PS3 Struggles in 360 WAR Questions Answered!

[Teazle]

Jet Cero has got it wrong if by saying that the PS3 is a gaming console he means something like _primarily_ a gaming console rather than a console for gaming inter alia.

The main reason derives from Sony's business interests as a vertically integrated producer of multimedia content and hardware alike. They develop and publish music, movies, television shows, video games and probably are involved in other media in other ways (maybe interests in print (Sony Reader)? broadcast? dunno). PS3 and PSP are clearly conceived as hardware platforms for the delivery of the content that make money for Sony. This means: not just games. That's the underlying business reason why PS3 is designed to function as a multimedia device. Despite the success of PS2 as a games machine, with the PS3 the intention was to expand the functionality of the device and the brand image of Playstation so as to make even more money for Sony by promoting higher consumption of their own content. This business model sets them apart from e.g. Nintendo who are quite content to make dedicated games hardware (after all, contentwise Nintendo only produce games).

Sony made gestures in this direction with PS2 and even PS1 (CD playback) but the hardware wasn't advanced enough to realize fully the Kurtargian vision. (E.g. the PS2's video playback isn't good enough for it to replace your DVD player in the way the PS3 does.) PS2 would have been more multifunction if only they could have built it cheaply enough; that it came out as a mainly-games console was a concession of sorts that Kutargi hoped to rectify with PS3.

However some people may wish to think of PS3 as a games-only or games-mainly machine, that would be trebly wrong. First, PS3 was never intended by its manufacturer as a single-use device; second, such would not be in the interests of the manufacturer; third, in point of brute fact PS3 does not work only or mainly as a games console.