The Microsoft Xbox 360 has been a huge success as a platform to develop for. It has simple, elegant, architecture and Microsoft have supported it with good tools, as you would expect from a software company. No surprise then that Metacritic lists 645 games for the Xbox 360 against 425 for the Wii and only 351 for the Sony Playstation PS3.

The problems of the PS3 are multiple. It has a quirky new CPU architecture and a poor GPU which acts as a bottleneck, hobbling the capabilities of the machine. If this weren’t enough there is the unavoidable fact that the PS3 isn’t selling very well. We are in mid cycle now, the point at which sales volumes should be ramping up. And for the PS3, they aren’t. The main reason for this is price, the PS3 is still vastly too expensive for the market and is cruelly exposed by the bargain that is the Xbox 360.

Sony are caught between a rock and a hard place. The PS3 design contained so many newly developed bits that it was, and remains, very expensive to manufacture. But Sony are not in good financial health so do not have the resources to subsidise a price reduction. Already they have lost billions on the PS3 project. It has proved to be probably the biggest loss maker in the history of video gaming.

And now things are getting even worse for Sony. Activision is the biggest game publisher and their boss is Bobby Kotick. He is not happy with the PS3: “I’m getting concerned about Sony; the PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don’t make it easy for me to support the platform. It’s expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better. Games generate a better return on invested capital on the Xbox than on the PlayStation”. And this unhappiness becomes a threat: “They have to cut the price, because if they don’t, the attach rates are likely to slow. If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony”.

In the real world very few games are actually developed for the PS3. They are mainly developed for the Xbox 360 and then converted to run on the PS3. So things are very bad when that conversion cost is becoming uneconomic.

If you're new, it's better to go Xbox 360 than PS3.

If you already invested heavily into PS3, then, you may as well go multiplat.

People own the system, and it's still selling. So I would say yes.

It's amazing how many people are taking Bobby Kotick seriously.

If Obama said he was going to nuke Switzerland if they didn't send him a box of chocolates, would you believe him?

Well I understand why developers make PS3 games. There is money to be made even if the sales are typically lower than the 360.

A better question would be at any point will the PS3 not drain Sony financially?

The War of the World famously caused mass panic when it was broadcast on radio with thousands of listener believing the situation was real and the little green men from Mars have come to do the unspeakable to their cows: Believe it!

Also Ronald Reagan already made the bombing joke gaffe during his presidency; it was not taken well. Some people need a sense of humour.