Who would have thought? Priced about $150 more than the incredibly fun and exciting Nintendo Wii, and a good $200 more than the entry level, yet highly social, version of the Xbox 360, Sony’s Playstation 3 makes for a hard sell. Costing something around two paychecks and a first-born son, the Playstation 3 has come up short in the console wars.
This has caused developers for the platform to consider if their money and time might be better spent courting a larger installed base, like, say, that Wii system that’s been flying off the shelves for the past two years. While the Playstation 3 is perhaps the most powerful of the current generation of machines, power alone doesn’t make for good games. Consumers have been teaching this lesson to Sony in the form of falling market share for a while now.
Developers have urged Sony to lower the price of their console offering for some time now, in the hopes that consumers will be more willing to pick up the Playstation 3 if they don’t have to sell blood to buy it. In response, Sony is expected to finally, reluctantly, knock $50 to $100 off the Playstation’s sticker price. Maybe.
Faced with a relatively small user base for Playstation 3 games, developers are taking steps to focus their efforts on the major player in the console market, which is small, white, and not made by Sony. Although game companies aren’t likely to ignore the PS3 entirely, they are looking to develop for the Wii first, and then port their more successful games to Sony’s flagship system.
Sony’s stock has dropped roughly 50% over the past year, and they recently announced a loss of 16,000 jobs.
Meanwhile, the Playstation 2 is doing pretty good.
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