most of it is about GTA IV, but I think the last article is what people are going to be discussing the most.
Lastly, the PlayStation 3 has a number of important exclusive titles — potential system sellers — coming in 2008, including Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, and MotorStorm: Pacific Rift (along with, of course, PlayStation Home). Is Microsoft confident that its slate of releases this year will be enough to combat what many perceive is a slowly growing momentum for Sony’s black box? And do you think that the hype behind (and success of) GTA IV will be able to sustain the 360 until its own heavy hitters come along?
I know a lot of folks enjoy watching the console wars and we would never underestimate our competition. But answer to your question specifically, didn’t Sony promise all of this last year including Home as well? We have been fighting Sony’s promises from the day we entered the market and if you remember at that time it was all about PS2 being an online cybercity with partner announcements from the likes of RealNetworks and AOL. Then three years ago at E3 they showed what PS3 games would supposedly look like with the Killzone 2 video, that we are now learning will ship four years later. That means that we will have shipped Gears of War and Gears of War 2 before they can even get Killzone out the door. Think back to GDC 2007 when Sony promised to leap ahead in online with the Sony Home unveil. Here we are two years later and multiple delays for a product that has appears to have little to no buzz. Where are the achievements? The friends list integration across all games? Where is the long-promised video store? Where are all the other products using and networking with their CELL chip? How come Blu-ray did not result in better games? What happened with Sixaxis and rumble? Where is the complete 1080p game library we were promised? If Blu-ray as they said would be such a catalyst to PS3 console sales, then why have PS3 sales over the past couple months not seen any lift since the format victory?
The reality is that Xbox 360 is leading this generation with a larger installed base, more than 2xs the games library, the most exclusives along with the leading online service and community. While we have not yet announced all of our plans for the full year, I am confident that we will extend our lead over the PS3 in 2008. Today Xbox 360 has a 5-million-unit console sales lead on a global basis based on most recently public reported data from both companies. This includes more than double the installed base in the US according to actual NPD sell-through and over a 1-million-unit lead across Europe also based on reported sell-through from Chart Track and GfK.
The days of Sony snowing the consumers and the press are over, I think the pressure is now really on them more than ever to deliver on all of these promises.
