When we think about great gaming companies (nowadays) three names come to mind: Sony, Nintendo and Sega Microsoft.
But lately we saw the joining of another potential competitor to those three: Apple. With their incredibly hyped cellphone and it’s great touchscreen interface game companies seized the opportunity to try and grab some of it’s increasingly-bigger market share and develop games for it.
Alongside with Nintendo, Apple has settled itself as a serious competitor in the gaming industry. Nintendo is nowhere close to being threatened, but Sony, who are similar to Apple from an industry perspective see themselves cornered from both the from and behind.
They make cellphones, they make computers, they make games and gaming hardware. Why haven’t they come up with a device that takes advantage of these three aspects? Must they always be independent companies working with their minds oblivious of what another sector is doing? This is why Apple was able to come out of nowhere and settle itself.
Sony Ericsson has been struggling with sales, and Sony’s Entertainment Divisions want to bring proffit up. But they seem to do nothing about it, at least so far. The only measures they seem to be taking is to lay off people and minimize expenses.
And while they tighten their belt, Microsoft and Nintendo (which have plenty of money to spend) continue paving their way and getting ahead of them. And with the rumor of an upcoming portable console from M$ it will only be a matter of time before Sony becomes obsolete.
Sony has right now incredible titles, some released, but most still upcoming. Long were the days when those 5 or so titles were enough to declare them kings with little or no more effort from other third-party games. Now Sony has (IMO) 2 must have titles, and all the rest are either multi-platform or almost irrelevant to what Microsoft or Nintendo have to offer.
As for the mobile industry, Sony just went down the hill ever since the release of the PSP. The console received a lot of attention for people that were eager for such a portable device to emerge with wifi, possibility of upgrading and expanding, eager to take advantage of the device’s functionality.
What did Sony do? They locked down their console, again and again and waged a ridiculous war for many months against their customers, the people who were keeping them in business. In the end people lost interest in the platform, and only went “back” to it thanks to a few nice third and first-party titles.
Personally I’m a fan of the whole Patapon/LocoRoco/Echochrome phase, because each of those games provide a unique and fun experience. They are what mobile gaming should be about, and not 32 bit RPG re-releases with new dungeons and microscopic sprites.
What did Apple do? They saw the interest of their customers and announced plans to allow them to develop and buy applications for their devices.
Apple’s way of listening to their customers is to release updates to support the platform, and do so in a proffitable manner that is both good for them and their clients.
Sony’s way of listening to their customers is to release an unfinished/flawed product, fail with it, and release a new version years later with none of the original mistakes, great features, but no longer holding any relevance whatsoever in the industry. A prime example of this is their Walkman franchise.
A future example of this is the upcoming Playstation Go! (or whatever the new PSP ends up being called) when it ditches UMD and offers what people truly wanted from the PSP when it first came out.
That is a Panasonic cellhone with what appears to be Ridge Racer connected to a large screen TV. This could have been you Sony, and it’s shameful that it isn’t.