by Levi Ritchie

Created on: June 23, 2008   Last Updated: November 03, 2008

Humor me for a moment. Ask yourself the question "What do I want most in a gaming console?" Think about it for a few seconds. Try to limit your answer to only one or two items. Got it?

For most people, the obvious answer is "frequently released, quality games." For others, it is "Easy to use and well maintained online service." Then to even others, the answer will be "Creative control schemes and software".

You are unlikely to hear someone say "Cutting edge graphical capabilities." It is now well known that in a gaming era totally dominated by the Nintendo DS and the Nintendo Wii (as far as sales go, anyway), few people are really concerned with how realistic their games appear. Years back, when the original Sony Playstation was competing with the Nintendo 64, the extra boost of power the Playstation had over the N64 allowed it to introduce brand new kinds of gameplay that only a system of that kind of power would be able to create. The 3D RPG and Racing markets gained serious momentum because of the Playstation 1.

For the past couple of years, Sony has been forced to realize that they aren't in that same situation. Hardware, even in the case of the Wii, no longer serves as a significant boundary to gaming. Microsoft went a tad overboard when they released the Xbox 360 early with overheating problems and technology that would be obsolete in a little more than a year, thanks to the hard work of Nvidia hardware developers on the PC market. Sony went the extra mile, releasing it's system a year later than that of Microsoft. Sony's marketing department underestimated the selling power of the comparatively weak Wii, and the PS3's sales were hurt by the almost simultaneous launch of Nintendo's system.

It would have been a much more forgivable offense if the exact same thing hadn't happened in the PSP vs. DS battle years back. Sony released a powerful uber media device, playing on every conceivable wish the iPod and GBA fans of the time had, and Nintendo trumped them by doing something completely new at a cheaper cost to both Nintendo and the consumer.

All in all, Sony has a seriously harsh lesson to learn. Fortunately, they seem to be on track for a better future. The PS2 is still a massively successful system, and continues to come out with new (good) games long after the Xbox and Gamecube are dead. They've dropped costly first-party support for most PSP games, with the exception of must-have Sony fan titles like Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core and the various Ratchet

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