If 3rd party exoduses from Sony (which I don't see as an 'if'), Sony will be forced out of the industry. That's the way I see it.

John Lucas


Come to think of it: how many stellar games are on the sony market that were made by Sony?

I think Ape Escape was sony? Correct me if I'm wrong.
Legend of Dragoon was an awesome game made by sony.

Are most of the great Sony games third party? If so 3rd party support failing and going to wii/360 would definately be a major blow to sony.

Great post as usual, John Lucas.

Great point on the "character" of gaming companies. Kind of like you know it's a piece by Mozart when you listen to it, Nintendo games are immediately recognizable.

So are the other iconic game makers.

That's all I want to say!

Wikipedia is your friend.

Ape Escape is indeed SCEI made in full.

Legend of Dragoon is also SCEI made. And both of these came about in the PS1 era when Sony had pseudo mascots like Crash Bandicoot and those Abe's Oddysee characters running around.

Sony didn't continue making these self-made properties a forefront of their company vision and Ape Escape now only seems to release in Japan.

Me and RolStoppable talked in IM one day months and went down the list of hit Sony games paying attention to their 1st party, 2nd party, or 3rd party status. A lot of Sony's great stuff comes from the 3rd we found. And as in the case of Retro Studios which was incorporated by Nintendo and guided by Nintendo in shaping the Metroid games, do we have Sony personnel shaping their incorporated companies' game design and guiding them?

Sony while making some hit 1st party stuff is absolutely dependent on 3rd party for survival. If that goes, so will they, I feel.

John Lucas 

what johnlucas? you mean sony didn't rehash the same characters over and over and over and over and over and over... good point!

Thanx for the long reply John

Yes you are comletly right, Sony never was in the situation Nintendo was in and Nintendos business model is much more stable and because they make profit and can rely on great 1st party games with a huge fanbase and a history they are much more likely to survive harsh times. I do think sony does have some kind of identity in the gaming industry but like you sayed without 3rd parties its not worth much and it looks like right now MS is doing a better job at getting 3rd parties to feel like their platform is a safe bet. If the 40Gig model and the spring lineup don´t do drastic things for the PS3 they might lose all chances to come in second this time around, if the PS3 doesn´t make any profit for Sony then the PS4 might be in danger.... I hope sony can at least gather enough support to make a healthy profit and stay in the industry but I also hope they learn from their mistakes, all in all the PS brandname is only as good as the games that come with in, now that most of these games are going to other systems as well Sony really needs to pull some bunnies out of their hat... and if they were totally unprepared for this type of situation it migh be to late... you can only slash system prices for so long, getting a ton of great games that make your system look like a winning maschine is not an easy task that can be done within a years time... 08 will have some great sofware for sony... but is it enough ? ... I tend to agree with you that it might be to little to late... if they don´t show some of their old strength in 08 than 09 could be a very bad year for them with lots of 3rd party Wii love and almost all HD games going to the 360 as well, FFXIII will not change much by then...

Again thanx for the long and well thought out reply John, always a pleasure to read what you think

The Dude

Eh i'll throw in my 2 cents.

There will be a PS4, however unlike the PS3 it won't be the most powerful of it's generation. Suddenly most of the pro-sony people will claim graphics never mattered (which they don't.)

Whoever has the best graphics between microsoft and nintendo will claim that having the best graphics will ensure it's victory. (Microsoft most likely, and it won't, if they win it won't be graphics.)

Atleast that would be my crystal ball guess.