Poll: Sony Pulls Out of the Console Race

[BehattedWanderer]

Microsoft alone? Oh gods why...It would be exactly as picked in the polls: painful. It would huuuuurt. On the bright side, I'd still have all my well cared for other systems, and all the games I own, so at least I could get away from it's terribleness from time to time.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

But didn't Sony win the last console generation. With the PS2, ya'know, the highest selling console of all time

No no no.... Third Party Developers won the last console generation for Sony.

 

[RanD00M]

If you want lifetime numbers, Nintendo still wins, with 95 million Wiis sold, beating 66 million Xbox 360s and 62 million PS3s

And the Xbox 360 came out a year before the PS3, so being only 4 million units behind isn't that bad and means that the PS3 could easily overtake the 360 by years end.
Not saying that it will, but who knows.

 

[Arakasi]

The only reason I voted apocalyptic is because they all need eachother for competition.

 

[Wintermoot]

it would give MS a complete monopoly on the AAA console market
and a monopoly is never a good thing
(I,m not calling Nintendo a non-gamer producer but they mostly produce family oriented stuff)

 

[scarecrow350]

Frankly at this point I reckon either sony or microsoft will jump out and start publishing games along with other ventures, whilst a publisher will jump into fill the void, perhaps we could have a EA or activision console
Im hoping for a little valve box

 

[vrbtny]

But didn't Sony win the last console generation. With the PS2, ya'know, the highest selling console of all time

No no no.... Third Party Developers won the last console generation for Sony.

That does still mean they won, though? And I don't know if Sony did a PS3 job on the PS2 and sold it for less than the value of its parts, but they must have made a few bucks off selling 100+ million consoles.

 

[Artemicion]

That would be bad. I barely use my PS3 and am much more likely to use my 360, but Microsoft needs competition to keep themselves in line.

 

[Kennetic]

Considering how much hate I have for the 360 this would make me leave consoles forever. (I do have a 360 but I never play it)

 

[M-E-D The Poet]

Microsoft seem to love that board game!

Anyway last I heard is sony is just putting a console out later than the next xbox. So in a sense they have taken themselvs out of the race but I don't think they are going to just stop making consoles.

Sony has had quite a run with there consoles, basically 2 every generation. PSX, PS1, PS2, PS2 slim, PS3 and then PS3 slim. So I can't see them just saying "nah, PS3 was our last one".

It will probably be released 2 or 3 years after the xbox. So the console war will be "hahaha we have a more powerful machine than the PS3" ... few years later ... "haha we have a more powerful console than the 720 (I guess)" and then the war will stop 'cos I assume the PS4 would blow the 720 out the water by being released so much later.

It's either a very smart move or a very stupid one. By coming out later they could launch a new generation and make the new xbox look like .5 rather than the next generation.

isn't this what happened in the first place anyway?
And didn't it fail particularly miserably?

I mean xbox 360 was out, PS3 took 3-4 years to find itself in a good marketable position, now the xbox has been turning a profit for ages and is going to bang out a brand new generation (Or so we are told to believe)
So then the PS3 takes a big hit from the new generation, and sony is then behind 2 years at least trying to push out something that's fighting against a storm again

I don't see them pulling it off because it's a stupid marketing idea

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

But didn't Sony win the last console generation. With the PS2, ya'know, the highest selling console of all time

No no no.... Third Party Developers won the last console generation for Sony.

That does still mean they won, though? And I don't know if Sony did a PS3 job on the PS2 and sold it for less than the value of its parts, but they must have made a few bucks off selling 100+ million consoles.

The point is that a hamster could have won that same generation. Look at their competition: The Gamecube, in a generation where the primary market was Nintendophobic, and the X-Box, which had to endure a few years of "Bill Gates doesn't need more money" before it got much acceptance... by which point the PS2 was already the (default) platform of choice for most people. So again, Sony didn't win the last console generation, they simply accepted the trophy.

Compare the last generation to this one: Microsoft has shaken the negative stigma (mostly), and Nintendo learned that they could push consoles by appealing to an audience that Microsoft and Sony didn't even know existed until Nintendo pulled them out. Low and behold, there's no more room for Sony to just put a console out there and sit-back while the cash rolls in. At best, all they've done is ape their competitors (trophies and Move), but they haven't done a single thing to let the PS3 stand-out on its own except for the fact that it can play movies that the 360 can't. But as we learned (and they should have learned) from the PSP, it takes more than playing movies to sell a gaming console. If I want to watch Blu-Rays, I'll buy (and indeed own) a Blu-ray player. So what's the PS3 for? Any "perk" you could list for it is just a rip-off of something that they got from their competitors.

Sony's two-generation free ride is long-since over. If they aren't dropping out of the console race, they damn-well better have some ideas for their next console.

 

[AgentCooper]

But didn't Sony win the last console generation. With the PS2, ya'know, the highest selling console of all time

No no no.... Third Party Developers won the last console generation for Sony.

That does still mean they won, though? And I don't know if Sony did a PS3 job on the PS2 and sold it for less than the value of its parts, but they must have made a few bucks off selling 100+ million consoles.

The point is that a hamster could have won that same generation. Look at their competition: The Gamecube, in a generation where the primary market was Nintendophobic, and the X-Box, which had to endure a few years of "Bill Gates doesn't need more money" before it got much acceptance... by which point the PS2 was already the (default) platform of choice for most people. So again, Sony didn't win the last console generation, they simply accepted the trophy.

Compare the last generation to this one: Microsoft has shaken the negative stigma (mostly), and Nintendo learned that they could push consoles by appealing to an audience that Microsoft and Sony didn't even know existed until Nintendo pulled them out. Low and behold, there's no more room for Sony to just put a console out there and sit-back while the cash rolls in. At best, all they've done is ape their competitors (trophies and Move), but they haven't done a single thing to let the PS3 stand-out on its own except for the fact that it can play movies that the 360 can't. But as we learned (and they should have learned) from the PSP, it takes more than playing movies to sell a gaming console. If I want to watch Blu-Rays, I'll buy (and indeed own) a Blu-ray player. So what's the PS3 for? Any "perk" you could list for it is just a rip-off of something that they got from their competitors.

Sony's two-generation free ride is long-since over. If they aren't dropping out of the console race, they damn-well better have some ideas for their next console.

Nintendo and Microsoft did not invent half the things you give them credit for.... just saying.

 

[LilithSlave]

I, for one, do not have any reason to believe that Sony is even so much losing a slight amount of interest in consoles. The mere notion, even, seems ridiculous.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

Urgh. I don't like XBoxes. I like my Playstation quite a bit. Being forced to turn to Microsoft for my games, while it wouldn't be "apocalyptic", is something that I would NOT like. I chose "painful".

In fact, it wouldn't just be mentally painful; I hate XBox controllers. They're extremely uncomfortable in my hands. ESPECIALLY the trigger buttons!

 

[LilithSlave]

I hope you love Linux

Microsoft is scary, all right.

Also, I would love to live in an age where Linux dominated everything electronic under the sun. Not that such an age will come anytime soon. But my, if it ever does, things will be great.

Think of it, everyone using a free operating system. The only thing really getting in the way of that, is that Wine is still long from perfected. If Linux folks ever find a way to make Linux do everything Windows does, Windows is dead.

I would be happy if they just made more PS2 games of the same caliber they used to be. What the PS2 lacks is hardware it still competes in games.

What it amounts to is that graphics has wrought horrible things on this generation.

I don't know that Sony are going to pull out of the next generation. But I think that a gaming revolution of some sort is upon us. One where people have to finally give up on petty graphics.

 

[Sylveria]

There has been a lot of rumors circulating about one of the big three console companies dropping out of the console race next generation.

No, there have not been "a lot" of rumors. There's been one rumor originated by one guy who makes iphone games and thus has a vested interest in the console market going bye bye. That rumor was based on the possibility that a new console will not be announced at E3 this year; that's a long stretch of logic to assume that means no consoles will be made ever again. It is irresponsible to makes this sound like it has any veracity to it what-so-ever.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Nintendo and Microsoft did not invent half the things you give them credit for.... just saying.

While I don't doubt that motion controls existed somewhere before Nintendo, they took it to a new level and put on something that could appeal to the mass market. Obviously they didn't invent the idea, but they brought it to a level never seen before. Sony, on the other hand, basically just took what Nintendo did, changed it enough to not infringe on copyright, then sold their own version of it. Heck, at least when Microsoft jumped on that bandwagon, they did it with a completely different take on the idea of motion controls.

And while I'm aware that many games had their own built-in achievement system before the 360, Microsoft brought it to another level and made it into a system where achievements from across multiple games could be pooled into a single whole. Granted that some developers have better ideas of what to do with this system than others do (I've seen games where, literally, all 1000 points can be earned by just beating the game), but it's an interesting new system, and I don't doubt that they're working on how to expand upon it for the next console. Sony, meanwhile, basically just took the achievement system, changed it to trophies, and called it a day.

In other words, there's a difference between innovation and invention. Likewise, there's a fine line between innovating on something, and just plain copying it. Microsoft and Nintendo have both been innovating ideas in ways that expand the gaming medium, Sony mostly just copies them to try and keep up. This needs to change if Sony plans to stay in the race.

 

[Dresos]

I own a ps2 and a gamecube, I also own a ps3 and Wii. If Sony decides not to make a ps4 I will just own a Wii U because even if Microsoft released Xbox 1080 tommorow I still wouldn't buy it. There are just a few games on the Xbox that interest me and I've got this unexplainable dislike for the Xbox community...

 

[Toby Kitching]

No point answering, since this is a stupid question. People forget two things: 1. Sony is a huge company. Yeah, they've made losses this year, but a big chunk of that can be chalked up to having headquarters and manufacturing plants that had to be shut down for a few weeks earlier this year when japan was hit by an earthquake.
2. Yeah, the PS3 is only just really coming into it's own. Irrelevant. the PS2 and the PS1 were two of the best selling consoles EVER. the PS2 sold far more than the wii has so far. Even if sony made a massive loss on the PS3 (they haven't) playstation has been a highly profitable brand for some time.

And, for the record, any console company or platform going down in flames is a terrible shame for gamers as a whole. The last thing we need is less competition.. that's a recipe for stagnation
The internet is full of rumours. I would estimate that about 80% of the rumours circulating surrounding video games consoles are started by embarassingly devoted fanboys. Until sony personally release a statement to the effect that they are dropping out of the hardware race, i will consider it pure wishful thinking by some fanboys who have an anti-sony grudge.