Archive for July, 2009

To Sony, their “life” for consoles are about ten years. I’m not sure they stop production of that particular console on the exact ten year day or not. (Which in fact would be incredibly funny to me, “well its been ten years, time to shut down.”) But this is more about strategy, marketing and excuses.

Strategy wise- Its smart, because costs go down over the year, parts get smaller and by the end they make some profit.  Even if they aren’t making a profit now, they will later.  That and I have a feeling their not feeling the competition by other competitors. I’m basing this all on the so called price drop that hasn’t came as of yet. If the PS3 Slim rumor is true and it comes out this August, I’ll take back what I said.

Marketing- So-So, In the beginning the advertising has been strong but for their new titles that came out, not really. LittleBigPlanet got little marketing push, gamers such as myself knew about it and bought it. But, none of my family has even heard of such a title. inFAMOUS had a huge marketing push on the internet with ads and such, and commercials for the first 3 weeks after release.

Excuses- How many times have you heard Sony say, “We’re following a ten year life plan, we do not comment on rumors or speculation.” And most of the time the rumor is true? I have. And if they want things to not be “Leaked”, then they should keep a better control on the matter. This is based on the of the Qore episode with the PSP Go revealed and this was their own fault it was “Leaked”

I can’t comment on the PlayStation 1′s ten years, since I wasn’t here for that generation. I was too busy on my Nintendo 64. Sue me :]

PlayStation 2′s Ten Year- In the beginning it started off slow with Ico, and some other titles I can’t remember. And, titles started piling up by the third year in its cycle. That’s when the “word of mouth” came around, and in a way that was marketing. Those who don’t watch television often, this is for them. By the 5th year we had series going on, and it was great. (such as Jak and Daxter, Devil May Cry, Kingdom Hearts, Metal Gear Solid etc.) I believe the Xbox came around the second year and the gamecube the third. And obviously since competition arrived, better titles started coming out. And such, by the end of the 7th year the PlaySation 3 came out. But the PS2′s lineup was still strong with titles like God Of War 2, and Rogue Galaxy. And its still going on till this day.

PlayStation Portable- It began with a huge push, everyone knew about it. People used it as media players rather than using Apple’s Ipod. I hadn’t heard a single bad thing about PSP, except that it can break easily but thats not the point. I’m not going to lie, UMD was a dumb idea. But at the time, what else could they have done? Digital downloads? Not very much people had broadband at the time. The titles that came out on the PSP early on were so-so, some were just ports.  Some were fantastic. By the end of the third year, it was platform for unique games. Such as Patapon and Locoroco. In the middle of its forth year, the PSP Go was announced. Their was a lot of mixed feelings about this. More than half of the gaming community were saying it was a ripoff. But, to me, it feels like the PSP is relaunching. And with great titles to come out too, by the end of this year. This is probably the PSP’s greatest year to come for gamers.

PlayStation 3- The launch of PS3 was a huge success, but with a price. Long lines and $600. The first year started off really slow, just like PS2, or any platform for that matter. Since the Xbox 360 was starting its second year in a couple months after launch. It was going to be hard to catch up with titles. Everything is about exclusivity or not. You couldn’t say PS3 wasn’t playing “catch up” for the first year without lying.  By the next year, The PS3 became distinct and was most unique. The PSN titles differed from Xbox’s Arcade titles, by being actual games worth your money. You could say PSN was playing catch up with Live but, the games on the PS3 didn’t need to anymore. A lot of exclusives on the PS3 were amazing and still are. And that was the year of the PS3 (as the internet would call it). Now we’re in our third year and PSN isn’t playing catch up anymore and became its own service.  And I believe this so far has been a great year and more love to come.

Wooo, that was long. Now tell me if you agree with what I had to say or not. Sound off in the comments.