GDC aftermath: Lazard Capital Market on Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2007 is now over and here comes the aftermath: Lazard Capital Markets reports that Sony was the “comeback story” of the recently concluded conference.

The research firm’s Colin Sebastian mentioned that the Playstation Portable (PSP) is now moving on the right track and the PlayStation 3 (PS3) is finally becoming stable. According to the analyst,

PlayStation Home could represent an important milestone for Sony as it seeks to build a stronger community for PS3 owners, as well as narrow the gap with Microsoft‘s Xbox Live, which is already a popular and more established online service.

Moving on to the PSP side of things, Sebastian didn’t specifically comment on PSP2 but mentioned that there’s a big possibility that Sony will revamp the handheld system. He remarked, “Sony could be preparing to bolster the PSP handheld market with a shift in marketing towards a younger demographic, possibly including a hardware price cut later this year.”

Sebastian helpfully added that the way to go is to have stronger software lineup and hardware price cut. Then, the analyst went on and discussed the continued momentum of Nintendo, with its consoles Wii and DS. According to him, Nintendo draws its strength from the support of many publishers and developers.

Lastly, regarding Microsoft, Sebastian believes that the company has a lot of things going for them like the high user usage of Xbox Live as well as upcoming giant video games Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto 4. He marveled at the current services being offered with the console. “The Xbox is one of the few ‘living room’ devices that can store and play digital media such as TV and movies that are directly downloaded over the Internet.”

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2007 is now over and here comes the aftermath: Lazard Capital Markets reports that Sony was the “comeback story” of the recently concluded conference.

The research firm’s Colin Sebastian mentioned that the Playstation Portable (PSP) is now moving on the right track and the PlayStation 3 (PS3) is finally becoming stable. According to the analyst,

PlayStation Home could represent an important milestone for Sony as it seeks to build a stronger community for PS3 owners, as well as narrow the gap with Microsoft‘s Xbox Live, which is already a popular and more established online service.

Moving on to the PSP side of things, Sebastian didn’t specifically comment on PSP2 but mentioned that there’s a big possibility that Sony will revamp the handheld system. He remarked, “Sony could be preparing to bolster the PSP handheld market with a shift in marketing towards a younger demographic, possibly including a hardware price cut later this year.”

Sebastian helpfully added that the way to go is to have stronger software lineup and hardware price cut. Then, the analyst went on and discussed the continued momentum of Nintendo, with its consoles Wii and DS. According to him, Nintendo draws its strength from the support of many publishers and developers.

Lastly, regarding Microsoft, Sebastian believes that the company has a lot of things going for them like the high user usage of Xbox Live as well as upcoming giant video games Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto 4. He marveled at the current services being offered with the console. “The Xbox is one of the few ‘living room’ devices that can store and play digital media such as TV and movies that are directly downloaded over the Internet.”