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This isn’t the year of the PS3.

November 13th, 2008 at 11:08 am · 103 Comments

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Hype, hype, hype.  Oh how I hate to get caught up in your backwash.  Earlier this year, pseudo-journalists around the Internets were proclaiming that “This was the year of the PS3.” They attempted to buoy their opinions on the backs of LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, Blu-Ray winning a “war” and the perceived waning of popularity of the Wii and Xbox 360.

Yeah, well, they were all kinds of wrong, cuz the PS3 crapped the bed and hasn’t done jack to step up it’s game.

There, I said it.  More flame baiting, anecdotal observations and the plain truth, after the jump.

So many media outlets went out of their way to fawn over the PS3 and make stupid proclamations.  Here’s a few:

MSNBC, EA, and all the ridiculousness right here.

Look, there’s no two ways around it.  Winning the format war and Metal Gear Solid 4 were THE high points of the year for the PS3.  Say what you want about LittleBigPlanet, but nobody is talking about it at all, despite it’s high praise and innovative community, even if it is destined to be a million seller. Resistance 2′s single player campaign is an critical failure.  Sure the multiplayer has long legs, but people don’t buy PS3 games for the multiplayer component alone.

Instead, the Wii continues on it’s path to madness and the Xbox 360 continues to undercut the PS3′s price, exploiting the Blu-Ray player’s price tag and making it look more and more ridiculously expensive, despite the expanded capabilities of the big shiny black box. Further adding insult to injury, Blu-Ray just hasn’t taken off as it was expected to after winning the format war.

The biggest insult to the PS3 is the continued issues it has with multi-platform games.  Of this year’s crop of games, only GTA IV and Mirror’s Edge have been definitively shown to look better than the much less powerful Xbox 360.  Fallout 3 and Bioshock both embarrassed PS3 owners with it’s poor performance and less than Xbox 360 graphics.  It’s a shame.

As a result, Xbox 360′s, the main PS3 competition, has taken off on the success of Fable 2, Left 4 Dead and Gears of War 2, while the PS3 sales remain flat. What can the PS3 do?  Who knows.  I’m not the guy you should be asking.  I’m just canary in the coal mine calling out all the so-called “experts” who proclaimed that 2008 would be the PS3′s year. Let me tell you that it surely is not.

Better luck next year?




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Tags:
Categories: Editorial · PlayStation 3

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  • Theminipanda

    Oh, please, for the love of god can we stop with the Blu Ray thing guys? the fact is that most movies made in blu ray are like 25% more expensive for a quality increase I cant even see.

    http://www.digital-digest.com/poll.php?pollid=28&url=&result=1

    they have a poll showing that over 50 percent see little or no increase in quality of the product.

  • Zvolen

    Wait, you talk about your “sources” you quote in your article but I wonder if you yourself have even read those articles. Your MSNBC reference, if you read it states that 2008 “should” be the year of the PS3 since it had one the HD format war, upcoming titles and in January of 2008 it beat out the Xbox in sales for the first time. The article goes on to clearly state, “So will 2008 be the breakout year for the PS3? Probably not.” And finally as their conclusion states, “The contest is for second place right now. And Microsoft just has too much of a head start on Sony to make 2008 a reversal of fortune, leaving Sony again holding the bronze over a console that was supposed to deliver the gold.” Yet you felt oblique to use this resource as an arguing point saying they made “stupid proclamations”.
    The Electronic Arts article did not go in depth about how this will be PS3’s year but only stated they “expect PS3 to outsell 360 in 2008” again nothing to do with which console will have more software sales, or even if will be “THE” year. But I will still report the statistics I have found on hardware sales this year between the two consoles, taken from http://www.vgchartz.com. The date range these results were taken from was 01/06/08 – 11/16/08. The Wii started the year with about 20 million units sold and currently has 36 million sold, which is a net result of 16 million units sold thus far in 2008. EA’s estimate according to your article was 12-14 million. The Xbox 360 started the year with 16 million units sold and currently has about 23 million units sold a difference of 7 million units sold thus far in 2008. EA’s estimate was slightly low at 6-8 million. Lastly the PS3 started the year at 9 million units sold and currently has 17 million units sold a difference of 8 million units sold. EA’s estimate was slightly high at 9.5-11.5 million units. However again plainly shows that although this may have not been a gang buster year that was projected the overall argument is in fact correct, PS3 HAS sold more units than the Xbox 360 this year to date.
    The last reference to your article was a search on N4G with “year of the PS3” in the search box. Most of the results are no longer than a paragraph from small blogs stating the same thing as the MSNBC article that 2008 “should” be PS3’s year or would it “could” be or it is “poised” to be which is certainly not proclaiming the next coming. Although I hardly think any of these results were major news outlets.
    Now, to respond to your specific thoughts which are personal opinion and have already been picked apart I will give my own opinion. In the article you state “…but people don’t buy PS3 games for the multiplayer component alone” you know this based on what? I will argue that people do in fact buy games based on the multi-player component alone, this according to over 500K people who bought Warhawk for the PS3 which is strictly an online game. You also state the success of the Xbox based on only a few games all of which are exclusive to the Xbox and one of which is not even out yet. A better gauge would be to judge the sales on a multi-platform game such as Far Cry 2 which has sold 319K units on the PS3 versus 411K on the 360, which now all of the sudden doesn’t seem so bleak. Although Fallout has a larger discrepancy I would even allow that for a better research on how the games or the systems are doing. For arguments sake Fallout has sold 308K on the PS3 and 580K on the 360 again not HUGE numbers given the greater market saturation of the 360 worldwide.
    Lastly, you are entitled to your opinion which is all you truly stated just has others are entitles to theirs, but to cast your opinion off has fact for simply including some links then request others to also have facts or their opinion is wrong is just idiotic. You guys, the Red Show, simply play what you enjoy nobody can blame you for that. But to cast off the PS3 like it is not a competitor in this game is ignoring one whole side of the argument. The success of either platform does not depend on what you guys deem is fun or personally play and that is what BOTH of your arguments were based on. You wanted the research our concrete evidence has a response and I doubt even this will satisfy that thirst or change yours or anyone’s mind. However that is what’s great, we each can have our own opinions and each be right.

  • EvenSteven

    I own a 360, Wii, and PS3.

    The only one collecting dust is the PS3.

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