I think most people are seeing things in the wrong perspective here. The current debate on whether or not Sony did well enough this generation does Microsoft's efforts some discredit. But the conclusions are also still premature. I've long been wanting to make a post making a very detailed analysis of the whole next-gen business, one that I will also be updating and revising as new details emerge. I'm fairly sure I'll still be doing that, but right now I am at work so I'd better not.
Some brief points though. I'm only listing the bright sides for Microsoft and Sony for now:
Credits to Microsoft, for choices they made that are helping them at least on the short term.
1. Microsoft made huge investments last gen, and part of its success this gen come from those investments paying dividents.
2. Microsoft went into this gen with a very clear strategy based on lessons learnt (from both the previous gen and from the Dreamcast through Peter Moore), and that was being a) cheaper and b) first to market, since those were the two things they experienced their biggest disadvantages versus the Playstation 3. All their descisions follow from this strategy, being a) having a HDD-less SKU, making as many things optional, and transfer some of the required profits to peripherals and b) dropping the HD-DVD drive, and making sure that development for the 360 would be relatively easy
Now here's Playstation 3 going into this generation.
Credits for Sony for daring to look at the long term:
1. Sony matched the difficult task of creating a worthy follow up to the original Playstation and managed to not only sell it much faster, but also selling more of them and the console is looking to live on for a few years still. Their integration of DVD features was also a big success, as were many of their attempts to create new and interesting franchises including peripherals.
2. Sony has always been forward looking when it comes to hardware and expanding the console market, and they have been more ambitious with the PS3 than ever before. Their primary goal was to make a console that would last another 10 years, and have the potential to further expand the market. For this, they definitely needed a next step in storage capacity, processing power, online capabilities, and multi-media functionality that the PS3 now offers, and further improve their build quailty (as PS2 did suffer from some disc-laser reliability issues, just as the PS1). In the last part of the PS2's lifecycle they also started to have trouble keeping up with the online features of Live, being stuck with a console that was not easily upgradeable and had no unified online vision. They also understand that while they have been primarily a hardware business, they need to work on their software side, hence the new role of Phil Harrison. Finally, as with the 360, it needs to be able to still compete at price, so build cost needs to be able to come down fast.
Before we go into a look at what possible mistakes they have made, let's look at where Sony and Microsoft stand right now:
Microsoft: at nearly the end of its second year, it has sold 12 million units, of which 8 million in the U.S. (same difference as last gen, by the way, where also 66% was sold in US and 33% in EU).
Sony: at nearly the end of its first year (minus 5 months in Europe) 5 million sold (about 40% US, 25% europe, and 35% others).
To be continued (including Nintendo)
