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SvennoJ on 12 February 2012
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Stefan.De.Machtige said:
SvennoJ said:
Stefan.De.Machtige said:

For a couple reasons:

1. Doing good enough is what got all of Sony in big trouble today. They should have been aiming for great.

2. Doing good enough, when your competition is doing great, is a bad investment. Sony puts in more work, but gains the least.

3. It is a sign of brand weakness. A big brand must be seen to be growing or it's deemed to be in decline. Even stagnating is seen as this.

4. Brands like Mario and Halo sells more consoles. The costs savings of making 1 IP with the strength of 4 or 5 IP's are rather big.

1. The ps3 was in trouble because they were aiming for great instead of good enough. Too much new tech to make it cost effective.

2. There are a lot of other factors why Sony is in trouble today, not because they are making too many games. The earthquake / tsunami and exchange rate are 2 big ones. Sony only makes 67% on overseas sales with the exchange rate compared to when the ps3 launched. Compare Sony's losses to other Japanese tech companies to put it in perspective. Not against MS who is riding on a weak dollar, thus gaining a lot on overseas sales.

3. As far as I know the ps3 brand is still growing, top of sales again since Januari.

4. Imo libraries is what sells consoles. Sure one great game can convince me to buy a console a little sooner, but without a nice variety of other games to be played on it as well I won't buy it.

1. You shouldn't define doing great in hardware terms. Sony is trying to sell a product to a certain audience - that's their goal. If you miss that by cost, marketing and others factors, then you're not doing great. A great product is what reaches it's audience the best.

2. I was mainly talking about grand game sales here. The exchange rate sure sucks for Sony. But if you compare them against Nintendo their planning/marketing tacticts aren't working vey well.   

3. The playstation brand is in decline. Going form a bit profatable to big losses (the earlie PS3 losses are still not cleared) and going from first place to third. There is no doubt that the PS brand is in decline. Sony said itself it wanted a synergy approach to help the brand grow again...

4. Sure. But in any library you have big games. Real must-have games. The more you have like of them, the better your library gets. Variety is also affected by the big hitters.  A standard library with like 2 or 3 big hitters is just stronger then a standard library with 7 or 8 normal hitters.

Don't forget that titles like Halo and Mario bring whole genre's with them . It's no accident that halo is a shooter and a lot of the same customers bought similar games when they bought a bundle. Smaller games/IP's can ride on the tails of the big brands.

1. I'm not sure what you mean by not aiming for great then. I don't think Sony were just aiming for good enough with the sales of the ps3. They were too arrogant in thinking everyone would fork over $600 for their latest hardware. Then they found out they were not the Apple of console gaming.

2. Nintendo is expecting 65 billion Yen loss for 2011. Their planning and marketing wasn't going much better last year.

3. It was in decline because of 1. But it is recovering now.

4. True, but you can't set out and make 1 must have game simply by putting all your money behind it. Better to spread the risk and get a diverse install base, exactly what ms has been doing after seeing halo starting to run out of steam. Best to have a couple of big hitters, some variety and try out new games to see if they can become the next big thing.
Or do you suggest Sony should forget about new games and only focus on God of war 4, Uncharted 4, MGS5, GT6.