In a short interview with Red Herring, Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, speaks his mind about the next generation of gaming. He makes the comment that he likes Xbox Live because it may become the "platform for the living room." With Live gaining more and more functionality, we're hard-pressed to argue. He further praises the Xbox 360 while simultaneously denigrating the PS3. When asked about Sony's strategy, he replies that "Sony shot themselves in the foot," and that "the price point is probably unsustainable."Bushnell believes that Microsoft's easy to use development tools and the extra money to be made on Live will ultimately be what separates the 360 from the PS3.
"For years and years Sony has been a very difficult company to deal with from a developer standpoint. They could get away with their arrogance and capriciousness because they had an installed base. They have also historically had horrible software tools. You compare that to the Xbox 360 with really great authoring tools [and] additional revenue streams from Xbox live... a first party developer would be an idiot to develop for Sony first and not the 360. People don't buy hardware, they buy software."
While we agree with many of Bushnell's points -- we are fanboys, after all -- we're not as eager to agree that the PS3 will outright fail. According to Bushnell:
"It would not surprise me if a year from now they'll be struggling to sell 1 million units. I think in the U.S. the number of early adopters you have is actually around 300,000."
Bold claims to make about a company with one of the largest brands on the planet. Then again, there may not even be 300,000 PS3s to be had.
[Thanks, Vic]
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