Sony Not Concerned With Market Share
By some accounts the PlayStation 3 controller was given tilt sensors only recently, with reports suggesting that some developers found out about the controller's new feature only two weeks before the Electronic Entertainment Expo, where it made its debut in May. But Sony has hit out at this and talk that it ripped off Nintendo, saying that the changes have been coming for much longer than that.
"We've had a positive reaction to the controller and obviously some people have asked if it's a last minute thing," Sony's European boss, David Reeves, told trade paper MCV. "It's not - it's been planned for around two and a half years."
"If you have a device that includes 50 or 55 patents, you can't reveal it, as someone will try to file a patent to stop it. We have already had some positive feedback on it from publishers."
The caterwauling between Sony and Nintendo will probably go back and forth for a while still, but it misses Sony's prime goal for the next generation.
"The name of the game is not market share, it's how fast we can grow the industry - our ambition is to grow 15 per cent a year on hardware and software if we can," Reeves told MCV.
"We want to try and double digital entertainment in the next five to six years. Whether we have 40, 50, or 60 per cent market share is not that important."
Benign as Reeves' comments may seem, some will write them off as pre-emptive damage control, to temper the expected loss of market share Sony is going to suffer in the next generation.
Sony's most direct rival, Microsoft, has already had its Xbox 360 on sale for more than half a year, and the company is confident that it'll have a 10 million unit lead by the time the PlayStation 3 launches in November.
Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games
Incroyable ! On est hyper loin des traditionnels bains de confiance à la Kaze Hirai ! Sony qui avoue ne pas chercher à être leader du marché en termes de base nistallée, c'est tout autre chose à ce à quoi nous avions été habitués.
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