A big thank you to those of you who were seriously trying to move the conversation forward rather than descending to ad hominem attack. You raised some good points and I tried to respond to most of them (even the personal ones) but I would like to tie these things into a single rebuttal.
First, I am asking a different question than most of you. Many of you are asking the question, "Did Sony make the best gaming console ever?" and come back in the affirmative. I tried to praise the technical achievements in the opening graphs, but evidently wasn't strong enough. Let me be clear: This console is awesome and I may even *buy* one, it's that good. But that isn't the question I'm asking. I'm asking, "What should Sony do to stay viable as a company?" Unfortunately these are radically different questions and even though Sony has just debuted a superior console, it won't simultaneously satisfy the need to keep Sony afloat. Let's be clear here: Sony hasn't had a profitable year in 5 years. It announced another 10,000 layoffs and has restructured the executive suite in an effort to get back on track. The PS4 will not rescue this company. Sony does not have the resources to gamble on another overengineered solution that is beautiful but a financial burden. That was 3DTV. Unfortunately, this year Sony is doing it again with Ultra HDTV. To also push out a PS4 that is beautiful, elegant, and creates photorealistic games that hardcore gamers will love but won't immediately grab 20 million unit sales this holiday season is a mistake.
This gets at my very dangerous claim that Xbox 360 is better than the PS3. I realized I was being a bit loose with my writing when I didn't explain in detail and many of you asked for an explanation (or insinuated there wasn't one) so I owe you one. Take the phrase I wrote, "Microsoft's Xbox 360 is the best-selling and most widely used game console of the current generation" and parse it this way, "Microsoft's Xbox 360 is the best (selling AND most widely used) game console of the current generation" -- the boolean AND in there to signify that both conditions have to be met for the phrase to be true. That's not how I wrote it and even at the time I realized I could have explained in more detail but didn't want to burden the larger point. I obviously shouldn't have shortcut this. In fact, explaining this will further add to my point. I believe this statement for the following reasons: a) The Wii has actually sold the most units, but it is the *least used* console of the three, meaning it grabs fewer hours of attention than the rest; b) yes, Sony has exceeded the Xbox's reach by 1mm, but from all the broadband providers who have shared their IP traffic analysis with me, the Xbox grabs significantly more IP traffic time than the PS3. True, this could mean that PS3 gamers could be doing all of their gaming offline, but that would be its own kind of failure. Mathematically speaking, for the Xbox to be a "better selling AND more used" console all it has to do is get its users to use it for 1.4% more minutes per day than the PS3 (77/76=1.013, or 1.3% more units sold). From the broadband data I have access to, the Xbox has blown way past that threshold.
Why is that important? Because engaging people with the box requires letting them do more than game. Xbox Live Gold members, for example, spend an average of an hour a day watching video on the box. It's not gaming, it doesn't earn respect from the legends of the gaming world, but it does give Microsoft a deeper digital customer relationship, one that the company can monetize more fully (something Sony needs) and can use to bridge to other experiences. That is a necessary element of the next generation of consoles and while Sony letting you push your gaming experience out over the internet is indeed cool, it won't engage a new audience and it won't add dramatically new minutes of engagement to the day of a PS4 user.
Finally, for those of you who chose to make this personal, I knew before I wrote this that gaming is like religion to some people and any suggestion that a favorite prophet has fallen is met with claims of heresy. But I'm trying to prop up this particular prophet's arms (if you get the reference, I'll be very impressed). You should really be hoping my words are read in Tokyo, not disregarded, especially if you want this faith to survive this crisis so that you can eventually argue with me over a PS5 roll-out.
