| Bodhesatva said: I'm sure this answer won't be popular: Sony needs to stop listening to its fans. Just tune them out, and start figuring out why the people who aren't fans are staying away. I believe Sony's fans are leading them down an increasingly niche road. It's very much like MMORPGs before WoW -- the "hardcore" fans succesfully kept all MMOs as niche products, by constantly insisting the game stay "hardcore" and not cater to the larger crowd. In short, the people who post in internet forums explaining what they want are precisely the sort of people that Sony needs to stop listening to. |
Another thing to consider ...
I have been predicting (for many months) that we were heading for a major worldwide ecconomic slowdown that was going to begin in Q4 of 2007 and continue through 2009; I was (by no means) not alone but most analysts are only starting to see things my way now.
Videogames (in general) tend to perform really well durring slow ecconomic periods because they represent inexpensive entertainment; at the same time luxury items (like HDTVs and Blu-Ray players) tend to see slower sales due to lower consumer confidence and the tendancy for people to save more money durring these slowdowns. Sony has positioned the PS3 in the market more as a luxury electronics item than an inexpensive videogame machine and this could cause Sony some serious problems; Sony needs to find a way to thrive in a market which may be hostile to the PS3.
