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Dallinor on 30 May 2012
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Dodece said:


Actually I think Sony has a lot of room to maneuver, but not necessarily within the space they occupied this generation. You don't have to be a high end player to succeed in the console market, and Nintendo proved that out this generation. What you can't do is angle towards the high end market, and not provide a high end product. Sophisticated users will move towards the more sophisticated machine. That doesn't mean there aren't other demographics to tap into.

There aren't any anti-competition laws that would seem to apply. Were that the case Sony would have been litigated to death this generation. They did actually sell a more expensive machine at a bigger loss then Microsoft actually did, and their trojan horse policy was almost underhanded when it came to the format war that was waged early on. So Sony would be the worst offender. Not only did they eat bigger losses, but they did in fact force someone out of a market. Like it or not I don't see the laws as being able to prevent this. Not that Sony would even try doing that in the first place. You don't want to make case law that all your victims can turn around on you.

Besides courts aren't likely to make a distinction between console generations. They would view these consoles as part of a product line, and if Sony is willing to absorb massive losses up front on one product. Then Microsoft would be perfectly justified in responding in the same way with a different product. What do you think Sony's argument would be exactly. Microsoft is getting a unfair advantage by doing what we did to get a unfair advantage. The judge would toss them out on their asses. That all before Microsoft has to fall back on the cell phone market as being a example of their philosophy. The machine after all is just a incentive to get people to use their service.

Hate to break it to you, but Sony wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

I should think Sony will not be competing for the same space they did this generation. I really don't expect their machine to be the most expensive, high-end of the three again. I think they'll have learned a lesson and will attempt to go back to their successful roots. Although, recently Sony has attempted to capitalize on MS's change of focus from the hardcore by trying to appeal even more to that demographic, so it will be interesting to see how they position themselves next gen.

In relation to Sony this generation with the PS3, I don't think as an example it really applies. They released their hardware at a substantially higher price than the competition. They ate massive losses just to bring the console into the price range where customers could afford it, let alone compete with their competitors pricing.

As for the HD format war, I think it was actually benificial for the market to only have one HD format pushed, with full studio support behind it. You had two formats with varying deegrees of support and a sense of uncertainty and confusion with consumers before HD DVD was dropped. The same cannot really be said if one of the big three were forced out through predatory pricing.