SONY's big mistake...Launching a year early

[Da Ill One]

I actually agree with this article...

PS3 ::: Advanced Media Network - Resistance: Fall of Man, Final Fantasy XIII, Metal Gear Solid, Devil May Cry 4

Maybe they realize it by now, and maybe they don't, but Sony has managed to play right into Microsoft's hands. Microsoft rushed a machine that clearly wasn't quite ready (massive hardware failures and spotty launch titles) out the gate in 2005, but it paid off. The big games started rolling in six to eight months later, and that early success caused Sony to get trigger happy. When you look at the PlayStation 3, it's hard to tell what is wrong. The PS3 was ready from a hardware design standpoint. All that talk about the Cell processor was justified. We've seen it's capable of some amazing feats. The machine runs cool compared to the noisy 360 and has a 1% failure rate. The Blu-ray player is a nice addition and it provides lots of capacity to store all the HD textures and master quality audio a developer could ever want. It's a great machine, but there is one problem. It has become glaringly obvious over the course of the last year that the PlayStation 3 was rushed to market when it was nowhere even near ready.

Sony did everything right with one exception…timing.

You can't rush a machine to market without games and when new technology prices are insanely high. Microsoft did, but they're loaded. $36 billion intake this year was it? Microsoft knew they could afford to jump to the new (expensive) generation early and they knew they could do it at a passable price point, so they did. Usually by that point in the generation, you're supposed to be making money on hardware sales, and since Microsoft wasn't and was lagging so horribly behind the PS2 in unit sales, it was probably a good idea. Sony unfortunately rushed to follow suit.

The question is…why? The PS2 was completely healthy. It hadn't even hit $99 and was still selling like mad. Plenty of good games were still coming out, and Sony was raking in dough off of hardware sales. In fact, the PlayStation division was the only part of Sony making any money at all. Nintendo was justified in rushing the Wii out the door. GameCube—though still profitable thanks to smart (read: cheap) hardware design—sank at retail like a sack of hammers on the Titanic. Sony, though, had no reason to kill off the PS2 and should have taken a conservative stance considering their shaky financial position. If you remember, they talked about their regrets in killing off the PS1 when they did three years ago because it was still selling quite admirably even ten years after its launch, and all that money was going straight into their pocket.

Games like Motor Storm are great, but to put it bluntly—they aren't exactly system sellers. Cornerstones, yes—but system sellers? No. Not every console is going to launch with a system seller, but if they launch with a good variety of quality titles out the gate (with the big guns right around the corner), the machine can still do just fine. That's exactly what happened with the Xbox 360 back in 2005.

The PS3 lacks that one game that makes a core gamer stand in GameStop, drop their pants and say "Wow, I need that…now". So where did all those games go? 2008. So, that makes you think—when should the PS3 have really been released? November 2007.

The PS3 lacked a true system selling star at launch. Imagine Heavenly Sword, Resistance, Motor Storm, Warhawk, DiRT, Ghost Recon 2, Sega Rally Revo, Gran Tourismo 5 Prologue, Folklore, Ratchet & Clank, SingStar, Uncharted, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Wipeout HD, and the Metal Gear Solid 4 demo, and imagine them all having dropped within a couple of months of each other. Now combine that with a cheaper launch price and put it all right in the middle of a Holiday hype storm.

"If Sony had waited until this Christmas, the machine could have possibly retailed for as low as $399. That's still a lot, but apparently Xbox 360 owners were perfectly happy with that price in 2005..."
And imagine what a two year delay could have done for the price. If Sony had waited until this Christmas, the machine could have possibly retailed for as low as $399--a price AMN's own Rumor Reporter is already hearing talk about for this holiday season. That's still a lot, but apparently Xbox 360 owners were perfectly happy with that price in 2005 and its weak launch lineup. If Sony had waited and let the "still highly profitable" PS2 run its course, they could have ridden into the next-gen late, but with a ton of launch content and more importantly still maintaining that mainstream superiority complex the PlayStation dynasty used to project to people. Sure, they would have been late, but it's better to show up to a party late with a boatload of gifts than to be the first in the door empty handed. It leaves a bad taste in the host's mouth, or in these situation— gamers.

Could that lineup combined with a lower price point have been enough to fully counter the hype machine that is Halo 3 or the casual appeal of Wii? Maybe not, but it would have sure taken a huge chunk out of the wind in the competition's sales. A "reasonable" price and all of those killer games dropping within a couple of months would have been a massive PR boost, but seeing them instead pass by one at a time over the Summer did little to stir things up. By letting Microsoft play them, Sony might not even get the chance to flaunt that 2008 lineup. All the good content could go multiplatform (or worse) before then, thanks to sales boosts to Xbox 360 and Wii caused from their Holiday releases.

It's called a "game" console, and without games to play, what is the point in launching a console? Blu-ray is a wonderful advancement for the home video industry, but it's at least two years too soon. The PS3 was one year too soon because that's when the launch title material finally showed up. What destroyed the PlayStation dynasty was launching with little to nothing worth playing, and launching with technology that still needed to drop in price so that it could be sold for a reasonable amount without bankrupting Sony. We all know that the only people who buy consoles at launch are early adopting gamers. It's irresponsible to rush a product to market when it costs too much for those early adopters to afford and there are no games to make the purchase worthwhile.

So, if Sony can hold on until 2008 everything should be fine, right? Maybe not. Recent reports have quoted Sega and Capcom representatives as saying they are disappointed with PS3 sales thus far—so disappointed in fact; they are halting development on all PS3 games until after the release of Halo 3. If Xbox 360 sales suddenly skyrocket, they may just cancel all PS3 titles in the pipeline outright and move them over to the Xbox 360.

It was all thanks to ego. The PS2 could have remained the dominant platform for another year while Sony could have continued to screw Microsoft with its presence because all low-tier multiplatform games would have continued to start development on PS2, making them continue to look awful with the 360 for another year. That side-effect would have done even more damage to the Wii's perception as the "cheap machine" of the next-gen lot. The big guns come out to play next year, even if the majority of those games are suited more to Japanese tastes than the mainstream North American gamer. Will Sony's fortunes turn around by then? The truth is, it probably will to some degree, but thanks to Sony's itchy trigger finger, the chances of seeing "one dominant mainstream platform" like the PS2 this generation are long gone.

[EaterOfDogs]

If you don't learn from history, you are bound to repeat it...

Too bad Sony learned nothing from Sega.

[Jamoodah]

I'm sorry if this has been said for I did not read everything, but I think the PS3 played a large role in the Blu-ray HDdvd format wars and was Sony's major weapon. They pretty much had to release it early or else HDdvd would have the upper hand. Just sucks that the console had to suffer for it.

[EaterOfDogs]

Yup, and Sony planned to use all of their gaming fans in order to push home their own next gen DVD format. They "used" their gaming fan base essentially. Or tried to anyway :P

[Zecks]

it got off to a bad start but i think it will pick up once the more popular game titles start coming out

[Todd]

im glad it came out when it did.

[shiz]

Sony continues to chase their tail in an attempt to keep their ship from sinking. Let's face it, Sony ruled the landscape for so long with the original PlayStation and PS2 that they've been blindsided by the Xbox 360

[wiiman1234]

I don't think that is was not a bad idea because sony did not rush Xbox did thats why there are so many problems with it because they wanted the Xbox to come out beforethe Playstation 3.