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Reeves: We’re Still Standing
SCEE president David Reeves has responded to Sony’s poor Q3 financial results by claiming that the company still has fight in it.
“We simply have to suffer a little,” he told The Guardian, “go down in market share and mind-share.” Here, Reeves compared Sony’s predicament to the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle showdown between Ali and Foreman, a fight where Ali held a defensive stance in the early rounds while Foreman began to tire from his ongoing offensive, before Ali burst into life and stole the show.
“Go eight or nine rounds and let him punch himself out,” said Reeves, who didn’t explicitly characterise a certain other platform holder to Foreman. “We're still standing, we're still profitable and there's a lot of fight in us. I don't say we will land a knockout blow, but we're there and we're fighting."
In response to the quarterly results specifically, where Sony’s market share saw a troubling decline across all consoles, Reeves responded rationally: “My objective is financial - to make a profit in our territory by the end of March, and we will. Our priority has always been the PS3; the forecast was 10m at the beginning of the year and it's still 10m.”
Reeves also tried to soothe the growing difficulty many have with Sony’s reluctance to drop the price of the PS3. “If we'd cut the price, lost another billion dollars, we might have had a huge Christmas but it would have been followed by a huge loss,” he said, trying to bring emphasis on a business with more priorities than simply market share.
“Admittedly,” he later added, “in the current climate, more people will go for the lower price, but we still make a profit and that is our objective."
In regards to that market share, and the competitors that operate within it, Reeves was quick to emphasise the comparative strengths of Sony's home console: “With PS3, you can go online for free, it's got all the games you want, it's got a Blu-ray drive so you don't need a new player, you can store photos on it, and you've got Home.”
“It's difficult to talk about Nintendo,” he added, “because we don't look at their console as a competitor. We've learned from Nintendo how to grow the market and move from handheld device to device - they've done it brilliantly.”
Refreshingly, Reeves added that Sony has learnt from Microsoft as well, and chose to celebrate how far the industry has progressed, and that Sony and its competitors have collectively grown it "beyond all recognition.”
Reeves also reconfirmed that he isn’t looking to reduce the workforce at SCEE. Full interview at The Guardian.
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Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
I love how you guys neglect to mention that Microsoft has been loosing money with 1st gen XBOX all the way up to recently when they finally made profit in the gaming division.
Sony has had two successful generations, and this one is not going to just make them go out of business. Now they are here to stay, whether u like that or not. IMO there is batter line up on PS3 than XBOX 360 that is for sure... Lets not even talk about the multi plat since they will come out for both.
"PS3 reached 20m in less weeks than Xbox 360 did. But how is it doing compared to Wii, DS, PSP, and PS2 worldwide through the same number of weeks? Come in and see. "
Source > http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=2954
You're not really going to start citing vgchartz now are you, gwsmokey??? That site has been discredited so many times (they often go back and revise figures from earlier entries so they don't look so far off) no one takes it seriously anymore.
Anyway, MS stated before they even launched the original x-box that they anticipated losing several billion dollars to get into the industry. That is the cost of business these days and MS was one of the few companies that could afford the price. Of more relevance is the opposite trajectories Sony and MS are going in the game industry NOW. MS went from third to second and Sony went from a dominating first to struggling third all in the space of one generation. Unlike numbers from VGChartz, those are indisputable facts.
Anyway, MS stated before they even launched the original x-box that they anticipated losing several billion dollars to get into the industry. That is the cost of business these days and MS was one of the few companies that could afford the price.
Yes, theirs certainly has been a measured, rational, COST CONSCIOUS entry into the market.
[/sarcasm]
If theres a decent price cut come April, theres no reason why that trend shouldn't start to reverse. They've got a decent line up this year - KZ2, God Of War 3, Uncharted 2, Infamous, Heavy Rain - all exclusives. I'm particularly excited about Uncharted 2.
Sony is going to lose alot more money this year.
And...
I'm waiting for the next part of this comment.
They'll be fine if they pony up for some exclusive games. That's what the 360 has a ton of that the PS3 has virtually none of.
Brian
www.brianwoods.com
Errr Sony are bigger than EA when it comes to software publishing and frankly the 360's first party stable is looking a little empty at the moment. Out of the two you get more first party and even second party support from Sony and you get all those multiplatform titles that you can also get on the 360.
What with the news that MS might loose Mass Effect's exclusivity it may prove to have not have been such a good idea off loading all their first part studios and relying on third party companies to provide "exclusive" IP.
That's because Sony always focused on having a wealth of 3rd party support and not much 1st party support. So when companies move they're screwed.
Microsoft is following the same pattern (perhaps worse) so the time will come when the same happens to them.
And this is why Nintendo always makes a profit. They will always have at least have a small group of great titles because of their wealth of first party support.
More exclusive games on the 360, Sony don't have any 1st party studios...
I'm pretty sure there are now about the same number of exclusives, or decent exclusives on both systems.
Sony have a lot more 1st party developers than Microsoft and Nintendo, they have all but dropped relying on 3rd party exclusives, because the cost of games this generation is so expensive, most will release for both systems, unless someone goes and drops a truck-load of money on their doorstep.
1st party studios seems a good way to go, they get good support from Sony during development, get help, advice and tips from other 1st party Devs etc.
Nintendo have always had 1st party exclusives, which is why I have always bought one of their systems, in every generation as there is always somethin that you can't get on another. I bought a wii on release and have been really let down by the games this Gen, whereas I have played some absolute Gems on the PS3 and 360 the past two years.
Microsoft's lack of 1st party devs is strange, I mean GOW, one of their biggest exclusive IPs is written by Epic in the UT3 engine. Strange for an exclusive hey!