Alby_da_Wolf said:
Darth Tigris said:
MonstaMack said:
Not a fan of Sony at all, but I feel sorry for them. This is a really bad situation and is not good for Sony or the game industry. (Do we really wants to see just Nintendo vs MS? I know the chances are still low, but this market needs at least 3 players). |
Does it? Does it really?
I've gamed ... well, forever. There was only one gen where there were three relevant players that I owned 3 consoles and that was last gen, with the PS2, Xbox and GC (and 4 if you count the DC). While it was wonderful because exclusivity meant nothing to me, it also meant I either didn't have time or money to play a lot of games that were deserving or I didn't give the ones I did play the proper attention. This gen I have one console and, crazily, the same things applied.
Now we have smartphone/tablet gaming too. There's ample choice out there, but there is also the reality that it's excessive. Because it is.
I feel bad for Sony (I was a Sega gamer, so I know where this could lead too), but they created a lot of this themselves. Hubris is always self-defeating. Always.
|
Wait, for most gamers the main benefit is not from having the opportunity of buying and playing on 3 different consoles, but from stronger competition. Three players, with the 3rd not too little, means no one can become strong enough to act as a near monopolist.
A totally different fact is that it's not necessary that a player be Sony, although the PS brand has become so universally known for gaming that should Sony go bankrupt, it would make sense for the new 3rd competitor to take over the PS brand and Sony strongest 1st parties at the liquidation sale.
About hubris, not always, alas: Intel kept the leadership also during the 6 years when Athlon was stronger than Pentium on desktops by "persuading" most manufacturers, retailers and technical magazines to downplay the rival, and it also managed to lure Compaq into killing Alpha, the most powerful CPU of its era it had obtained taking over DEC, and selling its tech for future versions for just one billion to Intel itself, boasting an inexistent superiority of the not yet released Itanium, that actually turned out to be a miserable failure, it took Itanium 2 a complete redesign and some more years to eventually beat Alpha after the latter's development had been already stopped.
|
You singled out one statement but missed the point it was leading to: there is so much more gaming content out there that our time and money are more taxed than ever before. There IS far more competition and that's part of my point. And for the record, I'm not predicting a bankrupt Sony (which doesn't mean the end of the world, as Marvel Comics was bankrupt 16 years ago and look where they are now). Sony Playstation may end up being a more Playstation Mobile service company available on multiple screens and less of a gaming hardware manufacturer. That makes more sense than anything to me, especially in light of the Gaikai purchase. But that would be, as I stated before, a traditional console market of only 2 players due to an inability to support 3 players anymore.
Hubris is always self-defeating. Always. Wait ...
Essay Pro