The gaming industry was about to die before Sony came along. Sony is by far the best thing to happen to the industry.

Yeah, Xbox Live isn't pushing any boundaries back. Nintendo's radical new controller design is keeping the gaming market stagnant. We need Sony to raise the bar by shoving unnecessary technology down our throats!

@Space20man

What? Name one way the PS3 or Sony is currently pushing the market forward?

@GranTurismo

The gaming industry wasn't about to die when Sony came along. It was, however, dominated by an arrogant and ill-guided giant (Nintendo), who, at the time, acted much like Sony is now. Difference is that they had Miyamoto keeping some innovation alive. The industry would have survived, but the ease of development and media production and general policy of just letting 3rd parties do their thing meant that Sony did much to revitalize an industry that might have grown somewhat stagnant. They forgot some of the reasons for their success by the time of the PS2, which was an unnecessarily complicated machine, but continued consumer and 3rd party loyalty, and a very strong resulting software lineup, pushed it as the best selling home console to date. Now that they've hit the PS3 era, virtually everything that they did to revitalize the business model of the industry has been forgotten. As they've never had the eye for hardware innovation that Nintendo has, and their arrogance extends to a ridiculous price point, the system is thusfar dead in the water.

Regardless of those facts, do some research into the NES's launch era, and please never state that Sony is the best thing to happen to the gaming industry.

I wouldnt say MS and Nintendo stagnate the industry but they dont make major jumps like Sony does i.e.PS2 to PS3. Sony isnt costing the industry anything games,naturally with every passing gen, get more expensive to make.We dont know what the average price of making a game on the PS3 is and what the average price is on X360 or Wii so you could argue this till Nintendo went bankrupt,we dont know what the prices are so there isnt any point in arguing the point.

Entroper said: Yeah, Xbox Live isn't pushing any boundaries back. Nintendo's radical new controller design is keeping the gaming market stagnant. We need Sony to raise the bar by shoving unnecessary technology down our throats!

 I think that Xbox Live is only pushing boundaries in terms of console gaming, not gaming in general.  That being said, I respect what Microsoft has done there, and applaud their ability to so smoothly transition one of the strongest features of PC gaming onto consoles.

mitsuhide said: I wouldnt say MS and Nintendo stagnate the industry but they dont make major jumps like Sony does i.e.PS2 to PS3. Sony isnt costing the industry anything games,naturally with every passing gen, get more expensive to make.We dont know what the average price of making a game on the PS3 is and what the average price is on X360 or Wii so you could argue this till Nintendo went bankrupt,we dont know what the prices are so there isnt any point in arguing the point.

 What major jump happened?  Graphics?  Even in this generation setting the PS3 apart in terms of jump in graphical abilities is wrongheaded (hi 360).  And outside of that?  What are we talking about?  Jump in price?

I was talking just about technoligies actually in the machines. Each company pushes the industry in different ways:

GranTurismo said: The gaming industry was about to die before Sony came along. Sony is by far the best thing to happen to the industry.

That's by far the most ludicrous statement on this site to date. The industry was dying? If i recall properly the gaming industry in the mid 90's was having a very good time with the snes and genesis systems. Actually it was Nintendo that took the industry out of a slump in the 80's. Now, i acknowledge that Sony did a great thing with the ps1 and further down the line with ps2, but sure as hell they did not save anything from anyone. That is fact. You? You're a joke with those kind of statements. 

 

@GranTurismo:
The industry wasnt dieing when Sony came along it was dieing when Nintendo came along in 1982, Nintendo saved the industry with the NES.

ArtofAngels said: Developing games on PS3 is expensive, and having less then first projected hardware sales would only thin out financial expectations, hence resulting in less profit, perhaps even debt. Securing profits seems to be the go with so many PS3/360 duel releases now, But I don't think it's just these developers losing money, it's also video stores. Today I went in to my local Video Ezy (Australia’s largest video store chain) and I asked why do you not stock Wii games for hire and only PS3? The man at the counter said he has been asked many times for Wii games (and said they are definitely on their way for those interested) and then went on to say that the big gun on top of the food chain for Video Ezy poured a lot of money into all these PS3 games expecting the PS3 to instantly continue on the PS2's success and hardly anyone has come in to hire any of the PS3 games, big mistake? Yes of course. So what happens from here? Now I'm reading all this stuff for HD DVD support over Blu-ray, What on Earth could Sony do to save themselves, I don't know, but would it be worth while to make a huge price cut on the PS3, hence resulting in more Blu-ray movie sales (resulting in declining HD DVD support) and better games sales/support, and possible becoming winner of the format war. Would this be enough to cover the loss from decreasing the PS3's price so much? I don't know exact figures/costs etc, but I think so.

 The Video Stores should be doing just fine. Ezy sounds like a rare case, as most places devoted resources to all systems, and while it does seam like the PS3's shelf space has diminished in a lot of stores, those are slight adjustments that don't really eat into anybodies bottom line.

As for the blu-ray/hd-dvd argument. While neither format is doing particularily well at the moment, these recent HD-DVD announcements dont' seem like they'll do much more than just keep the format war going for a little while longer. Everything still seems to point to a Blu-ray victory (though it'll never take off to the level DVD has)

All in all. Sony's lack of success is largely based on expectations from the last two consoles. There are still system selling games, console redesigns, price cuts and higher HD adoption rates on the way. The system will still move millions more over the next 5 or 6 years and will eventually turn profit. Just as the N64 was successful for Nintendo, so shal the PS3 be for Sony.

 

And Gelmer... That really doesn't add much to the conversation.