Four Reasons Why the Playstation 3 Might Fail!

That's hundreds of sweaty nerds angrily shifting in their chairs as they read the headline of this article. They're readying their blogs and hastily calling their friends to try to hack into my computer.

For some reason, the tech kids are really behind the Playstation 3, and any evidence that might support the idea that Sony will fail is pretty harshly attacked. I'm an early fan of the PS3 myself, but there's no denying that Sony will have to address a few major issues if it expects to beat Nintendo's Wii (get it?) and the Xbox 360 in the coming months. Here's a few reasons why Sony fans may need to freak out a little.

Price
This is the one everybody's talking about, and it's a pretty huge problem. $499 or $599 per system, depending on whether you want a big honkin' hard drive and better video output. Either price is massive for home users; many of the people in America wouldn't drop this kind of dough on a TV, much less something you hook up to a TV. Add in that you'll need a high definition brainbox and a few $60 games to really enjoy the features of your new half-a-grand-plus playground and you'll find that alot of people just can't afford it, especially with Nintendo's Wii costing under $250 and coming bundled with games. Sure, Sony will win the rich kid market at first, but if they don't sell enough units to justify their high priced contracts with game companies, developers are going to go to the Xbox 360 or Wii.

Bluray
Sony hasn't had much luck in the past with proprietary formats; their version of digital audio technology, ATRAC3, is widely mocked for its poor distribution and quality, and their miniDisc format failed miserably. The Universal Media Discs they sold for the Playstation Portable proved to be anything but, and Bluray may have the same fate. The Bluray discs are more expensive to produce than HDDVDs, and although they are considerably larger in terms of memory, there's a question as to how necessary that is. Besides, are people ready to throw DVDs away already and pay $25 and up for an increase in clarity that they won't even be able to see with a CRTV?

Sony did have alot of success with the PS2's DVD drive, which was a big unit mover in the early stages of the device. But Sony didn't invent DVD, and DVD was a giant step up from VHS. Bluray's great and all, but alot of people don't have high definition TVs yet, and many just don't think the graphical improvements are worth it. Sony's main means of justifying the massive price of the PS3 with the included Bluray player, which can cost quite a bit more than the whole system if bought alone, but if Bluray fails - and HD is strong enough to put up a fight - Sony will be left holding onto an expensive system whose price tag can't really be justified.

Online Capabilities
Xbox Live is widely considered to be the best online gaming service available, and for a good reason - Microsoft is great at making software. Sony? Eh, not so much. Check out their SoundStage music management software, which has one of the most aggravating interfaces on this planet. How can they expect to compete?
Simply put, they're going to need to really pour money into their online service. The problem is that they're not charging a monthly fee like Xbox Live does, which will mean more gamers, more problems, more people to keep happy, and less cash. So far, it's very unlikely that Sony's going to be able to win online gamers over; we'll know for sure in the next six months.

Programming's a Pain
We've heard from some developers that the Playstation 3 is going to be really friggin' hard to make games for. Others have denied that, and for the layman, there's really no way to say who's telling the truth. What we do know is that the more complex a game is, the harder it is to make, and the Playstation's going to have massive games. The Wii, in contrast, will be much, much easier to program for, since it's basically a souped-up Gamecube with some cool controller things. If you're a developer, and the Wii is popular, you can spend a lot less money making a Wii game and get a whole lot more dinero back.

All of these problems are possible to overcome, which is why this article is called "Four Reasons Why the Playstation 3 Might Fail" rather than "Four Reasons Why the Playstation 3 WILL Fail." We're not going to have a final answer on a lot of this stuff for a few months, and there's plenty of time for Sony to get their act together. There are a bunch of cool things about the Playstation 3, they just need to be properly explained; the motion sensitive controller, the absolutely stunning output, and the early but amazing graphics of coming games. Sony's going to have to show consumers why they're forking over five or six hundred bucks if they want to have any chance of winning this generation of the console wars.