Sony is dumb

[Dodece]

The sheer ignorance is mind blowing. Sony has purchased in the ballpark a dozen games developers in the past year. Sony has paid for some exclusive games. Do not for an instant think a timed exclusive for the PS3 has not been purchased dearly. Sony was the trend setter. When they were bigger then Nintendo, had limitless funds, and wanted to win. Guess what they did they bought many exclusive games for their consoles. Microsoft is only giving Sony the Sony treatment. They learned from what Sony did right when it came into the market.

All of the PS3s problems stem from a singular source. They forgot to factor in the economic equation. When it comes to a product that is an inviolable rule. Consider all the expenses not only yours but those that will support your product. The result was a very expensive machine, that required expensive development, and required massive resources to back.

Sony will not only lose on the exclusive front, because Microsoft is doing better and has more money. Microsoft has the power of positioning. They have the larger user base. They have the higher attach rate for their products. They provide better support for marketing, and they specialize in sales of additional content. The result is Microsoft can pay much less for exclusive content then Sony can. They might be able to buy up three or even four titles for every one that Sony can or will buy.

The higher install base means that from game sales there is a higher return for developers. The Microsoft consumer will purchase more games for their console. The fact that the PS3 is so expensive actually drives down game sales. Less money in the wallet is less money to spend on games. Microsoft is game focused compared to Sony placing more focus on technology. Microsoft strongly supports episodic content sales. Make no mistake there is a lot of fast easy money in expansion packs.

People seem to adopt the money pit philosophy in regard to these debates. The reality is you should never spend more money then you absolutely have to. Sony made that mistake out of the gate. So they are putting the money towards solving the main problem first. They are not going to buy dozens of exclusive titles just a few key ones. Their main problem is the price of their system. Once they get it down they will have more options, and it might stimulate a larger user base. That is critical to save the console far more so then buying exclusive games. They need to find sound financial footing, because throwing money at the problem makes it worse not better.

Sony effectively has nothing to work with for the next six months when it comes to buying exclusives, and based on how Square has behaved recently chances are they are going to lose more. Square would lose very little by going multi platform. Especially if it strengthens their sales in markets outside of Japan. After all its not like Sony will throw a fit and block the games off of their system. The same goes for other developers. The longer Microsoft extends this lead the more likely the PS3 will be to get fewer exclusive games, and more importantly the more likely they are to lose what they have. Sony does not get eighteen months to get around to putting up a fight. Developers cannot gamble their finances on such a whimsy as it will eventually happen.

Road I feel for you I seldom meet a PS3 owner is overly thrilled with the content. Unfortunately I see no point in the near term or the long term where the PS3 is going to be getting a surge in exclusive games. Hell based on the trends we have all seen it is very likely things are going to get worse rather then better.