"isn't doomed" =/= "isn't in trouble." 

If you're doomed, then it's almost guaranteed that you're not going to survive; you're about to drop out of the market, unless a miracle happens.

If you're trouble, then you should survive, but you shouldn't be satisfied with your position. (Example: Nintendo during the N64-GC era were in trouble because their profits & marketshare droppoed lower and lower. But they weren't doomed because hardware sales, software sales, and GB sales still made sustainable profit).

APM asserts that Sony isn't doomed. He does NOT assert that they're not in trouble; he's just saying they aren't in as much trouble as suggested by some people - likely the people who believe Sony is doomed.

Sony already said that they sell the PS Vita at a loss.

I don't think I've ever said Sony will drop out (maybe I did...) but if I had to choose then it would be Sony.

You're right, I just checked.

I gotta disagree with the "drastic changes" statement. They havnt really done that much to turn things around. The major thing they done was bring down the price...and really this isnt that drastic considering they were selling the ps3 pretty cheaply from the get go (by cheaply i mean compared to how much the ps3 actually costed to make). Apart from that and a few nice 1st party titles Sony has, like MS, relied heavily on 3rd party support. And like you said in your OP, the playstation 3 will end up selling close to 100 million units and this is despite how badly sony has messed up. The playstation brand was that strong. And because of this 3rd parties could not ignore the user base.

Sony have done things like offer PSN+, and a pretty varied first party lineup but other than that i dont see much drastic changes. The ps3 would have sold fine without those things.

If you look at the PSV launch it pretty much tells you exactly whats happening at sony, they dont have much ideas going forward to really be successful. We seeing this with just about all their products. Whether its tablets, smarphones, cameras, video recorders, hell just about any of the products they make they are unable to create a mass apeal product. And its been like this for quite sometime.

Its really frustrating, as a sony fan you can see all the potential they have...yet they dont seem to capitalise on it. This really does fall in with the lack of cooperation between the divisions at sony...you would think sony would be the ones to rival apple but they are the ones who are falling the furthest behind.

The psv is the perfect example...like you said such perfect hardware crammed into the device and cutting edge no less.Hell the PSV remains the most powerfull mobile device a year a nd a bit after its release. Thats amazing in this day and age. But look at all the things it got wrong: price, lack of software, pricey software, inconvenient product to have, big size, cant play android games..theres even more smaller issues that are just irritating. And you could say "ok but Sony has learnt from this now" No. This happend with the psp...6, 7 years later they go and do the same thing.

It really is tough though, the market is hitting them from every angle...but i still feel they are their own worse enemy. Until they sort out their company from the inside things are always gonna be the way they are.   

Source?

I'm just wondering if anything has been confirmed since the long-debated Kaz Hirai quote that they "aim to make a profit on the PS Vita in three years".

Which could well mean that they plan on selling the Vita at a loss for 3 years.  Given Sony's financials; stubborn-ness to bring in a price drop; current price of the Vita etc. I find it extremely unlikely that they plan on selling the Vita at a loss for 2 more years, given that, I'd conclude that Kaz was referring to the Vita project as a whole (i.e. R&D costs of the whole thing).

Anyhow, on topic: I dunno.

As Sales rightly said, Sony are in the worst position out of the three - no doubt.

What I think varies. There's so many points to consider.

On the one hand, this generation (in home consoles) is definitely Sony at their worst. High initial price point with few games; incredibly difficult hardware to create games on; a not-quite-as-good-as-the-competition online service, so on and so forth.

As the generation went on, however, Sony seemed (at least to me) to completely change. With the launch of the slim in 2009 the PS3 just gained so much momentum which arguably it still hasn't lost yet; the online service was greatly improved; the games have been great, there's so much to love about my PS3, and I think the sales have reflected that.

So, by that logic, if Sony carried this momentum through to the PS4 with one other change (make it easy to code for - which if Vita is anything to go by is a virtual certainty) then they could definitely hold on to - if not improve their market share.

I'd say another positive is that they're popular in all 3 markets.  They have a bigger dominance in Europe which I can realistically see them holding - the US is going to be hard against Microsoft but there's no reason why they can't sell a bucketload of all consoles in all 3 main regions.  The Playstation name is still a relatively big name.

There's some stuff they're gonna have to improve though. Marketing being the main culprit.

On the other hand, the competition is now far greater than it ever was during their eras of dominance. Wii-U may or may not be the next big thing in gaming and Microsoft could conceivably back Sony into a corner by going with a powerful console and selling it at a massive loss.

There's also the main problem, which is throughout the PS1 & 2 era Sony relied heavily on third parties to shift their consoles, and we're moving increasingly back towards all of the big 3 getting all the games (which admittedly happened a lot during the PS2 era, but many of the 'huge' games were secured on timed exclusivity for Sony). I think Sony are offputting this by working hard on a great network of second-party studios, exclusivity deals etc. I think the relationships with many of the big publishers are still there, but as we've seen from Vita - they can't always be relied on.

But that brings me to Vita, which is a different case altogether really. Definitely the last dedicated handheld I see Sony releasing. Whether or not they incorporate it into PS4 remains to be seen, but I certainly don't think it's a bad idea.

the market is big enough for the three - Sony can have its' share as long as it doesn,t mess up the way it did this gen


would be funny if PS4 is actually branded "Doom"...

since "Vita" had such an unfortunate outcome it would be really ballsy and funny if they dared call it "Doom"

that would be like slapping faith with the power of the C3ll

What!?

Isn't doomed = isn't in trouble at all? 

I said much better "than you might think."

I said a lot of the doom and gloom is largely unfair. "Largely" CLEARLY implies not ALL of it. Also, "some [of the doom is] completely reasonable."

Please stop with the strawmans.