The over pricing of consoles is also a factor! the reason why sony was so succesful is that its console was ready to play off the shelf the new genration of consoles need four or five additional items!

The PS3 has come late to the market particularly Europe and will suffer from missing out on 1 xmas compared with the wii and 2 on the Xbox360, however no console war has ever been won on the strength of a launch of a console and I have a massive problem believing that Sony will withdraw from the market place without even engaging in the current console war (altho not anyway near as much of a problem as believing the “Gutenberg of Video Games” comment considering viedo games had been around over 20 yrs before he even got involved, and if you must insist on Gutenberg being a console game developer im afraid that Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo would suit the crown alot more).

The way I see the current console bout devloping in the long term is unclear Microsoft put massive pressure on Sony by rushing its comparative console to the market 12months earlier, while Nintendo is attempting the avoid the proverbial Mhz war by completly differentiating its console from the others. I think the Wii will have initial success but will suffer from a lack of third party games and developers who in the long term dont want to spend the level of extra time developing watered down versions of their games and new control mapping when they can easily port them between PC/Xbox/PS3. I think the console will be great fun and have some great games but will ultimately fizzle out and possibly spell the end of Nintendo as a console developer if it doesnt manage to shift enough units. I think the PS3 will gradually close the gap on the 360 not least because it is still the brand in the market. Parents still substitue the word playstation for games console. The race will be much closer though than this time around and I think we will see Microsoft once again rush their next console to the market where I feel they may ultimately reign supreme then.

So the story goes: Limited availability due to manufacturing delays. Popular after its release so it was quite hard to find one on retailer shelves. Overpriced at the start. The launch seemed unimpressive and gaffe-prone, compared to the well-planned launch of the competitor, which was making a genuine attempt to woo developers and which had better launch titles.

But the odd thing is that’s the PS2 story, not the PS3 one.

The competitor was Sega, not Microsoft, the price was £299, but other than that the PS3 has mirrored it’s predecessor – too long in coming, couldn’t meet demand, too hard for games producers to write for, to expensive, predictions of doom…

Current total sales of the PS2 are 111,250,000 and they’re still selling 5 million a quarter (http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps2_e.html). Microsoft has sold 24 million Xboxes and it took them 9 months to sell as 5 million Xbox360s. Analysts are skeptical they’ll hit their target of 10 million by the end of 2006.

Let Sony get their console out in all markets before you declare them dead in the water.

Sony will finally catch up to the demand for the PS3. The games themselves are what sells the consoles, however. Good games will come out and sales will steady.

Microsoft’s XBOX 360 will continue along at its current pace, and spike when certain new titles come out (Lost Planet, Mass Effect, Halo 3).

The Wii will find a much wider audience because Nintendo knows that graphics are not as important as gameplay in the minds of the masses. It will continue to create innovative, fun games and will always have a piece of the market. At it’s current pricepoint, less than even the basest of XBOX 360s, the Wii will propagate (sp?) the current phenomenon – people owning multiple consoles.

When it comes down to brass tacks, Sony, MicroSoft and Nintendo all have their places – which is at the altar of comsumer spending, praying that the games are good enough to justify the cost of the system. Some must pray harder than others.

the people at the top are too concerned about making their division (or section/department/office) profitable without actually having any ideas about how the company can be an innovator…

they’re running scared and the climate within the company is one of absolute panic and ruthlessness, with the main management concentrating only on staying out of the firing line so that they are not the next to be made redundant.

exactly the same thing was happening at ICl before Fujistsu engulfed them.

Sony are going down.