Steve Ballmer's optimism about Sony's postponement of the PS3 launch
would be encouraging if it weren't for the many,
many, production
problems that plagued the unit when it launched last fall. While quick
to note that Sony dominated the market once it's old Play Station
reached the 10 million mark that doesn't necessarily mean that the same
will happen for Microsoft.
This company desperately needs as
much of a lead from Sony, because the PS3 is going to dominate the
landscape once again, and more or less eliminate or destroy all
competition in it's path. The reasons why are rather simple:
Sony still has the largest base of users than anyone else in the business.Sony will release more titles and employ more third party vendors than anyone else.Both
Microsoft and Nintendo have yet to truly expand their offerings to
include more than the few niche gamers that are part of their fan base
to date.
I mean people are still buying PS2 and the PSP,
when there is newer
technology available by Microsoft. The only thing
this news is telling me, is that Sony was comfortable enough with
Microsoft's problems to allow the PS3 to incorporate the Blue Ray
technology that we had reason to believe would not be available upon
it's release. Microsoft, who was quick to market and accelerated
development at the midnight hour with the help of IBM, still hasn't
made High-Definition a priority; the new technology will be an addition
to the 360, rather than a core part of it.
Not that I wouldn't
enjoy, no rather, squeal with joy, if Microsoft could sell even half of
many of the 360 than Sony did the Playstation 2. But it doesn't seem
likely. About the only thing that could hurt Sony's chances of taking
the market by storm at this point would be to price the PS3 at like
$700 or so, trying to minimize their losses. So far nothing like that
has happened to date.