Sony Aims to Step Up Sales and Dethrone Nintendo
Date : 22 Jul 2008 Category : Technology
NewsFactor NetworkKaz Hirai, CEO of Sony's PS3 game-console division, told E3 convention attendees last week that sales of the original PlayStation reached 102 million units since 1994. The popular PlayStation 2, now in its ninth year on the market, has sold 140 million units. Hirai hopes the PS3 will outpace its predecessor in a similar time frame.
"It's not fun for me replicating the PS2 numbers. I've seen that movie already," he said. "I want to try to see if we can exceed the PS2 numbers after nine years, otherwise why are we in this business?"
An Unexpected Competitor
Of course, Sony didn't have the Wii to contend with in the past. The game-console crown was Sony's to lose in the latest round of video-game hardware wars. Sony held the title for the past two consecutive generations, an impressive feat in the industry, according to Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch.
"Fairly late in the console cycle Sony is making some moves to try to reestablish its position," Gartenberg said. "It's not likely now that Sony will dominate the market as it did in past generations. At this point is a question of can Sony at least move into the market leader position? Certainly the last company Sony was expecting to deal with in that role was Nintendo."
Sony's admitted problem is that it made a heavy bet early on that Blu-ray drives would drive adoption of the PS3, and it didn't. Rather, the Blu-ray issue caused manufacturing delays and drove up the cost of the console out of the gate. What's more, Gartenberg said, Sony didn't have a great game title at launch. Now Sony has Metal...