I am going to start this off by saying that I am not a Sony fan boy. Not even close. If anything, I am a Nintendo nut, but that is beside the point. With that said, I would like to announce Sony’s soon (kinda soon) success with the Playstation 3.
I know, I know, the PS3 is still picking the seaweed out of its motor as the competition is racing downstream partly due to it being a vehemently over priced game console and its lack of game variety; and not to mention, it will be that much harder for the PS3 to overtake the competition with Halo 3 soon to be released on Microsoft’s XBOX 360 and the Nintendo’s little Wii that could not taking any prisoners (not to mention Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl set to release this year); but the PS3 is starting to take up a little bit of the market in just a week after its much needed $100 price drop. But its not just the cheaper price that is going to drive sales, Sony may be getting some help from the competition.
Well, not from Microsoft. But Nintendo’s savior of a system, the Wii, will start to bore gamers with its gimmicky qualities. As fun as the Wii can be to play with friends (WarioWare, Wii Sports, and Mario Party come to mind) it gets damn old playing it by yourself. I know what you are saying, “but what about Zelda?!?” Don’t get me wrong, Twilight Princess is a great game, but waggling your arm around to fight off enemies gets old after about thirty minutes (you’re better off getting the game on the Gamecube). And it looks like Super Mario Galaxy is going to have the same problem, because many of Mario’s maneuvers are triggered by your movement. The only game, so far, that is a great single player game is Super Paper Mario because it doesn’t force all of the system’s capabilities, which is what Nintendo and other game developers should try to mimic. Every game on the Wii does not have to use every function that the Wii remote has to offer, they should only use the appropriate ones. The Wii remote is one of the best (if not the best) controllers ever conceived of and with all that it can do, it is easy to get carried away, but do we really need swing it around like a sword, it’s a great concept, but I’m a gamer, not a body builder, in short, my arm gets tired! It would be great if Nintendo made the option of using the Virtual Console controller on any game, making the Wii an even more diverse console. One game that is going to seemingly have less motion sensing is Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Brawl is a straight forward Smash Bros. game with traditional controls, but (sadly) it also showcases Nintendo’s other downfall: the lack of online play.
Like it or not, online play is the future (and the present) of gaming – especially multi-player gaming – but Nintendo has said that Brawl and Metroid Prime 3 (and maybe even Mario Kart) will not be online. The only games that have been to be online this year will be Pokemon Battle Revolution (which is just giving DS online better graphics) and Super Mario Strikers (which will be pretty awesome). Even with all of the great games coming out consumers will lose interest in these games, and ultimately the system itself, if none of the biggest games have any online functions when they easily could. And believe it or not, Nintendo, gamers will pay $59.99 for a game if it is going to have some great online play, in fact, gamers will pay $129.99 for a game with great online play…and a Master Chief helmet.
If Nintendo continues to follow its current trend of party games and waggle-wanding, the PS3 just needs to draft up to Halo 3…er, the 360 as it passes the Wii sometime in the next year. And if Sony plays its cards right and gets a little help from an old friend, well a couple of old friends, it may start lapping Nintendo and Microsoft.
Sony made its first good move by dropping the price (even if it is just a tactic to get the 60 gig PS3 off the shelf and the 80 gig on, it is getting more PS3’s into more households which means more game and accessory sales which drives profits faster). Next they need to push the built in Blu-ray player further down consumers throats until I don’t have to explain it to everyone that comes into my store. This is important because the price of Blu-ray players make the PS3 price tag look dirt cheap and more importantly, Blockbuster Video (old friend numero uno) announced that it will only carry Blu-ray movies, not HD DVD’s. This pretty much solidifies Blu-ray as the next video format and the PS3 will be, by far, the cheapest player on the market for a couple of years; and over the next year or two, as DVD’s are faded out, people will be looking for Blu-ray players and will end up buying up PS3’s. Good call on the Blu-ray player, Sony. You proved me wrong.
The other old friend? Square Enix, silly. It looks like Final Fantasy XIII is going to be a Sony exclusive (All that non-exclusivitity talk meant that it will also be on mobile phones, not the 360). The game developer has been quoted to say that he has a great relationship with Sony and he doesn’t intend to break that just to earn a few more bucks. And let’s face it, Final Fantasy games are one of the game series that elevated the PS2 a gigameter above the competition. The other set? Metal Gear Solid. And the rumored final game in the series, Metal Gear Solid 4, is set to release within the next year exclusively on the PS3. Another game that should help is Gran Turismo 5. Hopefully for Sony, they will be able to learn from Microsoft’s insanely popular Forza 2 and have the chance to make their racing sim better (if that’s possible).
Sony doesn’t have to just rely on the competition failing and third party developers, because the PS2 is still alive and kicking. Kicking hard. It may not make the ten year benchmark that Sony promised, but it will be around for at least another year and it will continue to make money allowing Sony to lose money on the PS3 for a while, unlike the other two who will have completely dead systems after the Madden 08 launch in August and have to rely solely on their current systems.
Sony may be having a slow start, but with all of that technology in the PS3, it is hard to believe that the PS3 will the way of the Saturn…and the Dreamcast. Sony will most likely end up edging out Microsoft in the end and probably leave Nintendo to its non-online, multi-player mania in last place, again.
Suck on that my fellow Nintendo fans.
