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.

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.

This is my point - Sorry if i wasn't clear earlier. Sony thought that was good enough. They  really didn't think any further then a continuation of the PS2.

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

True. They are still doing better. I didn't mention they had no losses. In fact Nintendo is paying for mistakes which Sony made with the PS3.

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

This (strange) gen has different salescurves then the previous ones. but the PS3 is still the least selling Sony console. It's very unlikely to pass the PS and certainly not the PS2. That's is a clear decline from the PS and PS2.

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.

They just need a better evaluation of which IP is more marketable. Untill now that was rather lacking. It's not easy, that's for sure, they just have to do better for the PS brand.

To be fair on number 3... that was basically all the 3DS's doing with their big miscalculation there (that they readily admitted and took full responsibility on, something Sony has trouble admitting).  And the Wii basically died this past year because well... there were no games and its old (tech wise).  But then again, the 3DS seems to be full steam ahead now and the Wii U will come out far before the HD twins get their next gen.  Even still, they didn't lose close to what Sony lost and it was one loss after piling up the money from previous years, which Sony hasn't done in forever.

You're running off the assumption that these titles are not expensive to produce. I understand your reasoning, but I beg to differ, the costs must be much higher than we both might think. If not, why is Sony mentioning this? Are they bsing? I don't think so... I really believe these games cost an arm, maybe a leg, and this company is struggling to break even on these efforts, if not bleeding money. Money that could better be invested in marketing and leveraging sales for more appealing and theme-variant series such as GoW and UC, inFamous, even The Last of Us.

It would be called poor management and unrealistic expectations, as well as possible pressure from studios to create content that is not selling or pressure from management (one or the other).