I'm sad.

[ZenfoldorVGI]

I blame the coasting strategy and the loss of 3rd party games like GTA, due to short term thinking and bad leadership. Today sony said:


Well the pressure comes from the consumers obviously and so therefore there's always pressure on price, but you know we have a business to run, and we have to make sure we're doing the right thing for the shareholders as well... At the moment there's a marketplace for PS3 and I think for this particular Christmas, with the kind of quality of games we're seeing coming out this Christmas, I don't think the price of the console is going to be an issue at all.

http://kotaku.com/5070200/why-no-ps3-holiday-price-cut-sony-running-a-business-thinking-of-shareholders

That, my friends, is called coasting. You are resting on your laurels. You are not competing. You are saying, "we can stay afloat without competing, well enough to make a profit, at least."

With Microsoft's agressive strategy and Sony's apparent lack of concern about it, I wouldn't be very shocked if Sony ended up 3rd this gen, and I would be mildly shocked if they weren't guarnteed that spot next generation.

They are more concerned with pleasing the shareholders immediately, than they are in the long term interest of their brand. Final Fantasy and GTA are no longer associated with their brand, for the exact same reasons, shareholders. Those are quite large games to disassociate from your brand FOREVER for simply a smaller loss in 1 quarter, consisting of 4 months. Somebody didn't want to get chewed out or fired, so they let GTA slip to a multiplat to save money. That's lack of leadership. Nobody is looking out for the big picture over there, at Sony, at least from a gaming division perspective. Letting some of these IP's dissassociate themselves from Sony was a bad move. A very bad move, and a costly one, though not necessarily in the same quarter the decisions were made.

A lot of you didn't believe my coasting theory had any merit. You believe it now, don't you?