With the holiday season coming up, everyone is talking about
console announcements, console hardware and software sales, console price cuts,
and most importantly, the console war. And while some –Nintendo - keep a top
position and patiently fill the store shelves with Wiis and DSs to make sure
there will be no more shortages this year, others – Sony, Microsoft – prepare to
fight for the second spot.
But while we’ve been accustomed to seeing the two
giants constantly fighting for positions, we need to get used to something
completely and unexpectedly new: Sony wants Microsoft to succeed! We’ve got
Sony Worldwide Studios’ president Shuhei Yoshida’s interview with Eurogamer to
prove it: “I’d really like to see both PS3 and 360 succeed here (Japan) […] What
Microsoft is offering and what we are offering are closer, compared to what
other platforms are offering.”
Yoshida was referring to the high-definition gaming market
which opened up its gates to the Japanese market. And while Japan seems to
be a bit slow in adopting the new offerings, the best solution for both Sony
and Microsoft is for people here to start embracing it whether on PS3 or Xbox
360 (of course, PS3 over Xbox would probably have to be Yoshida’s personal favorite).
“In terms of realistic-looking graphics and smarter AI, they
haven’t really shown the appetite for what this generation of gaming can offer,”
Yoshida said, adding that the Japanese gamer continues to prefer Nintendo’s Wii.
This is why it is important that new titles coming out on any platform do well
in terms of sales.
Sony might want Microsoft to do well of course, but not as a
permanent thing, as Yoshida admitted. But it appears that the two consoles
could be at peace here as long as the road to high-definition gaming remains
somewhat narrow. When possibilities start coming up, it’s only logical for the
PS3-Xbox 360 war to start all over again.
So what will you have under the Christmas tree this year - a
PS3 or an Xbox? The sales we are going to see this end of the year will depend
on the strategy that each console maker adopts, and an important part of that
strategy will of course be the price. So far, the ball is in Xbox’s court, with
prices that PS3 has not yet managed to match.
As a proof of that, Xbox not only outsold PS3 on
the US market in August, according to figures released by NPD Group, but has
also kept the lowest price compared to Sony’s PS3, which meant another
victorious month in September for Microsoft.
This should be a sign for PS3 to make some price
adjustments, perhaps just in time for Santa’s shopping spree, or else, it won’t
be hard to guess who will follow Nintendo in sales at the end of the year. As for
the Japanese market, Sony and Microsoft will still find Nintendo hard to beat,
so Sony whishing the best for the enemy is the equivalent of Sony wishing for things to
go smoothly for them.