Benjamin Schachter, hard-to-type-last-name analyst number one zillion, forty-eight trillion and three, says the PlayStation 3 will crawl into second place in 2010 behind the Wii worldwide. He also says the PS3 needs to shape up, or it could bring the whole gaming industry down with it. We ask, what? If you're afraid a system will fail and ruin the industry, shouldn't the industry have been affected by the Saturn, the Jaguar, the 3DO, the Neo-Geo Pocket? The N-Gage? Let's see what he means by that. Three key things were touched upon in his report, outlined below.- First-party strength may come at the expense of third-party publishers. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are ramping up production on their exclusive, first party titles. It was the opposite last cycle, but who knows where this cycle will take us.
- The new $60 price tag is going to stick. New ways to gain revenue, like in-game advertising, downloads, online stuff, will also prove to have some staying power.
- The PC gaming market is on the decline. With the onset of large HDTV's and the "console gaming experience continues to improve versus PC gaming", there's simply more draw to consoles. Couple that with the fact that online gaming has invaded the console market, there's little advantage to PC gaming left.
That's all well and good, but what is saying that Sony's failure will bring down the industry? Unless he's talking about certain genres or publishers that thrive on Sony's console suffering along with them (first and second party publishers, niche publishers), we're not sure about his angle. Anyone else got any ideas?
