hapless turns at Sony's

Probably you've already heard it: Sony needs a lot of red ink for writing the records of their gaming branch since the release of the PS3.

Sony has - up to PS3 - had a very strong pillar in Games, while other business areas are usully rather unexciting (No pioneers' work in most of them). Thus, the damages caused by this bad streak might cost Sony a lot of their overall stability.

But what went wrong?

To my mind, Sony went very very wrong in the concept phase. Taking a pride in the long-lasting PS2-sales, they threw their new machine on the market without caring about demographical or, on a peoples-scale, economical changes. Consumers want to spend less money on games, PS3 games get more expensive without offering extra benefits to the gamers. You still finish cheap-ass jump'n'runs in a few hours or lose interest before that happens, but pay 1.5 times the price. Or, as Terry pratchett has put economy : "It's very much like dairy farming. The goal is to get a maximum amount of milk with a minimum amount of moo, and I'm afraid all I get these days is moo". Sure, we must pay for entertainment. But if it hurts more than it pleases, it's a habit to kick.

PS2 was, in the end, budget gaming, which kept people buying. The prospect of testing games before buying (using a modchip) also tickled some of their fancies.
Right now, PS3 is still only interesting for enthusiasts, consumers will wait until it gets cheaper (and moddable!).

I consider myself a model gamer citizen : I love playing, I spend a lot of time on it, and I even play a lot of crap. PS2 was a great platform for that, cut out for gaming. It sold very well, because of all consoles it was, while being more pricey, still the best. It was, powerful enough, quite easily moddable and most of all affordable. Recently I prefer Crysis on my PC to what my PS3 has to offer...

While microsoft didn't achieve too much with XBOX on the gaming side, it offered great MediaCenter and Modding potential. Which is why I owned one. Most of the games really sucked, but XBMC had a strong appeal to keep it for a long time.

One more admonition goes to Sony for their policy towards the European consumers. Ever since the PSX, we have stood in queue behind all other markets, finally getting a modified and less interesting product. For more money. Dear Sony, a market consists of people (who might add up to numbers, but each and every one of them considers him/herself a person rather than a digit) who have emotions. Emotions play a very big role in a market, which is how stock trade works. If you treat us like the car's fifth wheel, there will be an according echo.

Have it your way, but if you want people to buy your stuff, it's give and take!

And yes, I can judge this. I am a gamer. I own a PS3. I am very happy about the console and very unhappy about the games available right now. It's like winning a Ferrari in a lottery and having no gas station around. The Sony Store is a good idea, but filled with junk, whoever wants to pay money for crappy B- or C-games they have to download when each and every harmful firmware upgrade (my brother's console was bricked by a regular update) might make you lose the game?

I sincerely hope the modding community will squeeze some pleasure out of the console pretty soon, otherwise it will be a final stop at ebay for mine...