Sony Buries PS3, While CB Games’ Prediction Comes True

By William Usher: 2007-04-18 08:40:21

Sony Buries PS3, While CB Games’ Prediction Comes True

You all thought Microsoft would have delivered the fatal blow to the head, but it was Sony who dealt the fatality that echoed throughout the video game industry. Shortly after our article about the PS3 dying, what does Sony go and do? They kill the PlayStation 3. It wasn’t without good reason, but it does make you question whether the PS3 is doing all that well, considering that both versions of the Xbox 360 survived through the first six months of release.

As you all know, the 60gig PS3 has not be touched; it is not harmed. However, some of you may have already read about the 20 gigabyte PlayStation 3 being nailed in a coffin and buried beneath the earth, never to rise again. And this came shortly after we predicted that the PS3 was dying. Posters, readers and fanboys vehemently denied that anything was wrong with the PS3, and yet Sony said otherwise with their actions.

Now what’s more is that the consumer demand for the 60gig model outweighed the 20gig model 10 to 1. Basically meaning that approximately – out of just under the 1.5 million units sold in the United States – only 142,000 units of the 20gig PS3 were preferred by consumers. Ouch!

Amazingly, people preferred the $600 unit over the $500 one. In this particular case I’m horribly convinced that price is no longer the PlayStation 3's down-dragging. With interest and demand from retailers hovering over the Xbox 360 Elite, which is only $20 away from what the 20gig PS3 used to be, one obviously can’t argue that 100 gigabyte in the Xbox 360 Elite is the $20 interest difference between the PlayStation 3 20 gigabyte model and the Xbox 360 Elite...can they?

Well, despite the oxymoron consumer demand for a product (i.e., paying $20 less for an Elite), we here at CB Games have always stuck to the simple philosophy that software sells hardware. And the only game for the PS3 that was within the top twenty sales charts for February was Resistance: Fall of Man. Again, OUCH!

Even with the 80 gig model on the way (and possibly without the Emotion Engine, if they want to further cut the costs), which in my opinion is the surefire way to compete with the X3E, Sony is somehow going to have to convince people that the PS3 is not dying. The PlayStation Home is something no gamer can deny as being cool, but how well will the Home cater toward third-party software support? And what game will make use of the Home’s avatar? I admit, it’s cool being able to create yourself...or Michael Jordan...or your Miss February biology teacher who always leans too close...yeah, you get my drift. But what good is that if Sony has yet to announce a game that makes use of that avatar? I can’t tell you how cool it would be to run around in GTA IV while playing as Jack Thompson!

Anyway, while a lot of fanboys have been defending Sony since the PS3's launch, a lot of people have recognized that while the PS3 has shifted more units than the Xbox 360 in the same period of last year, one system suffered from shortages up to and through March. Can you guess which system that is? No nevermind, I know how fanboys respond. It was the Xbox 360. Sony already had 1 million PS3's shipped to the US and Japan before the end of 2006. Yet they haven’t even sold 1 million in Japan and that’s where they’re supposed to be favored. Again, OUCH!

But still, Sony needs a software solution not a hardware solution. They NEED third-party exclusives from developers who can actually master the PS3's architecture. I don’t want to play Devil May Cry 4, Final Fantasy, Dark Sector, Army of Two, GTA IV or Assassin’s Creed on a $600 machine that looks and plays the same on a $400 machine. The hardware sales are reflecting the PS3's lacking, exclusive software appeal. Even according to early (shoddy) preview estimates by Wedbush, the PS3 is still down 100,000 units in a sales comparison to the Xbox 360. As much as gamers, fanboys, analysts and even myself, have used the excuse that the PS3 will be "future proof", and subsequently huge in another two or three years, the fore-mentioned games are coming out this year and early next year. So what reason do you really have to play GTA IV on the PS3 and not the Xbox 360? Or more importantly, why pay $200 more to play your favorite game?

Personally, I don’t think Sony is expecting people to wait until 2008 to buy the darn thing. But between that time the software (with the exception of MGS4, Lair and Heavenly Sword) isn’t looking particularly fancy. Now I’m not writing this to appeal to either side of the console war, I’m writing this because I’m a gamer just as much as the next reader over and I’d like to see what I could be playing on the PS3 six years from now. But that won’t happen if the system doesn't stay around long enough, or developers keep sharing the PS3's possible smash-hits with Xbox 360 and PC gamers.

Remember, mass consumers for a console will be gamers and no one else. Every so often techies or gadget gurus will pick up a latest and greatest video game console, but it’s the gamers who keep it alive. The 3DO, Saturn, Dreamcast, Sega Mars, Sega CD, Atari Jaguar and M2 were proof of that. Heck, two weeks before its release the M2 didn’t even make it to retailers. So if Sony doesn’t want to bury another PS3 model, they better find a way to make gamers feel like that $200 difference is worth it.

With the current axe given to the 20gig PS3, how important is it for Sony to change their gameplay for the PS3?