why NCsoft decided on the playstation 3

[joeorc]

Home won't sell PS3 - NCsoft
17/10/07 09:57

NCsoft's director of product development believes Home's fortunes are dependent on PlayStation 3's installed base, and not the other way around.

Thomas Bidaux told our sister site GamesIndustry.biz that Home is "very interesting", but he believes it will "remain quite limited" unless it offers something significant beyond customisation of avatars.

He is also unconvinced that it will encourage take-up of the console. "One of the limitations is linked to the PlayStation 3 - so the success of Home is 100 per cent tied to the PS3's penetration into the market," he said.

"I don't think you can say you will sell more PS3s because of Home, but if the PS3 had the right penetration in the market, then yes - Home will be very interesting."

Bidaux also made the point that Sony's history of keeping a console on the market for a significant length of time, and its strength as a hardware company, were critical to NCsoft's decision to partner with the company on a range of games.

"[Y]ou don't want to roll out an MMO and make it obsolete because of a new platform a year after that," he pointed out. "You want to have your MMO for many, many, many years - as many as possible.

"So the PlayStation 3 is a good platform for us, and we assume it's going to be around for quite a long time. Early adopters, and the early days - we don't really worry too much at that point."

Bidaux also acknowledged that both Sony and Microsoft's hardware strategies are "valid" and "interesting" in their own ways, and agreed that people probably get a bit carried away trying to compare them.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=29663

Bidaux interview :

snippit:

Do you think Microsoft will have to release new technology sooner than Sony in that case?

I think that's the strategy. I don't know for sure, but I think it's the strategy. It's very interesting because Microsoft and Sony are two very different companies. One is a software company at its core, one is a hardware company at its core.

If you look at the 360 and the SDKs and the operating system, and the beginning of Xbox Live - that's all Microsoft's strengths. If you look at Sony, their strength is on the hardware, the longevity of the hardware, and it will be around longer than the 360.

So I think that Microsoft will release the Xbox 720, or whatever it will be called, before the PlayStation 4, for example - but both strategies are valid, they are interesting in their own ways.

It's been said that nowadays hardware is becoming less of a focus, while content is as important as ever, and services are increasingly so. Is that something you'd agree with?

When you have the minimum level of hardware required, then it's no longer a problem. If you have the connectivity, if you have the hard drive, if you have the minimum raw power, then actually it's the distribution of the services that's the most important part.

So yes, I totally agree. But you still have this accessibility issue, and the fact that the PS3 has the Blu-ray drive makes it very nice, so that as games become bigger and bigger, we know that we'll have space on the Blu-ray disc to put everything that we want for quite a while.

It goes in that direction - it's the longevity of the hardware that's important. Hardware isn't totally irrelevant, it's never something that you can totally discard.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=29663