What we are seeing is a split into two game industries. One is the game industry around ‘sophistication’. The other is the game industry around ‘mass audience’. One of these game industries has a future; the other does not.
How far Sony has come from the first PlayStation. The PS1 was designed to be a mass market console. But Sony has now totally gotten away from that:
Sony’s president of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, has said that he wants Microsoft’s Xbox 360 to succeed in Japan in order to help push the concepts of high-definition gaming to local consumers.
With Nintendo’s Wii the most popular console in the Japanese market, Yoshida would like both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 to sell well in order to convince punters of a more sophisticated take on next-generation gaming.
“I like to see people here in Japan showing interest in high-definition gaming and more sophisticated gaming experiences,” offered Yoshida, in an interview with our sister site Eurogamer.net.
“In terms of realistic-looking graphics and smarter AI, they haven’t really shown the appetite for what this generation of gaming can offer. I’d really like to see both PS3 and 360 succeed here.”
“What Microsoft is offering and what we are offering are closer, compared to what other platforms are offering. Because of that commonality, the new games coming out on 360 and PS3 help to get consumers more interested in this generation of gaming,” he added.
Who defines what is sophisticated gaming? Is it Sony? Is it Microsoft? Is it the game developers? The game journalists?
No, friends! It is the customer. Only the customer defines what is and what is not the quality product. When Sony says that it wants ‘sophisticated gaming’ to succeed, what they are really saying is that customers do not define what quality is. This is a major, major red flag. What defines quality in Sony’s eyes? Technology? Developers? Publishers? Game journalists? No matter the answer, they will all be wrong.
Now, Kaz is saying that Sony cannot allow Nintendo to run away with the market. Sony should have had those thoughts in 2006, not 2008.
What we are witnessing is Sony now…
-Publicly saying that the inevitable PS3 ‘rebound’ is not going to occur as every analyst mindlessly parroted.
-Publicly saying that Blu-Ray will not sell PS3s to any big success. Alas, poor Pachter!
Sony has some massive problems they need to sort out through if they ever want to become competitive again. They need to decide whether the PlayStation is going to be a dedicated games machine or a multi-purpose computer. It cannot be both.
Sony is admitting, not so much in words, that the dream of the Top Box is dying. We’ll see how Sony responds to this. But until Sony adopts a more Nintendo product approach, just as Sony did with PS1, Sony will not be winning any more console wars.