PS3 Fanboy

Totally agree. They banked on brand loyalty way to much (especially in America, where all you have to do is look as professional sports to see we'll go wherever the money is). It was a grave miscalculation/error on their part and Microsoft has really one-upped them in this respect. In all honesty that is what Microsoft does best, buy things to compensate for their own lack of ability to drive content development.

I never believed the "we don't pay for exclusives" line anyway. Stuff like co-marketing where they share or pay for a games advertising with the PS logo at the end has been done for a long time. that's just one way to get a developer on board, especially when advertising can get very expensive and eat into game profits.

It's not a question of profitability of first party games, its branding.

Consumer associate certain games or genres (like GTA, and RPG's were with PS2) to certain systems, this helps enable the system to have an identity or definable brand. Microsoft has aggressively targeted these to try to bring PS2 gamers (read: majority) to transition to the 360 and not PS3). They also went to japan and sign exclusive deals with companies that the hardcore gamers revere, such as Treasure, to create the market they have now. So far they have been pretty successful, just look at their lineup of XBLA offerings.

To that end, though, and where they are behind (as is tradition in Microsoft in innovation. buying innovation is all they can do, if you look at all of their internal development, there is a lot of me too stuff, or sequalitis. No company is immune to that, but I feel Sony's strength is its 1st and 2nd party devs. While this is generally great, not every dev is insomniac, which can crank out an AMAZING game every year. This gen has seen a lot of growing pains (especially on PS3) and it takes time for devs get games out. This is the reason PS3 needs to pick up the slack through 3rd party games, and unique exclusives.

Yeah, it's really Microsoft's fault that Sony dropped the ball at the beginning of this generation. It has nothing to do with bringing their machine to market last, not supporting the RPG genre that put food on Sony's table last time around, making the Cell so hard to program for (while simultaneously not going out of their way to help developers...well...develop for it,) and (worst of all) being so arrogant to expect an automatic brand loyalty from both consumers as well as developers, based *solely* on the fact that they were king of the hill last generation (regardless of whether or not they had the best platform.)

Yup, totally "M$'s fault," as you so eloquently put it.

This is why I comment on Joystiq instead of the Fanboy sites. The man makes a bold, but reasonable statement, but gets voted to oblivion simply because he voiced something that is not pro-PS3.

The only console I own this generation is a PS3. Feel free to read my post history and see how I defend it. But I'm also reasonable enough to not plug my ears and tell someone to shut up, just because their well-reasoned point is not something I like to hear.

Someone tells you that you screwed up, that everything is your fault. Yeah, it hurts to hear it, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily wrong.

We only have two kinds of posters here, PS3 fans and Microsoft defenders. The latter kind tend to come out of the woodwork when they feel their precious console and company is under attack.

And they talk about a Sony Defense Force...sheesh.

Agreed.

At the same time, Sony had no idea it would be in the position it's in right now. This why they reneged on a few stances they took prior to the PS3 launch (i.e. "Rumble is last gen" ---> Dual Shock 3, "we don't pay for exclusives" ---> this very article). If anything, Sony is adapting to the market. I agree with you though, had Sony been open to money hatting earlier, it would be interesting to see where things would've been. However, is it true that Sony money hatted Namco for Soul Calibur 3 on PS2?

Bring back Ken I say!
:)