Archive notice: This article was originally published on May 16, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Electronics company Sony intends to orient itself more strongly toward competitor Nintendo in the video-game sector in future. According to the Financial Times Deutschland, the company aims above all to reach new groups of buyers with its current PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable consoles. Its previous strategy, aimed primarily at young people and gaming enthusiasts as the target group for consoles and associated games, is to be expanded. Alongside a dedicated range of software titles, Sony is also relying on a broad spectrum of value-added services. Following Nintendo’s example, these are intended increasingly to win over target groups that have so far been less interested in video-game consoles.
“We are beginning to broaden the horizons for the PS3,” the FTD quoted Kazuo Hirai, head of Sony’s video-game division, as saying. “This will become apparent in the games released this year,” Hirai added. New audiences are to be reached, for example, with titles such as the quiz game “Buzz! Quiz TV” and the music game “SingStar.” The planned launches this year of Sony’s own online video service and the virtual meeting place Home are also expected to contribute. In Home, users can move through a 3D environment using a virtual character. The service was scheduled to launch in autumn 2008. Sony was also working intensively to build advertising within video games into a lucrative business area. At the end of February, the group announced it intended to open its in-game advertising platform for PS3 to US advertisers.
Nintendo has succeeded with its Wii and Nintendo DS handheld in attracting entirely new customer groups to video games. The intuitive controls of the Wii, combined with a broad offering of accessible casual games and new concepts such as the fitness title Wii Fit, have increasingly enthused families and older people. Sony has not overlooked this development. It intends to follow suit with the new strategic direction.
Sony is also responding to weak sales figures for its games consoles. According to Hirai, 10.5 million PS3 consoles had been sold worldwide by the end of 2007, five million of them in Europe. Although Sony had overtaken Microsoft in this respect, the software company had sold more consoles overall to date. High production costs, manufacturing difficulties, expensive components and a shortage of games had also burdened Sony’s results at the PS3 launch. “We did not have as much software as we had hoped,” Hirai said. Even though most problems had since been resolved, Sony cut its PS3 sales forecast for the current fiscal year from 11 million to 9.5 million units at the start of 2008.
