What happens to the PS brand if the big 3 repeat their action next gen?

[Kenryoku_Maxis]

Mr Puggsly said:

Kenryoku_Maxis said:

And well, Microsoft has been going even more in this direction, claiming any new system will come with Kinect standard and they are focusing directly on the casual market.

Its in my opinion that next gen, we're probably going to see a major shift in focus, with PS3/360 trying to focus more on the 'casual' market while still trying to claim to be the 'hardcore gamer' system.  And Nintendo will increase its graphical output and third party support.

I think people exagerate on how much MS focuses on the casual market and it should be noted they've always tried to appeal to the casual market. They bought Rare specifically to do that. Now they have Kinect, they finally have a hit in the casual market.

As it stands now, the 360 has the most diverse audience in the market of casual and core gamers. Sony tried to appeal to casual with Move, but they failed and sell it as a core device. Wii hasn't had much success moving core games. I don't know why people see the 360 as less core just because MS has had success with casuals now.

Well, I'd argue that MS isn't making a massive change to the Casual market.  They've spend like $300 million on JUST advertising the Kinect, a peripheral to their core system.  And for about 2 years now, all the major XBOX commercials, aside from Halo Reach, have focused on things like LEGO Batman and the Kinect games.  This is a massive switch to the first XBOX and even the first 3 years of the XBOX360 where Microsoft was focusing almost exclusively on 'hardcore M rated games'.

PS3 is also seeingt an upswing of sales after MS switched to the casual market and they started focusing on the 'core' audience with advertisements for 'core' games.  Where this strategy failed at the launch of the PS3 because XBOX360 had such a strong start, Sony is doing well with it now because XBOX isn't focusing on that market anymore.