What Sony started the second great depression will finish.

Guess what?  Sony made a machine that only the most hardcore segment of the video game world would buy.  That has nothing to do with 3rd parties.  Is that difficult for you to understand?

The only one out of this kind of threads that actually has the right to exist.
It's always the same story. The (former) market leader plays the major role (not the only one of course) when you have to point out the reasons why he isn't any longer No.1.
We'll see that a few more times in the next decades.

I dont think Sony are that stupid, I really do think they have though well ahead, and the Ps3 is designed for the long run , ps1 sold over 100 million ps2 sold over 100 million , sony arnt fools they know what there doing, it isnt even that expensive anymore, considering its price and the year later launch xbox hasnt sold much more consoles
games that are coming out now for the ps3 are really starting to show there dominance ,killzone 2, heavy rain , metal gear solid, uncharted 2 God of war 3, we all know the ps3 is just starting to blossom ,Where as the 360 is running out of steam , it has reached its peak game wise (im really not dising the console, i do love my xbox) Sony crammed all that hardware in for a reason , many people say its "overkill" not really they've just though ahead and made something that will compete with other consoles to come keep producing good games for along time to come and the ps3 price is only going to come down ,and with more and more good titles being announced i can see ps3 selling strong for at least another 6 years? yes its had a slow start because of competition from the 360 ,but you will see Sony will come out on top once again

^ its not about sony being stupid.. its about making wrong descisions..

-sony is not a benevolent hive minded creature its a international corporation with thousands of employes..and thus it rises and falls with the competence of its people and the ability to forsee and propberly react to any occuring problems .

 and mistakes are only natural and some grave mistakes have been made regarding the pricing the distribution and the advertising of the console

its just a example of how a bad launch can insure a well established product the similarities between the launch of the ps2 and the p3

- both had a exorbitant launch price that was partially justified with the introduction of new technology (dvd -    blue ray)

- both had a rather boring array of launch titles (remember "THE BOUNCER" of course you dont)# both had a lot of word of mouth advertising thanks to the previous console being so good in games and lifetime

- both arrived only after other next gen consoles had been released already ( ps2 -dreamcast) (ps3 - 360- wii)

now lest see what was different

since sega is the master of lack of adverrtising the dreamcast didnt get much attention and people decided to wait for the ps2 instead...

whereas many people got tired of waiting another year for the ps3 and bought a 360 or a wii instead.. plus all the bad rumors before the console was finally released ..about the hardware being prone to malfunctions and the general lack of quality for a 599$ piece of hardware

sony did very little to counter those rumors and unlike the ps2 they did very little advertising once the launch was actually happening thats why many people didnt even noticed that it was finally avaiable for purchase

another thing that has been going on is the general attitude of sony pr...sony seemed to rely on the product name alone to work in order to sell the console "we made 2 successfull consoles before thats why you will want to buy the ps3 just because" and that attitude has been going on for the last 2 years  along with taking jabs at nintendo and microsoft instead and downtalking own mistakes

tl.dr : sony expected the console to sell itsself just because its playstation no 3.. and even though microsoft policies are sometimes dubious its not all because they "bribed" or "bough" off all of sonys former 3rd partie supporters and dlc

^you must know, the Wii was released the same year as the PS3, same month, same week.

For me, and I believe for many high directives at Sony, Sony's failure was their inability to build on the PS2's success. It was their role to make a "Wii-like" console, they failed to see it. Remember it's Nintendo who's dethroned Sony. Sony could've easily made a PS2-based, PSN-enabled, PSP-compatible console with the approach and design to party/family/casual gaming Nintendo went for with the Wii. It would've worked wonders for them without a very high investment in R&D. They could've phased out the old PS2 without any conflicts, keeping their mass-market share and reinvigorate their brand. In the best case scenario, this would've prevented Nintendo to become a fierce competitor less a market king again. On the other hand, HD-DVD vs Blu-ray could have continued to the end of 2008 and beyond and most likely ruin completely all posibility for any HD format to be something else than another "Laser disc". Remember I'm asuming Sony made a PS2.5, so no Blu-ray at all would've made it into this. Of course, Sony could've pushed a lot more those stand-alone Blu-ray players without having to worry about any videogaming losses, they could've probably gone the "Toshiba way" selling the players at absurdly low prices to push for market adoption. Who knows where they'd be standing today, it's all now part of a past that never happened.

I think in a year or two hardcore gamers will be glad the PS3 isn't just a PS2.5/ PSWii, yet well affordable to gamers.

I agree it was obvious considering manufacturing costs the PS3 wouldn't sell at PS2/Wii levels early on. Sony could not afford such a thing.

The PS3 needed to perform well enough and it did. It already sold 21.3 million units worldwide by the end of 2008, so less than 2 years on the market in Europe (and yet to officially launch in some regions). That's a solid performance nevertheless.

Although I think Microsoft by far produced the worst PR, I agree Sony's PR with regard to the PS3 has often been seriously flawed. But some of it almost seems intentional to me, maybe they didn't want PS2 fans to upgrade too quickly as that would have meant shortages (considering they couldn't afford to sell many more than they did).

I imagine when a cheaper to produce slimline PS3 (and highly anticipated games like Final Fantasy XIII, God of War 3 and Gran Turismo 5) hits the market things will improve a lot.

What people don't realize is when you combine both of the HD consoles you get a number that is greater than the Wii. Had Sony went the 'Wii' route, they would be in a similar position as they are now. Xbox 360 would become the primary platform of developers naturally wanting to show off and probably would be number 1 this generation.

The only mistake Sony made was making a very reliable, well-made piece of hardware at an extremely high price. They sacrificed quantity too much in the sake of quality and thought that brand loyalty and the Playstation empire alone would carry them through.

To some extent it has. The PS3 while being twice the price of it's primary competitor is still selling rather well. (Despite a myriad of issues along the way). But the dynamics have changed some what. Sony realized that price matters to most consumers far more than releasing the most cutting edge technology.

I think that Sony felt that the PS3 would be the crown jewel in their empire and decided to go all out on it. This came at a cost (to Sony) and to (their consumers).


A competitively priced PS3 hovering around the same price point as an Xbox 360 (From Day 1) would have been in front of the 360 at this point in time.



I see why Sony made the moves that they made. Some worked out, some didn't.