Sony calls dibs on 2008 – PS3’s ‘breakthrough’ year

No matter what Microsoft Game Studios’ Shane Kim says Redmond has up its sleeves, Sony probably doesn’t care. And who could blame them? Their recent triumph with Blu-ray has solidified Sony’s mark on the consumer entertainment front, and the PlayStation 3 just overtook the Xbox 360 in market sales for a month. What could be sweeter? CEO Jack Tretton hints that it starts with a two and ends with an eight. More at the full story.

Sony Computer Entertainment America’s (SCEA) Jack Tretton called 2008 as an important year for Sony’s PlayStation 3, after Toshiba backed down from the high-definition format wars. According to SCEA’s CEO, Blu-ray’s victory has just given consumers one more reason to purchase a PlayStation 3 over other platforms:

The emergence of Blu-ray as the de facto high-def standard is one more reason why PS3 is a great value to consumers. The combination of strong sales, Blu-ray dominance and widely-anticipated games all point to 2008 as a breakthrough year for PS3.

After reports of the PlayStation 3 finally overtaking the Xbox 360 in sales hit the press waves, everything just seemed to fall into place for Sony. Though the gaming division of the consumer electronic giant picked up steam back at CES 2008 after revealing the well-received BD Live initiative, their momentum never slacked, and the world saw the eventual defeat of HD-DVD.

Now investors are gaining confidence in the company’s performance, and Sony’s share just rose a promising 5% roughly at the time of the Toshiba‘s press announcement. Analysts confirmed that it was due to the encouraging sales of the PlayStation 3 and the victory of Blu-ray, but other market analysts believe that Sony could actually pull another victory in the Year of the Rat, and that victory would be establishing organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays as the technology to grab before the year ends – despite opposition.

As a matter of fact, Sony Japan‘s recent shares just leveled off at a 2.2% increase when the market closed back in Tuesday, after the company made known their plans to shovel 200 billion yen (US$ 203.5 million) in funds to make some headway into the research of medium and large OLED displays – yes, large. Like enthusiast monitor large. Good-bye LCD, hello beautiful, sharp OLED.