Personally I've always rather liked having a choice of console. SNES/Mega Drive? Playstation/N64? Heck for me it goes back to the home computer days of the C64/ZX Spectrum (C64, obviously). Part of the fun was making your choice and sticking with it, religiously standing by your decision even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Yes, that's me hanging onto the N64 well into 2000. But what if there was only one console to choose from? We're not that there yet, but Sony CEO Howard Stringer recently talked about the evolution of the PS3 into an open platform.
"We developed brand new, absolutely incredible technology for the PlayStation 3 (PS3), but the cost was high. We've adopted a slightly different approach now, and are evolving the PS3 into a platform for web services,"
The Playstation Network – Sony's online service for the PS3 - is key to this, with Stringer looking to spread it to new hardware.
"Next we will be expanding the PlayStation Network to hardware other than the PS3, because the number of PS3 units sold puts a limit on the scale of the network possible. Sony has a vertical structure for each product line, an organisational structure that resists change, so it will take time to achieve this network growth. However, a large number of employees share my opinion on this."
So what do you think then? Is the PS3 going "open" the first step towards a single console platform? And if so is that what you want? Or would you rather have a choice of what console to buy?
