The Continuing Rise of Sony

For the few of you that continue reading this blog, you’ll notice the lack of articles about Sony.



The reason is very simple: Sony has not screwed up as much as the competitors in recent years. Especially Nintendo.



And their reward? Winning the 2013 Holiday Season and being a few months away from taking first place in the Eighth Generation race.


Sony, led by a great marketing campaign, excellent forward momentum, good arsenal of third-party games has won the holiday season even though there weren’t many exclusive titles for its newest system or its latest handheld. It already is closing in on the WiiU hardware sales and is slowly but surely separating itself from the troubled XBox One (still recovering from its summer of controversy).


The Playstation Vita will definitely lose against the 3DS, and may not even reach the sales of the original PSP. But the Vita is gaining traction in Japan and is handedly outselling Nintendo’s WiiU. A victory is a victory, even if it’s coupled by a couple losses. Let’s also add its sales have increased by over 160% in Europe since the release of the Playstation 4, so there might be a growing market in the England-and-beyond-Europe community.


Sony became smart by making the Vita a piggyback to the Playstation 4 as opposed to a full-on competitor against smartphones and Nintendo (the hardware fight has been pointless for two decades now. Nintendo owns this and it is their battle to lose). So the Vita is an expensive niche that can serve as a controller or a nice accessory to the reasonably-priced PS4.


PS4 has sold 4.7 million copies, and has survived the I-am-accidently-competing-against-my-own-system PS3 crossing the 80 million threshold and still making good money thanks to the mammoth success of Grand Theft Auto V an FIFA 13. And this is with only one of the PS4’s best-selling games being an exclusive, with Killzone on the list. So imagine what happens when Uncharted, Gran Turismo, God of War, Little Big Planet, and whatever Naughty Dog has up their sleeve releases. The main difference between Microsoft and Sony is that while Microsoft has more third-party power, Sony has made excellent strides in the first-party department.


And let’s recall that it has not even come out in Japan. Outselling the XBox 360 9 to 1 last generation, Sony has a lot of forward momentum heading through 2014 as the third-party hasn’t abandoned them like they have Nintendo, and they have yet to unleash their big weapons. It is a good time to be a Sony fan.


With the dust finally settling from 2013’s Black Friday and Holiday Season, it is definitely Sony’s victory as the PS3 continues selling, the Vita is earning a new life as a niche product, and the brand-new PS4 is inches away from overtaking the WiiU and becoming the top dog of the Eighth Generation.




Well done, Sony.