I keep asking myself why oh why do people keep defending the PS3, especially against Wii
"Well you wouldn't compare Honda Accord sales to Ferrari sales would you?"
"It's a brave move by Sony - they have managed to get 3.5 million Blu Ray players into homes"
"How can you compare a home media entertainment center to a simple games console?"
Everybody seems to be forgetting PSP. When PSP and DS launched everyone said how sleek the PSP was, they all loved the graphics, it could play movies and was packed with many more features than DS. There were plenty of big games on the way - GTA: Liberty City Stories, Madden, Ridge Racers, Luminies, most of the major multi-platform games while DS was a gimmicky fad with a few weird touch screen games.
I'm sure a lot of hardcore gamers don't care much for Brain Training, Animal Crossing, Nintendogs, Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wario Ware, but it is these games that are selling. It's these types of games that the general public are getting into and you'd be a fool to say they weren't expanding the market.
You can make just about every parallel possible between Wii / PS3 and DS / PSP - Wii and DS are "underpowered", dominated by a different control scheme, aimed at creating new gamers and making games accessible, cheap, no media capabilities while PS3 / PSP are cutting edge technology, full of media capabilities, slick, pushing new media formats etc.
The one thing that everyone seems to be forgetting about though is GAMES. PSP is struggling due to lack of good quality games. Tie ratios are relatively low and many use it for media capabilities. You can't blame Sony for this, they are a media company after all, but does it make good business sense when they lose money on each PSP/PS3 sold? PS3 is looking like following the same pattern- it needs games and fast. The major difference with PSP and PS3 is the existance of Xbox360 - for those who can afford a super console then why chose a PS3 over 360?
Many knock Nintendo's strategy of putting gaming above all else but this is really what sold the original Playstation - good original games that you just couldn't get anywhere else. It says something that the least powerful console of each generation has always sold best. Getting out early is a massive advantage and something else that Sony have messed up this time. Wii will pass 360 sales in the next two months and will just keep on rising so the battle for 2nd place will be between 360 and PS3, of which 360 already has 75% of the market. With nearly every major PS3 game coming out on 360 then what hope do Sony have of claiming second place? Maybe if Sony had concentrated more on games and bringing a system to the market which had more mass appeal then they wouldn't be in the situation they are now - losing massive amounts of money on each console they make, still overpricing themselves well out of the market, developers jumping ship, bad press everywhere and PS3 sales which have slowed to an almost stangnant level.
Price drops will come, plenty more games will come, but will it all be too little too late for Sony?
