Skip to the longer version if you're a reader or just read the shorter version if long walls of text give you a headache.

The short version:

• Sony needs to get you, the PS3 fan to buy the Move first because they simply do not have the advantages of novelty or ease of demonstration which came naturally to the Wii at launch and which Microsoft has with Kinect. They need you to show the non PS3 gamer what Move is all about before they can start serious promotion of the interface.
• Extensive promotion of the Move controller this year is counter productive. They need to wait until they have the ability to price a Move enabled PS3 at a point which the mass market will accept without incurring great losses. This is why obvious games like RFOM 3 are no shows and why Socom has been delayed until 2011. Theres no point advertising a product when the price and experience hasn't come together yet. Next year is when they need the games, this year is just a taster.
• They feel they have no reason to rush things. Kinect isn't a direct competitor with the Move controller in reality and the games Nintendo has in store for the core market in the near term are less reliant on motion controls themselves. Also whether or not their confidence is well founded, they seem to have the belief that once they get the games, price, marketing and an evangelical user base on the ground to come together into a neat and powerful package. They seem to believe that the PS3 with Move will be more than competitive against the Wii and Xbox 360 in 2011.

The longer version:

Im making this thread because Sony Move strategy doesn't make sense. Well I couldn't make sense of it so I really had to give it a lot of thought. Its the same sort of reason why I made my thread about Microsoft Xbox 360 strategy in 2008 because it didn't make sense in the same kind of way at the time. Now since explanations like "they are stupid" or "they made mistakes so they will keep making mistakes" are kind of tempting, they are also unsatisfactory. So I attempted to put myself into Sony's shoes and think about it as if I were them and as if I were calling the shots whilst trying to factor in some of their mindset based upon various things they have said and my perception of the gaming market.

It struck me when I was thinking about the market for the holidays in 2010 that unlike Nintendo and Microsoft they have a unique and difficult problem with Move that the other two don't have. They need to prove themselves. Nintendo as the incumbant motion control console have set the standard as to what a motion controller is and people think of their controller when they think of the style of play the Wii ensues. Kinect on the other side of the fence has two advantages in that it is a novel interface by itself which is drawing significant attention from the media and they have an easy way to prove themselves in that they can demonstrate Kinect at any store in a way that Nintendo and Sony cannot. Sony on the other hand needs to prove that Move is infact better than the Wiimote and the only way to prove themselves to the market is to sell Move controllers which is why they are first focusing on their own audience in order for them to put the Move controllers into non PS3 owners hands because naturally you'll want to show your Wii owning friends just how good it is!

To facilitate their strategy, they need to sell core games first and foremost because their primary audience is core and their primary early adopters are also core or hardcore gamers. This is the reason why they are releasing their games in the reverse of Nintendo by aiming primarily for the core first as they can only sell to the audience which they have. Microsoft is pursuing the opposite strategy, so this is the reason why Move is available much more cheaply and Kinect is priced best to entice new owners. Since the core and hardcore early adopters are also the most enthusiastic, they need little encouragement to jump wholeheartedly onto the new interface so they can afford to delay their big Move games to 2011 when it really starts to count.

They know just as well as we know that Move in 2010 is no Wii competitor and it certainly is no Xbox 360 destroyer either. Theres little point in their wasting resources trying to push Move into the system any faster. Its like driving a car really, you have to clear the corners before you can put your foot down or you risk spinning out. Pushing Move out relatively slowly and then building up the pace is effectively clearing these corners and by early to mid 2011 most of the obstacles to adoption ought to have been cleared away. Move doesn't have to set the world alight this Christmas but it wouldn't hurt them if it did. They can bring everything to bear in late 2011 because they can bring together a potent mix of having the right games, the right price and the right promotion both over the air and on the ground by enthusiastic Move owners.

2011 is when they make their stand against the dying candle of this hardware generation and it represents the culmination of their PS3 resurrection plan put into motion in 2007 and again in 2009 to sacrafice profits for the long term sales and market position of the PS3. 2011 is where we find out if their 10 year plan was bullshit and where we find out their true worth and if they can turn around the PS3 from an over-hyped division destroyer killer into a console which can stand against the most competitive hardware generation and perhaps even come out on top in the end.

OK. How long did that take you ?

Eye pet, Move Sports, Move Party - are those for the Core?

I see your point in Move strategy being odd, however I am not sure that they are releasing with the intention of going for gold in 2011.

So what you are saying is that Sony with the Move is engaging a Red Ocean business strategy. Here is a succinct definition of the Red Ocean business strategy.

"Red ocean is where competitions exists and are heavily contested. Profits and growths are thin in a red ocean. It is basically a zero sum game were only the strongest survives. However, it is easier to enter because the industries are defined already so you can just copy others; however, surviving is a different story. Let’s just say red ocean is easy to enter, hard to survive."

Source: http://marketingdeviant.com/blue-and-red-ocean-business-strategy/

Lets turn your argument on it's head:

1. "Sony needs to get you, the PS3 fan to buy the Move first because they simply do not have the advantages of novelty or ease of demonstration which came naturally to the Wii at launch and which Microsoft has with Kinect. They need you to show the non PS3 gamer what Move is all about before they can start serious promotion of the interface."

In the biggest single market, the Americas, Sony has sold 14.4 million PS3s compared to Microsoft's 24.1 million 360s and Nintendo's 34.3 million Wiis. (http://www.vgchartz.com/#Americas Totals). A few questions arise from a business strategy seemingly built around catering to existing owners and word-of-mouth:

A. Is Sony testing the waters in the Americas market before they start to market Move heavily in the Americas? If the Move does not generate the sales of PS3s that they want, then what is their Plan B for competing in the Americas? A PS3 price cut down to $150-200?

B. Why cater to the core? Why not cater to those tens of millions who are not in the gaming market?

The PS3 has sold 10 million less than the 360 and 20 million less than the Wii in the Americas. Why would Sony limit it's customer base by only catering to 14 million existing customers?

2. "Extensive promotion of the Move controller this year is counter productive. They need to wait until they have the ability to price a Move enabled PS3 at a point which the mass market will accept without incurring great losses. This is why obvious games like RFOM 3 are no shows and why Socom has been delayed until 2011. Theres no point advertising a product when the price and experience hasn't come together yet. Next year is when they need the games, this year is just a taster."

Indeed it is counter-productive and downright stupid on face. You bundle the Move with the PS3 from the get-go because you will have a harder time catching up than keeping a lead. Makes no sense to cater to the core first, then change your business strategy midstream and start catering to the casuals. The risk is that those casuals will have already purchased a Kinect or Wii by January 2011.

3. "They feel they have no reason to rush things. Kinect isn't a direct competitor with the Move controller in reality and the games Nintendo has in store for the core market in the near term are less reliant on motion controls themselves. Also whether or not their confidence is well founded, they seem to have the belief that once they get the games, price, marketing and an evangelical user base on the ground to come together into a neat and powerful package. They seem to believe that the PS3 with Move will be more than competitive against the Wii and Xbox 360 in 2011."

I cannot disagree here, nor think of any questions.

As for the long version of your argument, I have to commend you for writing a well though out post and I thank you for the opportunity you have given me to escape boredom at work.

I think if Sony is waiting until 2011 to take it's stand, then it will have waited too long. The big shopping season for video games in the Americas market, the US in particular, is during the holidays. The best selling day is Black Friday, which is the Friday after Thanksgiving (the last Thursday in November). If Sony is making it's move from January 2011 on, then it has the timing all wrong and their stand may end up with them on their knees.

Business like life is a lot about timing. In business, the market does not wait for you. You either meet your competitors head on during the timing that they choose, innovate and have them catch up to you, or continually follow the leader who is Nintendo in this case.

Either way, it will be fun to see how the rest of the year shapes up.

i agree with MOVE having a slow start and slowly picking up sales over time. I'm too sleepy to analyze your entire post so I guess I'll read it in the morning. 

To elaborate, I think Sony waiting until 2011 to take it's stand will be too long for one key reason:

1. The release of the Nintendo 3DS changing expectations concerning 3D entertainment.

Sony has invested an unknown amount of millions upon millions in developing and marketing their 3D televisions. The Nintendo 3DS is a disruptive innovation directly aimed at Sony and Sony's 3D television business.

Once the Nintendo 3DS launches, it will get major news coverage on your tech news and mainstream news. Most of the coverage will have comparisons of $3000 Sony televisons requiring $100 for a pair of 3D glasses to a $300 Nintendo handheld gaming device that requires no glasses.

The question, which Sony will struggle to answer is "Sony, if Nintendo can do it without glasses, then why are you charging thousands for a similar experience?"

Sony's 3D hype will be dead once the Nintendo 3DS launches, which will impact their ability to sell 3D capable PS3 games playable on a $3000 Sony 3D television.

The delay of titles like Socom and Resistance is entirely unrelated to their inclusion of Move.  Socom was in all likelihood simply not ready to be released, considering it was announced well under a year before its intended ship date, and was announced before Zipper had even managed to ship MAG.  People were shocked to think Zipper could possibly ship two games in under a year, and the delay wasn't very surprising to most.

Resistance 3, on the other hand, hasn't been delayed at all.  When Insomniac announced their deal with EA to go multiplatform, they claimed they did so to facilitate three year dev cycles for future titles instead of just two.  Resistance 3 is the first game to benefit from this, which explains the year delay.  This isn't very surprising after the complaints that Resistance 2 felt rushed.

Plus neither of these titles will require Move.  Both are merely intended to tempt hardcore gamers with the thought of playing such titles with Move.  And that's even assuming Resistance 3 will support Move, something that is by no means a guarantee.

I honestly don't think Sony has very big plans for Move.  They're not intending to pull a Nintendo and take the casual audience by storm.  Everyone knows that boat has sailed, and Move is simply there to let Sony say, "Hey look, we have motion controls too!"  They hope to convince any ps3 owners looking into the Wii that they don't need it, and any non-ps3 owners looking at the Wii that they should buy a ps3 instead.  That and of course sell a bunch of new expensive accessories, as well as tip the sales of more multiplat titles in their favor (Tiger Woods ps3 vs 360, for example).

Personally, i dont think sony care about move. they'll just made it to counter microsoft and nintendo. and i really dont think this gen will end in 2011/12. i think at least another 3 or 4 years until we hear about new consoles being developed.

by the way i think sonys 10 year plan is actully true, if not more so than 10 years. they spent so much money coming this far, so the console has as much momentium as possible.

I have to disagree with you on your assessment that Move is entering into a red ocean. I'll use your own source as support for this:

"Red ocean is where competitions exists and are heavily contested. Profits and growths are thin in a red ocean. It is basically a zero sum game were only the strongest survives. However, it is easier to enter because the industries are defined already so you can just copy others; however, surviving is a different story. Let’s just say red ocean is easy to enter, hard to survive."

Move isn't entering into a red ocean because it is not entering into a zero sum market. Not one single console can claim to cover the entirety of the market and profit and growth have still got the potential to be very strong. Move isn't a direct competitor to Kinect and Move isn't going to offer precisely the same experience that Nintendo offers with the Wii. Further to that, the market itself isn't a free market as there are only three major players. It is an oligopoly, however within the Playstation eco-system by itself it is also a true monopoly in the purest sense. Beyond this there are a large number of console owners who are already invested heavily in the Playstation 3 so it makes switching consoles potentially unappealing.

A B C: Its because their market entrance strategy has to be different to the Wii and Kinect with the Xbox 360. Nintendo was the new kid on the block and they went straight for the unattached consumer, the non gamers. This enabled them to gain incredible traction within the market very quickly and very easily, this is the total crystal ocean first mover advantage than Nintendo had when they launched the Wii. The people who bought the Wii in the mass market had no real attachment to other consoles so there was nothing holding them back from purchasing aside from the timing of when they were exposed to the Wii and the level of their desire to get one afterwards. Now that the market knows what a Wii is, they have to convince people who have already experienced the Wii that their version is better but they cannot take advantage of novelty or a rapidly expanding userbase from day 0 to drive word of mouth.

Kinect also has much better point of sale marketability. Kinect is just a camera and it is both novel and easy to demonstrate in a store environment. It can litterally draw people in to try it out and they can easily display it in every single store which sells video games and consoles. Whereas on the other hand Move is simply at its heart a better mouse trap. The best people to sell a better mouse trap to aren't the people who already have mouse traps. The best people to sell them to are the people who don't have mouse traps at all. Now drawing back to the monopoly they have with PS3 owners, since they are essentially a captive audience they can use what is effectively an Amway like strategy of using their best customers to sell their Move controller to new customers. They need to prove to the people who currently have mouse traps that theirs is better and the current PS3 userbase are the people they have picked to do that job. So this is why selling to PS3 owners first is the better strategy.

The market is fluid. Sony aren't trying to sell people a lifetime supply of chocolate. So once people have their chocolate the market declines and dies. Besides this, noone ever really says that Move is a bad interface. All the reasons given for Move to fail or not make any significant impact only relate to one of two things. They don't get the games / experience working which people appreciate and/or if they do Nintendos dominance of the market at the present time won't allow them to make headway.

With both Microsoft and Sony kicking up a storm of market changes it is quite arguable that they are doing enough to trigger a 'next generation' like atmosphere. So whilst Kinect is a competitor in many ways it is also helping Sony as well. Console generations may be defined by us as the technology improvements from a new console. For the mass market however it is defined by the new experiences that the games offer. I would say at this point that both Move and Kinect are offering new experiences, perhaps new enough to shake up the market in the same way that a real new generation would so much as to say that the current lines of console market share could blur or be erased to the point where hardware sales LTD could be useless for determining the actual active market share of a console.

Well thanks!

Its not about waiting, its about timing your moves to the right time. They have a different rhythm as have an entirely different market dynamic. Im saying in this that they are making their own timing and getting all their ducks in a row before they take their big shot for glory. They have their own schedule. They obviously need to get themselves into the position Microsoft is in this year in having relatively profitable hardware and a good support base of software sales. To rush things would be to risk great losses and their market dynamic at this point doesn't support such a strategy, so any losses taken trying to force Move onto the market would be counter productive. Both players have done this, you've seen that every other year is a year for consolidation or an attempt to go for market share. 2010 is Microsofts turn, 2011 is open for Sony to have a go at it.