase yield and another for the ps3 is basic functions and OS so developers could use 8 threads total for ps3 software 2 from PPE and six from SPE this means by design cell is an asymmetric multi-threaded architecture it's like having a set goal which would be making ps3 software and divvying up the tasks to accomplish that goal amongst six individuals those individuals being your SPE while the PPE would oversee and handle tasks itself like a group leader the SPE though our specialized single instruction multiple data processors they are extremely efficient at accomplishing their tasks over and over in short they're purpose-built number crunchers and they're very good at it when used correctly for comparison's sake the xbox 360 cpu features three PowerPC cores compared to ps3 single PPE basically you have to figure out how to use those SPE on ps3 this kind of architecture is what makes game development for PlayStation 3 rocky and supercomputing capabilities and scientific fields a breeze when speaking with developers one theme became clear amongst those I talked to communication played a large role in early development struggles prior to a brand new platform launching secrecy is key and depending on the Studios position they may not easily get access to the answers they need first party developers being at the top of the hierarchy they're owned by Sony and get access to Hardware first they have a more direct line of communication second party is trusted and may get help before a third party where it's more likely that any communication is run through by lawyers to uphold integrity of early hardware secrets but this is just one issue early on that stages the bigger picture of problems relating to developing on PlayStation 3 namely the platform CPU wasn't specifically designed for game development and on the heels of Sony's PlayStation 2 success ken Kutaragi is asking the entire videogame industry to learn his new complicated cell processor worse yet he's asking at a time where a competitor has already started the seventh generation of game consoles [Music] Sony's 2006 III press conference gives a final look at the hardware and games before launch and it appears the console and games have indeed been scaled back from their initial reveal in 2005 most of the footage shown last year was indeed pre-rendered but the actual ps3 system now has less USB Ethernet and HDMI ports than initially promised and the controller design has been reverted back to the more traditional looking DualShock except it's now being dumped sixaxis with no rumble functionality due to an ongoing legal battle with the haptic feedback company immersion the rest of the show is filled with awkward clips sound bytes and presentation choices making e3 2006 for Sony a laughingstock that the internet will never forget however games shown this year are now running on development kits and look closer to what consumers will actually be able to play Gran Turismo HD heavenly sword resistance fall of man Final Fantasy 13 Metal Gear Solid 4 this was a turning point the ps3 is finally being billed as a video game machine and these are some of the great titles that you can expect unfortunately any momentum the company had slowly receded once SCEA president CEO Kaz Hirai revealed the launch date and price and the 60 gigabyte PlayStation 3 for 599 u.s. dollars six hundred and fifty nine dollars Canadian PlayStation 3 will be available in Europe and Australasia his cause said the price and the room we were in went silent and and I said did he really say what I think he said absolutely in my mind and many of us said out loud oh this this could be really fun okay we got a real chance there's real upside here yeah if we push hard we can really make a difference while PlayStation 3 even with the scale back ports is an incredibly impressive piece of tech it's still considered overwhelmingly expensive even at the starting price of $4.99 to $5.99 Sony would be taking an approximate $200 loss for every system sold there's a lot at stake spending four hundred million dollars on the CPU betting on blu-ray technology winning against HD DVD selling hardware at a substantial loss launching a year later than Microsoft surely there was a massive amount of pressure mounting on Sony yet for president and CEO ken Kutaragi there was a level of confidence that led developments that the PlayStation name was strong and desirable and for Kutaragi personally ps3 was his pride and joy a passion project culminating years of blood sweat and tears ps1 and ps2 were just the build-up for what he wanted to accomplish long term former employees who work closer with him described him as a fierce visionary one who at times would get emotional for better or worse it wasn't uncommon that Kutaragi would be described as a micromanager barking orders at engineers to make things happen a former Wall Street Journal reporter Rob gut claims Kaz Hirai was even subject to put-downs saying at one point Kaz reflected on how he was seen as a branch manager despite being the president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America a lot of stories regarding kutaragi are kept close to the chest but it wasn't out of the ordinary for his approach to leadership being described similarly to that of Steve Jobs and with ps3 he was concerned with making it the be-all end-all entertainment device the one product anyone would need with graphical fidelity being pushed to its limits but more prominently ps3 would be his send-off former Sony Computer Entertainment Chairman Shaquille Maruyama recalls that ken got to work right away on ps2 after ps1 shipped and he did the same thing with ps3 ps2 released and work began right away on the next-generation near the end of ps3's development prior to it being released Maruyama asked Cudahy what his plans were for ps4 he responded PlayStation 4 is not my responsibility for someone who is already being seen as someday running all of Sony Corporation this seemed unclear at the time at least for Kutaragi he knew for one reason or another PlayStation 3 was his goodbye you ps3 officially launches in Japan in North America and November and manufacturing delays has led to an extreme shortage of consoles delaying the system's European launch to march 2007 North America in particular saw a number of violent crime surrounding all the launch lines as some stores would only have a handful of systems for a group of 100 people and once these systems were sold flipping them on eBay was a lucrative option for most I'm a reseller hey some of my bills off with the money I'm gonna sell it I'm gonna sell it right away right after they get but early impressions are finally coming in and the general reception is not good for a console that costs upwards of $600 the friendslist and online connectivity was poor the PlayStation Store was a simplified web browser the XMB was liking many expected features and the launch lineup was disappointing but during the chaos of launch Sony made it vehemently clear that ps3 is planned to have a 10-year life cycle if you're a hardcore consumer you're a hardcore gamer you're gonna play this system for ten years like you had the opportunity to do on the PlayStation and will be able to do on the PlayStation 2 10 game investment over a 10-year period it is a drop in the bucket people are gonna spend hours months years playing the PlayStation 3 and they're gonna forget what they paid several years from now they're gonna see this investment return time and time again shortly after release on November 30th ken kutaragi is replaced by Casarez presidency of Sony Computer Entertainment with COO Draghi now being chairman and CEO of SCE he will no longer handle day-to-day operations though this change is only temporary next year April 2007 Koon Wragge officially retires and becomes an honorary chairman while many deem his leaving because the ps3 is poor performance its lesser-known that prior to launch he already knew he was leaving whether it was due to his hostile leadership or personal desires to call it quits is still completely up in the air but by this time being mid 2007 the cel processor struggles were really starting to hit developers and it was ultimately affecting the end products for as much as Sony touted how strong the platform was many third-party games were simply performing better on Xbox 360 since most teams were already developing seventh generation games on xbox a vast majority of studios were leading development on 360 first and porting to ps3 second games that were coated around three PowerPC cores simply weren't going to move to ps3 single PPE and eight SPE s without a hitch this put many developers in a rock and a hard place when it comes down to it there is a limited amount of time money and resources for many teams it didn't make sense to spend a massive amount of time utilizing SPE s on a platform that didn't have market leadership this led to many titles leading on ps3 single p PE vs. 360 s3 PowerPC cores on paper ps3 in theory could produce visually stunning well performing games in execution many developers faced difficulties in juggling multi-platform work and due to the ps3 complex architecture it also didn't bode well that Sony split their memory 256 megabytes for video and another 256 for games whereas Microsoft had a unified pool of 512 megabytes offering a bit of flexibility and while many game developers are having a rough time developing on ps3 that very same CPU is being put to practice for the other fields it was also designed for blade servers SEL evaluation systems TVs even taking ps3's themselves and just clustering them together to harvest their computing power for the price to performance ratio the cell and ps3 made perfect sense for supercomputing Gaurav Khanna a professor of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth clustered ps3's together for Astrophysical simulations of supermassive black holes the performance of just a handful of ps3's far exceeding over 100 Intel Xeon based systems the folding at home application found its way to ps3 for this reason allowing anyone to lend their ps3s for protein folding this is the power of the number crunching SPE s it's just that for game developers it would take years of compromise and learning Sony on the other hand wanted the complexity they wanted cell to have longevity but more so they felt ps3 would take off creating an environment where developers would focus primarily on ps3 because it was the platform to be on instead the opposite happened at least for third-party when it comes to games developed exclusively for ps3 the focus was extracting power out of the SPE s without worrying about any other platforms Naughty Dog's ice team was responsible for creating many of the SDK advancements needed for that very goal and this is why the very first run of ps3 exclusives often looked good and ran better than most other games the PlayStation 3 has the cell processor which contains several SPU's these are additional processors outside of the main processor which can be used to process other tasks for example we have our physics running on several SPU's at once we have sound processing running on our SP use we have dynamic lighting calculations running on SPU's we have collision processing it it goes on and on the more you can actually offload to the SPU's the more you can do per frame and therefore the more you can get into your game at this point Sony Computer Entertainment is scrambling to repair PlayStation 3 the system starts to see some dramatic shifts the 20 gigabyte model is discontinued the 60 gigabyte received a price drop and an 80 gigabyte model with ps2 emulation comes in then that model is dropped in favor of a 40 gigabyte model with ps2 backwards compatibility removed at a lower price the system sees numerous firmware updates bringing promised features quality exclusives finally come everything from this point forward is reactionary in order to gain market share and worse yet ps3 is still not profitable Sony development in sell was for ps3 but the grand scheme was to have other divisions of Sony used cell as well except no other Sony division wanted to participate lest they sell a product at a higher price compared to the competitor all things considered Sony Corp had a cel-3 Cell processor electronics - one customer for the manufacturing costs to work out ps3 became the only cell based product out of Sony by 2008 behind the scenes engineers at Sony began a post-mortem analysis of the ps3 to figure out what did and didn't work this is one game consultant mark Cerny became involved in what was the early development of PlayStation 4 this didn't keep the rest of Sony from trying to reinvigorate the ps3 though the company was making big bets on experimental titles like Little Big Planet and PlayStation Home home being a virtual social space for gamers to meet up hang out and launch games together which saw a slow rollout and lukewarm open beta release LittleBigPlanet fared much better seeing critical acclaim and great sales for being a game that breaks the norm against a market flooded with first-person shooters the pressure from Microsoft however was finally starting to show when heavy hitters like Final Fantasy 13 Devil May Cry and Grand Theft Auto 4 are all launching day and date on Xbox 360 it becomes a very easy decision for a lot of consumers to just buy the cheaper platform that also happens to have a more robust online network and superior third party games we want to invest heavily in our internal development knowing that the software content will ultimately drive the success of the hard work the average independent software publisher can't afford to be as creative and innovative as maybe we can because we know that ultimately we're trying to make the platform successful and the profitability of an individual software title is probably secondary to the success of the platform so we feel that we're able to take greater risk [Music] by e3 2009 both Sony and Microsoft revealed their own motion control peripherals prior to them having official names Microsoft showed off project natal and Sony demonstrated PlayStation motion controllers at this point it's nearing mid lifecycle with Sony still doing what they can to sell more hardware and Microsoft trying to keep their lead once Gamescom 2009 came Sony fired on every cylinder by basically relaunching PlayStation 3 a slim console revision was announced with a new low price across most territories and a logo rebranding to kick it all off Sony launched a massive marketing campaign featuring fake PlayStation executive Kevin Butler which were extremely well received and effective at resonating with the target audience $2.99 Bernie you can't believe everything you read on the Internet that's how World War 1 got started the best blu-ray player around built in for free what is this 1992 I know I mean if you're not on the PlayStation Network you can't get PlayStation Home PSone classics you can't download movies TV show no Jenny scraps likes you and it's no surprise that Sony is doing what they can to push the PlayStation brand back to the top during their earnings report ending October 30th 2009 the company reported a 654 million dollar loss for the games and network services division bringing the grand total of ps3 losses since the start of the consoles launch to 4.7 billion dollars no small sum of cash and certainly a far cry from the company's outgoing dominance in the games space PlayStation Move launches that holiday season and the library of varied ps3 exclusives continues to grow around the same time IBM announces advancements in sell are all but over while the basic ideas and concepts of sell would live on IBM would not be iterating on the chip much further signaling not so much a failure but a massive shortfall of cells overall goal to be used in a multitude of products with massive developer support going into 2010 there were plenty of quality games still on the horizon except Sony would now find themselves in a PR snag by removing the other OS feature from the ps3 through a firmware update this is what allowed ps3 to run Linux to come quickly finds themselves in a class-action lawsuit facing harsh criticism for removing a feature that was initially advertised this also inadvertently puts a timer on ps3 super computer clusters remaining ones would be fine but acquiring new systems for clusters with old firmwares would not be reasonably cost-effective or even feasible all struggles aside the ps3 continues to see growing year-over-year sales strong markets like Europe really catapult the system further closing the sales gap between them and Xbox however for every step that Sony takes Microsoft takes one - they launch a revised Xbox 360s console and see tremendous success selling the Kinect sensor during the holiday season it's another booster shot for the competition as the ps3 still plays catch-up in the midst of this though slowly but surely public image begins to change what was once a console that was mocked for its lack of games and high price is now being praised for seeing a constant flow of exciting exclusive releases whereas 360 is now seeing criticism for returning franchises and a new heavy marketing push for the Kinect sensor and family oriented games and on the developer side things are changing to ps3 cell is still difficult but developers are gaining experience there's now plenty of talent floating around the industry with ps3 expertise and third-party games are starting to see parity with Xbox 360 releases during the development of Rage John Carmack was very forward about working on ps3 and 360 and modern development on the ps3 where you have a central processor which can't do all the work that you need to do on your game and then you've got these more specialized processors where you need to offload significant amounts of the work that you do there it's definitely a lot easier nowadays where lots of developers us included will complain about the architecture of the ps3 not being particularly easy to develop for but we need to count our blessings and look back into the crappy development tools that we had to use back in the older days the much more limited power and while it's definitely easier to develop for a 360 where you've got three symmetric cores with I or three symmetric processors with two threads on each core versus the PlayStation 3 where you've got one dual thread core and then a specialized chorus in the cell processor but you could still use modern tools modern languages and it still works reasonably well but it is it is kind of a pain valves Gabe Newell who was originally very outspoken about the PlayStation 3 was now part of Sony's e3 2010 press conference to vouch for the ps3 version of portal 2 being the best console version to play the game on and more notably ps3 exclusives continued to show incredible improvement in graphical fidelity the difficult to deal with architecture was now starting to show its potential and yet the question still begged was it worth it that remained to be seen 2011 brought another nightmare disaster for Sony when a network intrusion on PSN servers caused an outage Sony kept the service down for 23 days investigating the cause and rebuilding the network for relaunch customer data like credit card info was possibly compromised and federal agencies from many different countries got involved the outage caused Sony an estimated 171 million dollars with an additional 250 thousand pound fine for breaching the UK's Data Protection Act 1998 the amount of backlash and media coverage is just enough to slow down the sales momentum the PlayStation 3 had going not what Sony motorcycles I was in to stop effective April 1st 2012 Kaz Hirai who had taken over ken-kun Rocky's role back in 2007 was now appointed to president and CEO of Sony Corporation after spending the last five years leading PlayStation he would now be leading all of Sony which bode well for the ps3 and the company's gaming efforts Kaz was effectively making all the right moves when it came to putting PlayStation back on the map and now that same level of dedication would be leading the entire company giving PlayStation fans have been of reassurance ps3 had lost so much money there were genuine fears that Sony Corporation was considering backing down or even distancing themselves from gaming before the year closed out Sony released an updated ps3 model even smaller than the outgoing one with a disc tray lower power consumption and higher storage options by January 2013 it was being reported that total ps3 worldwide shipments had exceeded Xbox 360 just one month prior to Sony pulling the veil off of PlayStation 4 this is the found of our next generation platform PlayStation 4 thank you bime a ps3 units sold did officially crossover ending in a somewhat anticlimactic fashion with Nintendo selling over 100 million we's and the entire games industry now looking at the eighth generation of consoles still it's an amazing feat that paints ps3 as the underdog platform finally coming back and beating their closest competitor yet it begs the question at what cost when everything is all said and done PlayStation 3 matured into a fantastic games platform with an impressive library of exclusive games there were some fruitless efforts like 3d PlayStation Home or even move support but the library is there the features and multimedia functionality is there it took thousands of people across multiple disciplines and PlayStation to bring the product to life from game development at worldwide Studios network engineers for PSN OS programmers it finally came together and while the grand vision for the cel processor wasn't fully realized in the business landscape of being a widely adopted standard in technology its role in ps3 over the years proves just how iterative and rewarding it can be looking at any of the early lifecycle ps3 exclusives and comparing them to some of the last shows just how much can be extracted from sell over time with more efficiency any single platform Studios working on ps3 never had to worry about other platforms this is why ps3 exclusives always shined and showed the potential performance that can be achieved whereas a multi-platform studio that led their development on anything but ps3 had difficulty moving their code over in the beginning ps3 was originally targeting a 2005 release but was delayed a year former president of SCE worldwide studios Phil Harrison recalled that one of the biggest holdups in manufacturing was a five-cent blu-ray diode it makes you wonder if ps3 was able to release on time or rather if Sony made sure developers got ps3 kits before Xbox 360 the generation could have played out dramatically different not just in sales but the precedent it would have set for developers to lead on ps3 from the start cell processor might have had a fighting chance but beyond that there were still upsides going with standard hard drives and using blu-ray discs were huge bonuses to developers microsoft going with DVD often hurt the bottom line for 360 releases that had to ship on multiple discs and Microsoft mandated that games work without hard drives another weight that often bogged down 360 games but then there was the unified memory on 360 versus the split pool on ps3 between both machines there were enough inconsistencies for any multi-platform studio to feel the pressure and headaches and yet the 7th generation of consoles still yielded a number of incredible games that continued to hold their own today I think you know the PlayStation 3 was an extremely ambitious and absolutely superb piece of technology having said that it came with some inherent challenges on the business front PlayStation 3 wrapped we all started to do post mortems it had been pretty brutal frankly the hardware was very very hard to use for the developers PlayStation 3 is the epitome of biting off more than you can chew or perhaps it's better to say more than others are willing to chew ken Kutaragi was a passionate motivated and at times aggressive leader who set out to make ps3 the absolute best piece of technology the world would ever see he thought beyond gaming and it didn't matter how much it would cost Sony or what software developers would be left to deal with but when you ask the world to buy a $600 product that is difficult to program for all the while there's cheaper more readily available hardware it's going to be a tough pill to swallow many see Kutaragi as a visionary for his work in the games industry like former SCE a president and CEO Jack Tretton I mean he was really an amazing man and he was just you know he was unlike anybody else and that you can just take all corporate decorum and throw it out the window I mean he is a real visionary though some call him out for his decisions that often affect the livelihood of others like oddworld crater Lauren laning and it was the first time I ever saw you get passionate about because you're going why why he changed the industry taste this and I said he put ahead for the development community out of business but what what what it was was as if as a I'm sure none of you can relate to that for whatever reason PlayStation 3 was ken Kutaragi swan song this almost Faberge egg that was broken into a million pieces right before he left the remaining leadership of Sony the industry's talented developers and the most hardcore fans were left to pick up the pieces and put it back together everyone did a phenomenal job thank you so much for watching this video and making it to the end I really hope you enjoyed it you know for me every single time I do a video on ps3 I keep thinking maybe this is my favorite console because for longest time I always said it was ps2 but now the game's history memories I think ps3 is finally starting to beat it now I want to thank all the developers I spoke to I want to thank developer Jeff for helping me in the early part of this project and if you were watching this and wondering why I glossed over certain topics or if you're new to the channel we've actually done separate documentaries on PlayStation Home the PSN hack ps3 vs. 360 sales would get more in depth there there's a channel playlist for that I'll link it down below but because of that you should subscribe not only for the best PlayStation news reviews and updates that are here on YouTube but more video game documentaries like this also any support over on patreon comm slash mystic grind would be greatly appreciated as I am a one-man show on not only my other videos but this one as well scripts editing sourcing footage scouting out interviews all done by me so any small little amount goes a long way also even the free stuff likes on YouTube subscribing shares anything helps it's always appreciated I am truly grateful for any support that you all give me you can also follow me on twitter at mystic ryan to keep up with what i'm doing and i think that's it for all of our housekeeping and plugs so i will see you all in my next video and i want you to take it easy [Music]

Channel: Mystic

Views: 1,173,807

Keywords: PS3, PS3 Games, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 3 games, PS3 commercial, PlayStation 3 commercial, PS3 Startup, PlayStation 3 Startup, Sony, PS3 Slim, PS3 Super Slim, Gaming, Ken Kutaragi, Cell Processor, PS3 vs Xbox 360, PS3 vs 360, PS3 vs PS4, Dualshock 3, PS3 controller, Sixaxis

Id: 1S40_MCMZHk

Length: 33min 43sec (2023 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 26 2019