It's a strange question I put before you, and a question that may well not have an answer. The numbers for Sony's first quarter have been released, and the news, especially for the gaming side of the equation, isn't looking good. But does Skyrim's recently-released DLC, Dawnguard, explain why?
The numbers looked like the fiscal equivalent of a train wreck, if the train were carrying the equivalent of all the fake blood used in the entire Saw series. Sony's first quarter accounted for a $312 million loss. Worse yet, $45 million of that loss came from the gaming division alone. Sony's even adjusted its figures for the third quarter downward even farther due to a combination of factors, including "uncertain exchange rates" and "trends in the global economy".
But is there another, maybe less concrete, explanation? Recent reports also came out suggesting that the Dawnguard expansion pack for PS3 was still delayed, and wouldn't be coming out for an as yet undetermined length of time for the simple reason that Bethesda was "not yet satisfied" with the PS3 edition.
The PC version has been in play for some time. The Xbox 360 version, I already beat that playing as the Dawnguard and haven't yet gone back to play the vampire side of things. But PS3 players are still waiting for Dawnguard. That's unusual. In turn, that may be what drove the drop.
One of the biggest problems in a historical sense that I've been able to spot is that there isn't much reason to go with PS3 over Xbox 360. Admittedly, Microsoft was dropping the ball like it was on fire and venting rattlesnake venom at random intervals thanks to the Red Ring crisis, but the newest Xbox 360 seems largely RRoD-free.
Thus, it brings us to a matter of games. Sony simply doesn't have a whole lot of exclusive titles. This is actually much the same problem that Microsoft had back in the original Xbox days; obviously there's some room for debate here, but the games are comparable, with Microsoft having most of Sony's offerings and plenty all its own.
So maybe the differences in the offerings are what's keeping Sony down. Maybe it's the overall economic environment. Maybe it's the value of the yen against all other currencies. Maybe it's all of those combined. Either way, though, Sony needs a change...and fast.
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