Archive for December 2008
Platform-antagonistic
Regarding PS3, I have no interest in the platform but I’m not going to be foolish and say “it’s done” like many others are now starting to do. At this point, all I could consider Sony guilty of is piss-poor management, a completely stupid hardware iteration cycle and the fact they’ve failed to fill the software library as quickly as their competitors. Just look at Wii, drowning in shovelware and selling by the truckload regardless. Xbox 360 certainly doesn’t have the volume, but it still has a comparable – if not arguably superior – range of titles to Wii.
In my opinion, PS3 doesn’t need Home – that’s not going to save it. Home was originally intended to be a ‘day zero’ novelty, an immediate and clear differentiator between what came before and the rest of the next-gen competition. We’re now almost 3 (yes, three) years down the line from that point and, to all intents and purposes, Home’s true purpose and impact on the platform is almost entirely moot. Especially given that someone like Microsoft can so effortlessly integrate a similar novelty into their platform.
But even more fundamental that this, I believe that Sony releasing quirky titles, such as LittleBIGPlanet, while the PS3’s library is depressingly overwhelmed by multi-platform games, does nothing to bolster the PS3’s perception. In fact, if anything, I’d say Sony are alienating potential customers, because their approach seems to be “loads of games you can play on something else, then something novel once in a blue moon.”
Three years ago, when debating which next-generation console to buy, I fully anticipated regretting my subsequent purchase of an Xbox 360 by Christmas 2008. But Sony haven’t gotten their act together. They need to focus on turning out good-to-great games for their platform alone, not the occaisional super-hyped epic. No-one in their right mind plops down roughly £300 (in the UK) just to play Metal Gear Solid and/or LittleBIGPlanet several months later. Especially when I can buy a competitor system with all those cross-platform titles for a little over a third of that price.
