Ever since The Playstation 3′s launch, much has been made about its less than stellar sales. Nintendo has been praised for their strategy behind the Wii; targeting a segment which had been untouched in the video game industry: the non gamers.
Nintendo has made a fortune selling their console system to those who normally wouldn’t be in the market for one. Grandparents? Soccer moms? Four year old children? Check, check and check. Nintendo’s risky strategy to target these non gamers sure paid off, they have sold almost 72 million units since its release (http://www.vgchartz.com/).
Xbox responded by positioning themselves on the other end of the gaming spectrum. Microsoft decided to make the Xbox 360 the “gamers console”. It was positioned as the option for the hardcore video-gamer, who consoles had traditionally targeted. Xbox was successful in positioning themselves as the “gamers’” console and Sony had to respond.
Their first real attempt at positioning was the “It Does Everything” tagline. An attempt to make the PS3 more mainstream by showing off its multiple entertainment uses. It was a logical strategy, the PS3 offers lots of entertainment value including a Blue Ray DVD player for a very reasonable price. Sony pushed it but it never took off. Playstation sales were not where Sony would have liked them.
Recently, Sony has taken a page out of Apple’s playbook, and it might just work and successfully position the PS3 for dominance of a market. Sony has rolled out their “Play, Create, Share” strategy.
Apple is successful because of a trickle down effect of sorts with their products. Before Apple took off and became as popular as they are today, they were the only option in the “creative” community. You couldn’t go to any office or home studio of someone who did graphics, or video editing and find a PC being used. Creators were Apple’s target market.
The trickle down effect caught on and now 1 in every 2 college student has a Mac for their computer.
Sony is now hoping to initiate this strategy. With Sony’s new approach, they are hoping to target the content creators who are the gaming world’s influentials. In a perfect world, these “creators” will be drawn in by the customization and vast creation options and will encourage others to adopt Sony’s line of products.
It’s a great strategy for Sony. This new market doesn’t compete with Nintendo’s or Xbox’s targets, thus making all “gamers” in their target. This expands their target market potential greatly and doesn’t put them in direct competition with anyone. They can be successful at the same time as Nintendo and Microsoft.
It will take time to tell how successful this strategy will be, but I think it’s a step in the right direction for Sony.
Now excuse me when I go tweak my Uncle Sam Mod on my PS3.
[...] the original post here: A look into Playstationu00e2u0080u0099s Strategy: Play, Create Share Categories: Uncategorized, playstation, xbox Tags: house, microsoft, playstation, ps3, search, [...]
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