For my final paper, I will be discussing the different strategies employed by the three competing video game systems that released in the past year. I will be dissecting their different marketing campaigns and evaluating their overall strategies in pushing their systems and capabilities to the consumers that they are specifically targeting. Part of this breakdown will include discussion about whether or not their strategies have been successful or not.
Recently, the Sony released it’s highly touted Playstation 3, the descendant of the extremely successful Playstation 2. Compared to the other two systems, the Playstation 3 definitely has the strongest processing and hardware components. However, the Xbox and Wii have definite competitive advantages in other arenas of the gaming industry. For Sony, the release of the Playstation 3 fell greatly short of expectations in the US and Japan. According to Markio Sanchanta for the Financial Times, Sony has had record-breaking success for the release of the Playstation 3 in Europe. Howard Stringer, Sony’s chief executive has stated that Sony was close to selling 800,000 units in Europe alone. This is a turnaround performance that the Playstation 3 sorely needed after less-than-stellar launches in the US and Japan. This article definitely emphasized that Sony was having success in Europe and the CEO estimates that they should continue to sell units in Europe. The difference behind the success in the European market and the one at home was that they entered the market with much more software backing up the PS3’s strong hardware. This is definitely the strategy that Sony must employee in order to recapture market share from its competitors. Without strong support from their game manufacturers, the PS3 will not be able to convince new customers to buy their high-priced system.
Despite the success of the system in Europe, Goldman Sachs still estimates that Sony will not see any profits from the PS3 until the first or second quarter of 2008. The only strong aspect of the system in its current state is the processing capabilities that current software does not even begin to utilize. Unfortunately for them, Microsoft and Nintendo have already developed a strong niche with their systems and Sony yet has their work cut out for them. From a marketing standpoint, the additional games in the European launch provided more material to show off the PS3’s capabilities. This is the reason why there was more success in this market as opposed to the other markets. To continue this trend, Sony will continue to emphasize the strong graphics of their games and push consumers into a state of sensory overload with pure processing power. Fortunately for the PS3, Sony is reluctant to kill off any unprofitable business and will strive to continue shipping the system, even if it is at a loss. For the future, Sony should maintain a strong output of games and start to ramp up the releases of the other features, such as online support, that the system promises to utilize.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment