It may have been wise on Sony part. But currently it looks like Taco Bell and it's advertising partner isn't handling things well though.

http://kotaku.com/5884142/this-taco-bell-playstation-vita-contest-seems-a-little-weird

Don't remind me. 1080p graphics! Moooooooooods!!

I never left. :)

The thing that probably hits Sony franchises hard is that there game brands aren't household names. Not on the level of Mario or Halo or Call of Duty at any rate.
I can ask any of my real-life friends what Uncharted is and they would have no clue.
Ask them about Halo or Mario? Yep they know it, they might not understand the games, but they have heard of them and they associate that with the respective platforms.

Sony probably doesn't need to cut down on the amount of franchises it has, but just bring out something that will make itself a name and hit hard home that people will associate the PS3 with.

Here is how it all happened...

Event 0: Nintendo massacres the competition in the 1st party exclusives department, and survives gens 5 & 6 off in-house effort.

Event 1: MS steals 3rd parties from Sony in 7th gen.

Event 2: MS has a few shooter hits on their hands with Halo and Gears of War.

Sony reacts: Mandate all studios to develop exclusive, high-production shooter-style games to compete with MS shooter offerings and counterbalance 3rd party exclusivity disparity, as well as attempt to meet Nintendo by developing new IPs they could own from there on out.

The Mistake: Not relatively managing resources. Certain studios should have been mandated to create low-production but high-appeal content so as to spend less money and create smaller-caliber games which were to foster sales and sustain the business. They also threw all their eggs in the nitty-gritty basket (safe an exception or two).

Consequence 1: High production costs means chance to waste resources on features with low ROI, as well as general non-feasibility of project against a chance of success probability factor.

Consequence 2: Less money for marketing = lower sales and smaller ROI, as well as consumer confusion.

Consequence 3: Theme cannibalism. Games like Killzone and Resistance ate each other up due to offering a very similar experience and theme.

The Bottom Line: Sony needs to close down certain studios or reduce personel, attempt to meet the same objective of creating new IPs for their IP bank, but offering more appealing experiences with smaller production value. They need to diversify and offer experiences that are very fresh, not simply new. They also need to look into creating compelling content off a low production cost setup. Their sales expectations should diminish for certain types of content, in that proper resource allocation can ensue. Lastly, their marketing should be efficient and accurate, if they have any more money to do so.

My, what happened to the marketing juggernaught we had in the PS1 era? Crash Bandicoot was not only a good game, but it was massively marketed. So was Final Fantasy VII, and it was a 3rd party game (massively funded by Sony mind you)!

Sounds like a sleasy operation, may be bad...

so having less games, less variety, and having more of the same is good for gamers!

good to know, next time im in the market i will be buying the console with which i think there will be the least amount of games for.

silly me, all this time i thought having the most options, in which games to buy was a good thing for me.

i a game nut, doesnt matter if its exclusive or multiplat, i will buy it, if its good.

and i will say this, i may not speak for everyone, but i am for myself, and less games will never be good for me.

i bought my PlayStation because I wanted games, lots of them. i would have bought a different system if i cared for a few games that sold a lot. that doesnt bring me joy, knowing the 2 games i bought this year sold 10 million or whatever. what does bring me joy, is the 9 or so Games i bought this year

So instead of trying to discuss like everyone else you decided to go the troll route. Good job, mate!

You're bringing absolutely 0 value to the thread. Even Sony realize that, so they can make more games you enjoy, they need to have business sense, and stop producing games that have low ROI. They also admit they need to restrict certain resource allocation so as to bolster marketing and increase sales so as to stay alive and produce more games they can market.

If resources are allocated in excess of the respective sales met, due to not reaching a market (for marketing and content reasons) or failing to appeal to an audience, then those resources should be better allocated into proper marketing games with higher ROI and reducing the money lost in content the audience is not responding to. That's all that's being said.

Many posters have explained this to you, drop it already.

So here we go again , might as well compare every game to cod and be done with or if your masochistic use wii sports as the benchmark ,the fact is very few games sell as well as those fore mentioned and the fact is take away the big sellers including Sony's own GT and the Sony games look pretty good you could also use this thinking with regards to MS and the rest of it's first party not being on par with the big boys , and that would be wrong because just like most of the Sony games ,games like forza etc are selling great , of course you have to look at certain games that drop off and your studio dynamic , Sony have been doing that but that's always been the nature of the business .