Sony is forcing a high-end system in to the mass market

Sorry Sony, but it doesn't work that way. Many loyal PS3 developers are beginning to think they've backed the wrong horse, that will mean fewer games for PS3, eventually it means top tier titles will start to migrate over to the system that everybody owns. Or to use your own car analogy which is more lucrative: Making after-market parts for the few thousands Ferrari's in the world or the several million Chevy's?

The PS3 is looking more and more like a niche market product. Like the Neo-Geo or the 3DO. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as the Neo-Geo was very successful as a hardcore high end system. But SNK never had any illusions that it would ever beat the SNES or the Genesis.

The PS3 is ideal for the 5 million "hardcore" gamers who are willing to pay premium to have every last pixel rendered on their 1080p HDTV's. The Wii is the game system for everybody else. And that would be a good thing except Sony bet the company that the PS3 would be as successful as it's predecessors and if it doesn't live up to that lineage Sony will declare it a failure. Last year Sony laid off 10,000 employees from all divisions but left the Playstation division in tact because they were counting on the massive success of the PS3 to pull them out of trouble. Seven months and millions of dollars worth of hype and they've only got 3.5 million systems to show for it.

Two years ago a lot of people were predicting "The PSP will end Nintendo's dominance of the portable market and the DS is just a gimmick" and that wasn't true. Many of those same people are now making the same argument "the PSP and the DS serve different markets" Proclaiming "the Wii is a gimmick" doesn't make it true no matter how many times you say it. EA, Ubisoft, Sega, and Square are corporations that want to make money and they'll make the most games for whoever has the most systems in people homes, that's how you make money in the video game industry.

GTA and Final Fantasy will sell some systems no doubt but they're not going to cancel the momentum Nintendo has going right now. Many of the people buying Wii's right now don't care about GTA and don't know anything about Final Fantasy. Hell my boss (a middle aged woman) owns a Wii. Unless either Sony or Microsoft do something very drastic sometime in the near future, 18 months from now Nintendo will be right where they were in 1990, with the top selling console and portable, and back on their perch as the undisputed king video games.

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Posted by Bill

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