Seems you can't visit a videogame news site or aggregator these days without having to wade through a dozen downbeat PS3 posts. On the menu tonight, Gamesindustry.biz has a series of quotes from IDC analyst Billy Pidgeon, who contrasts the lasting allure of PS2 with its seemingly unattractive next-gen replacement:
"The PlayStation brand doesn't appear to be helping the PS3. If NPD's numbers are correct, there are over 300K PS3s on retail shelves. That is not good for a console launch of only a million and it's not good for publishers with PS3 software... Sony needs more must-have first party titles to sell consoles. Gamers know Halo 3 is coming on the Xbox 360, and they can expect Mario on the Wii, but there are no established first party franchises coming to the PS3 except Gran Turismo - and that is delayed."
Interestingly, Pidgeon goes on to mention the promising Heavenly Sword and Motorstorm but points out that "They are new and less anticipated." Poor Sony - oft berated for relying too heavily on the same old franchises, now finds that offering new brands may be its downfall. And really, it's not an accurate assessment: Sony has never relied on first-party development - PSone launched with no in-house titles, just the Namco exclusive, Ridge Racer, and later, Tekken. Wipeout was the company's first huge 'homegrown' hit, but even that was from a well-established third-party - Psygnosis - bought into the Sony stable rather than nurtured from the outset.
The despondence certainly doesn't end there...
Gamasutra reports on findings from Japanese analyst group Nomura Securities, suggesting that Sony will miss its PS3 sales targets by 25 percent:
"Sony's estimated PlayStation 3 sales up to the end of March 2007 were cut from 6 million to 4.5 million by the group, with what it called "poor sales" in North America through December as the leading factor cited for the drop.
Beyond this year, the group lowered its sales for the next fiscal year (ending March 2008) from 16 million to 10 million, and from 18 million to 11 million the year following (ending March 2009), likely reflecting a lack of confidence by Nomura in the product as a whole, rather than any shorter-term supply issues."
Of course, it's far too early to be drawing anything conclusive from these stats and forecasts - Sony is still having trouble manufacturing the machines. When there are hundreds of thousands of units available, a fully functioning multiplayer service and several Triple A titles, that's when execs should start getting jittery if the numbers aren't adding up. Yet still, this isn't the sort of thing that Kaz Hirai will want to be reading.
Finally, Valve head honcho, Gabe Newell, would seem to have attacked PS3 in US magazine, Game Informer. The developer apparently states:
"The PS3 is a total disaster on so many levels, I think It's really clear that Sony lost track of what customers and what developers wanted. I'd say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a "do over". Just say, "This was a horrible disaster and we're sorry and we're going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it""
Newell - who later backs Wii for success - has never really been a big fan of PS3. In a 2005 video interview for 1up.com he referred to the machine - negatively, I fear - as 'the Next Sega Saturn'. There's some truth here. Like Saturn, PS3 is conceived as being difficult to code for and yet - as with Saturn - games programmers like it (Or at least the ones I've talked to) because the hardware dictates to them less than platforms stuffed with high-level libraries and APIs. Games programmers love a challenge - it's their bosses who aren't so sure.
So the critical mass of anti-PS3 feeling, analysis and comment is growing. And mystifyingly, I'm hearing commentators placing Nintendo as some kind of underdog. Hmmm. One thing's for sure, there are a lot of people with extremely short memories talking about games at the moment. It's as though Nintendo never ruled the industry. It's as though statistics and forecasts never let us down.
