Sony is in danger of losing it's fans

[Impulsivity]

amp316 said:

strunge said:

 

amp316 said:

My final point is this.  Sony fans like Sony.  Nintendo fans like Nintendo.  What Sony is doing reminds me of when Coca-Cola introduced New Coke because they were losing to Pepsi at the time.  They made Coke taste more like Pepsi and no one liked it.  People that liked Coke still wanted Coke and not Pepsi in a Coke can.  Sony is turning into the New Coke and will be in trouble unless they bring back Coca-Cola Classic.  

RolStoppable said:
The analogy to New Coke is fantastic.
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No it isn't because it is incorrect in its grasping of what actually occurred. 

 

the fact is that Coke fans did like the taste of New Coke, and preferred it to both Pepsi and original Coke in blind taste tests.  the opposition to New Coke was that they pulled original Coke off the market, and consumers were angry they couldn't get the original anymore and thus boycotted New Coke to voice that.  unfortunately, the damage was done to New Coke and Coke could never recover it from that. this is one of the most basic branding case studies taught in intro Brand Management classes and isn't hard to grasp.  perhaps some of you should actually educate yourselves on these things before trying to use them, because the New Coke example actually contradicts what you are trying to assert.

 

the lesson learned from New Coke is that if Sony makes all games like Wii games and stops producing next-gen games, they will lose their fans, just like Coke did when it stopped providing original Coke.  But if Sony provides the same great Next Gen games alongside with Wii like games, just like Coke should have kept both formulas on the market, they won't lose fans.  That's what the New Coke example ACTUALLY proves.  way to defeat your own position.

I love it when people who don't know what they are talking about actually defeat their own argument.

It doesn't really matter if you think that Coke, New Coke, or Pepsi tastes the best. 

All that matters is that it's all black soda and belongs to the same market.

  Here since you like using soda analogies (I think I originally said something about pepsi and coke preferences being like game console prefs over a year ago) here's whats happening.

  Notice Pepsi and Coke don't just make their flagships.  There is also Mellow Yellow and Mountain Dew, Sprite and Siera Mist, Sunkist and Slice etc.  Every time one makes a new product, the other needs to match it with something similar to shore up their product line and keep customers in their overall camp.  Sometimes it takes a few years before there is a Mellow Yellow to counter Mountian Dew, but eventually it's more or less inevitable except for fail products (there was never a Crystal Coke, for instance).

  That is what this is.  For the Mario Bros camp there's Little Big Planet, for the Zelda camp there's darksiders, for the Mario Kart Camp theres that Crash Bandicoot racing game etc.  Sony needs a collection of games to shore up the kid demographic just like Nintendo made games like Killer Instinct to counter the Genesis contention that it was just for kids (several studies were showing that teenagers wouldn't admit to their friends they owned an SNES because it wasn't cool like the Genesis was in that demographic) ditto for Conker's bad fur day, perfect dark and golden eye in the N64 era vs the Saturn and PS1.  

   Nintendo isn't doing as much matching in this gen since they're in the lead so insead the other consoles match them, that's just temporary though, if Sony wins in the next gen Nintendo will almost certainly make different types of games to try and match the success again.  It is the nature of the beast.

  So there are a few holes in the Sony line up relative to the Wii, maybe in the light and airy Sprite type games (mini game collections, motion sports games etc) so they put out the move to counter Nintendo's Sprite with a Sony Sierra Mist.