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Sony's PS3 Strategy Brilliant or Insane?
1up's Jeremy Parish has a piece wondering out loud about the sanity of Sony's PS3 strategy. From the article: "The veil of mystery surrounding the PS3 is downright maddening, and a little worrying. Consider that by March 2000, the company had already set the PlayStation 2's October 26th release date in stone. Yet here in March 2006, Sony has only been willing to commit to a 'spring 2006' launch for its latest console. Less than ten days from winter's end and gamers are left scraping together scraps of conflicting information trickling from the company's various divisions to try and get a sense of the bigger picture." We may find out which side of the coin they're on tomorrow; The current rumour is there will be some sort of big announcement about Sony's next-gen console on the 15th.
While I think the premise is interesting, the article has some really loopy conclusions. First, there seems to be a lot of MS love, considering the author's assertion that Nintendo is now a distant third and the 360 is primed to take over the market. The 360, which is plauged by issues and being outsold by the PS2?
Plus, his idea that every decade the industry just changes itself is a little bit absurd. The changes he cites came about for different reasons. Atari failed because of public indifference to "games" (hence "entertainment system"). Nintendo's failure was more technical than social, even against trumped-up charges of mistreatment regarding developers (which were serious, to be sure, but definitely not the main reason everyone jumped ship). Just taking periods of time and saying "hey, they're similar!" and then basing your entire analysis on that is ridiculous.
As for the secrecy potentially being a huge problem for Sony, I agree completely. He should have fleshed that idea out more, however, rather than just throwing around poorly-informed speculation.
In the USA. Overall, Nintendo actually sold slightly more consoles than MS. Don't discount how well they do in Japan.
If all you care about is graphics you can get an xbox 360. If you want good games get the Revolution. What is the point of the PS3? The only people that I can see buying one are people who are hooked on GT, or PS2 fanboys who would buy a PS3 if all it did was make toast.