My two cent's on next gen consoles ... Playstation 3

Last time I talked about Microsoft's next generation console the XBOX 360 and how it stacks up in the "console wars." Now it's time to take a look at the company that currently controls the worlds most popular console, with 80 million Playstaion 2's sold worldwide, Sony has shown that its Playstation brand is just as strong as ever. With the up coming Playstation 3 (PS3), coming up probably before the end of this year, expect big things from the industry leader.

So what might we expect? Well to start an online service system to rival Microsoft's Live Service, both Sony and Nintendo will be behind in this front since, Microsoft's Live service has matured quite a bit since its inception. Sony's version will probably be good, just probably not right away. The Japan based company has the resources to create such as service and a commitment to the Playstation brand that leads me to believe that they'll throw as much money as it takes to make it work. However, luckly they'll have the advantage on know what can go wrong right away, due to initial problems with Microsoft's XBOX Live service, hence if they were paying attention they'll be able to catch up; proably sooner than later. In either case that isn't Sony's main advantage, their biggest advantage has to be the popularity of the Playstation name brand, this can be seen since the days of the original Playstation. That console pushed Sega out of the console market and forced Nintendo to seriously re-thinking  it's strategy. The Playstation brand is almost synonymous with console gaming and has a huge fan base. With the Playstation's dominance in the console market has brought the most important factor with it, the games, there are thousands of them and some are pretty damn good. This advantage is allegedly in danger due to the fact that Microsoft's platform is so easy to develop for and the PS3 isn't which pushes away game developers, note this is all internet rumor stuff so take it with a grain of salt. Also had Microsoft's XBOX 360 gained huge shares in the market place, its possible many game developers may reevaluate which platform(s) they develop for and concentrate on. Obviously the last argument doesn't stick and the other threat hasn't been confirmed so, Sony's Playstation 3 will have a lot of games in varying quality but it will have a lot of them. In short "Playstation = Games" in most people's minds hence odds are Sony will still come out on top in the console wars, but they will probably not have the same dominance that its current Playstation 2 enjoys, they're the king of the hill and will be so until some one knocks them off. Next up I'll put up a posting about Nintendo's next generation console and why they're the wild card that may surprise everyone with the Revolution.