It’s stuff like this that makes me think someone needs to crack open Sony’s Ken Kutaragi and flip the breaker:
When it comes to game hardware, we are targeting 100 million units (of PlayStation 3 sales), just like PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2.
Bold, Mr. Kutaragi. Very bold. Especially when you consider the Xbox, which debuted almost exactly a year behind the PS2’s release, has sold 24 million units worldwide. The PS3 is more than likely going to be at least a year behind the 360, and Sony’s pretty much said as much that they’re using it as much to get Blu-Ray HD-DVD players into homes as they are to deliver quality videogames to consumers.
To continue flogging the poor dead horse, we also gotta look at the fact that what sold PS2s: The exclusive deals Sony had with SquareEnix and Rockstar to make sure two of the best selling franchises ever made their first (and in Final Fantasy‘s case, only) debut on Sony’s unit. Take into consideration that console exclusivity is going the way of the Dodo, and Ken’s prediction shifts from bold to nutso.
And besides, selling 100 million PS2s cost Sony $1 billion, and that was using technology that, outside of the processor, was already pretty cheap at the time. Enter three one-point-twenty-one-gigawatt processors, a media-reading device that’s been pushed back multiple times and the fact they’re not finding enough factories to produce PS3s (at least until the benjamins start greasing more gears and turbines). If Blu-Ray flops, I’m forced to wonder if selling 100 million PS3s is even in Sony’s best interest.
