Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out what the right move is for Sony in the video game market.
I’ve read a half dozen or so articles that analyze Sony’s options to try to get back in the game. Things like brining a motion controller to the PS3, or repurposing the PS2 to eat more into Wii’s and 360’s market share.
The one thing I’m not hearing is that they should give up. I don’t really understand it… And maybe it’s because everyone wants competition to produce more innovation…. But for the most part, the video game war(s) have always been 2-system competitors. It was Sega V. Nintendo for a long time. Then Sony v. Nintendo (while sega died). Then it was Sony V. Xbox while Nintendo suffered. Now it seems it’s Xbox v. Wii, with the Wii taking serious charge and the PS3, almost all but away from people’s minds.
That said, the only company that has ever “rebounded” persay is Nintendo, and that was parially due to the fact that:
#1 – Nintendo has always been profitable with it’s systems (and when it wasn’t, Virtual boy was pulled within months).
#2 – Nintendo has always had it’s portable systems to fall back on
#3 – Parents still refer to every other system out there as Nintendo (although this was quickly dying as playstation took charge).
So with Sony losing BILLIONS of dollars on the PS3… Why do they keep going? If the profit is in the games… Why are they still worrying about hardware? What piece to this puzzle am I missing? Why wouldn’t they just do what Sega did… Let the 2 leaders fight it out, and build games for them.
The only reason I can think Sony is even staying in this battle is one word: Blueray. And sadly, the format wars also seem to be a pointless endevor, as it seems the general public just isn’t quite ready to adopt yet ANOTHER form of buying movies (how many people really want to upgrade their DVD collection to blueray/HD… Most of us barely just finished getting away from VHS and getting our systems to be 5.1 compatible… Now you expect us to replace everything yet again with 7.1 equipment and ultra HD tvs…) No thank you… Call me in 5 years.
If you can think of any other reason why Sony just doesn’t give up this time around… Please, post it… because I must be missing something.