- Sony make ever more ridiculous press announcements. For Sir Howard Stringer to say that PS3 games are “infinitely more fun, demanding and exciting” than Wii games is very worrying. He either hasn’t the faintest idea what he is talking about or he has the mistaken belief that dodgy statements like this carry any credibility.
- Sega put Sonic on iPod. Following on from the Harmonix/Phase announcement and the Hudson announcement. We are getting some good momentum here with iPod as a gaming platform. It should be massive.Â
- In Fortune’s 101 Dumbest Moments in Business for 2007 Sony Computer Entertainment feature twice, here and here. The Manchester Cathedral story has already been covered here.
- Sega announce that they will enter the industry consolidation fray. But anyone who reads this blog or any other analysis on the subject knows it will be as the subject of a takeover.
- DS breaks UK hardware sales record for one week. With 212,584 units. Brilliant. A lot of industry people will need to readjust their ideas as to what a gaming platform is and what a game is. About time too.
- Analysts say 2008 to be the year of the PS3. But regular readers know that it carries a few problems:
1) The PS3 is too expensive to make. They have no room to get into price competition with the 360.
2) They are a long way behind in the number of AAA exclusives. This is the main reason for buying one console instead of another.
3) They currently have only half the global installed base of the 360, so games have only half the sales potential.
4) Xbox Live gives Microsoft a huge competitive advantage. And they are putting a lot of effort into making it even better.
5) The Wii has cannibalised development resources.
6) The PS3 has a less powerful GPU than the 360. It is strange that Sony did this. - E3 returns to the LA Convention Centre in 2008. But in July which gives developers more time to prepare demos for their Q4 releases. And retail/the media less time to plan for the same releases.
- PSP Media Manager now free, as long as you get it from their Japanese website. Nice for consumers for whom the PSP is mainly a media player and for which games are, at best, an afterthought.
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It is true that the publishers have focused a lot of attention on the Wii. However, I’m not sure how that works with the low conversion ratio of Wii (hw sold to sw units bought). True, there is massive installed base and it continues to grow. But if that doesnt result in more software units shifted in the next year this misplaced publisher investment might backfire.
There is a “industry focus” bit in the January2008 Edge dedicated to this. It has some interesting charts with number of Wii titles per publisher. Interesting to see Data Design focus on budget titles for Wii – low risk and possibly luring the non-hardcore market that is not willing to invest in full price product.