Squilliam on 03 May 2009
| Dodece said: @richardhutnik I notice a lot of posters trying to see the bright side, and saying Sony can reevaluate their strategy, but will they honestly have a chance to mend the errors. Realistically you are looking at ten years to reintroduce backward compatibility alone. Not to mention rectify late market arrival. Plus resolve pricing issues. Basically it is easier said then done, and I am not entirely sure the market is going to allow Sony the time to do so. The competition is surely not going to stagnate, and let Sony get back into the mix. Microsoft has found a mountain of cash in live. Eventually they will be able to lock in most of the high end software market, and that is going to slow the recovery of Sony dramatically. We are not in the age anymore where the next console is a fresh start the competition will build upon its success, and make it much harder on Sony, and Sony has a mountain of problems to resolve. All I see in the long term prospects for their console business is them moving away from that business. Moving either towards portable devices, or moving towards the way Sega changed their model. Perhaps towards being a software only company, or a component manufacturer. I am not seeing Sony having the ability to both rectify its mistakes, and being able to compete meaningfully. I often wonder how people envisage Sony countering its failures, and being able to strongly compete it in the end will be very expensive. Without carryover Sony will have a powerful detractor to overcome against a very successful Nintendo with a great deal of financial assets, and Microsoft which could be looking at a billion dollars annually coming from their live service. With both having ample incentive to push Sony out of the market for good. They will have the capitol to do this, and Sony will have to fix at that point some serious design problems. Really Sony has penned itself into a corner. They cannot be cost effective while following the Cell architecture, and they cannot honor backward compatibility without that architecture. I know people sing the praises of emulation, but if that were such a possibility by now the PS3 would have an emotion emulator. Kind of like that epic line in the Bill and Ted movie. Where they need a great musician to be a great band, but they cannot get a great musician without being a great band first. Carryover as far it is concerned is like the insurmountable obstacle. Without it Sony is crippled. While trying to honor it will cripple Sony. So either way they are crippled going into the next generation against Olympic athletes. The only way I see out of the paradox where Sony doesn't get obliterated out of the market next generation is for them to perform a Nintendo, and have a radical departure which brings the masses to them. |
I think you're creating a false dilemma here. Sony does have strategic strengths even now which it can leverage for a next generation of consoles. With the still strong Playstation brand, all they would have to do would be copy the offerings of one or both of their competitors and they would likely be assured a reasonable portion of the market in the next generation. PSN locks in a fair proportion of their current userbase to their next generation games console as well. Their greatest weakness is Microsoft running away with things from the beginning with a quick entry into the next generation of consoles which they are unable to compete with. I.E if Microsoft targets the same userbase and hits a home run at the same time.
Tease.
