Sony – Future Downfall?

Xantar has posted a very, very, very long read on Sony in the gaming industry and it seems to speak the truth that none of us could put into words. Xantar begins by referring Sony to the gaming giant in the market right now, and according to some of the recent figures, that could be true or false. Sony has seen great success in the United States with the PSP and previous success with the PS2 worldwide, making Playstation a household-name. Xantar explains that Nintendo lost the battle already, but many would disagree due to the recent statistics and the fact that Nintendo is a “true” gaming company. Xantar has posted a very, very, very long read on Sony in the gaming industry and it seems to speak the truth that none of us could put into words. Xantar begins by referring Sony to the gaming giant in the market right now, and according to some of the recent figures, that could be true or false. Sony has seen great success in the United States with the PSP and previous success with the PS2 worldwide, making Playstation a household-name. Xantar explains that Nintendo lost the battle already, but many would disagree due to the recent statistics and the fact that Nintendo is a “true” gaming company.

Sony – Lost within
In Xantar’s long article, he describes Sony as lost, not knowing where to go or where to turn next. The PSP is featured with more than just games, but multimedia capabilities and a web browser. The PSP is a result of various Sony divisions (computer, music, movie, etc) trying to stay alive. Xantar believes that these divisions do not strive to work together, but rather stay alive by telling the big guys that if you were to include “this” into the PSP, it will boost our sales (basically hitting two birds with one stone). Sony has fallen for this, and included several multimedia functionality with the PSP, along with an exclusive Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo memory card format in which Sony produced themselves.

Sony – Heavy price to pay for branching
These various features found in the PSP will most likely find its way to the PS3 in the near (well, hopefully near) future. Xantar, as well as various political scientists believe that the PS3 will be the greatest challenge for Sony economic-wise with all the promised features and components. Sony plans to add the top-notch hardware in the PS3, costing them nearly 900$ to produce one single console. As with the PSP, Sony will sell the PS3 at a loss of a couple of hundred, bring the price to around 500$ (hopefully), requiring a lot of catching up by Sony. To “catch up” with the lose, Sony would have to make around a 50% profit from games and have 10 games per console. When comparing this to the 12 games per PS2 that exists today, and adding in the higher cost of next-generation games, this may prove quite a challenge for Sony.

Sony – The end?
All in all, Sony has lost its way in the gaming industry with the attempts to explore their horizons in the PS3 console to multimedia which will cost them a lot. Sony does not know where to go in the gaming industry, to add multimedia, to add this, to add that, and cannot chose a clear path. Sony is branching out in too many directions, and their “divisions” are not cooperating with each other, leading to an ultimate downfall.

Feel free to read the entire article by Xantar with the Via link below.