Wired Dissects Sony as PS3 Effort Falters

PetManimal writes "Wired has an excellent analysis of Sony as it struggles to overcome the failures of the 1990s and make the PS3 live up to its promise. Sony is counting on the PS3 turning around the company's fortunes, but it may have been too ambitious. Besides being hamstrung with an unusual company culture that emphasizes small hardware teams and proprietary formats, Sony's efforts to make the PS3 kill several birds with one stone and appeal to a wider customer base is turning off the PS3's core support network: gamers. From the article: 'Then there was the decision to build Blu-ray into the PlayStation 3. Sony's logic seemed ironclad: Not only would the hi-def drive's huge storage capacity allow for far-more-realistic and complex games, the PS3 would carry Blu-ray into millions of households and drive sales of HDTVs as well. As it turned out, however, Blu-ray has done nothing good for the PS3. Blu-ray was the main reason gamers weren't able to get the new machine last spring: The launch had to be postponed because the new format's digital rights management system did not yet satisfy every Hollywood studio.'"

Comments

My daily naive question

[UbuntuDupe]

Blu-ray was the main reason gamers weren't able to get the new machine last spring: The launch had to be postponed because the new format's digital rights management system did not yet satisfy every Hollywood studio.'"

Blu-ray was the *main* reason? So, otherwise, they were basically ready to launch before May? So, a bunch of launch titles had *already* been completed by developers and should have had full functionality at E3, and it's possible to send reviewers ready-for-gaming (but crippled) PS3s with these games? And the "tilt controller" was ready to go then?

Is it just me, or were several other equally important issues preventing the Spring launch?

Re:Great, Sony vs. Microsoft

[Frag-A-Muffin]

...and I have no clue who to cheer for.

Nintendo.

This is more insightful then you know. It's the only gaming company left that doesn't have some ulterior motive. Sony wants the PS3 to push its bluray format into every living room. Then you have Microsoft battling that by siding with the HDDVD camp, cuz THEY also have interest in the "living room".

Meanwhile, Nintendo wants to make games, and fun ones at that. You can argue it's motive is to try to tie in the DS and sell more of those (or vice versa). But at least it's still game related.

I for one am siding with Nintendo on this one, and not only because I'm a Nintendo fanboy, but because I want my gaming to not be affected by some stupid political battle of the formats. I don't want to be caught in the middle of a format war that no good can come of.