PlayStation III vs. Nintendo Wii vs. Xbox 360

My post about the Wii has started generating some quality debate in the comments section. And as much as I'd like to perpetuate the dialogue there, those narrow confines aren't the ideal format for a discussion as polarizing as this one.

So I'm taking the fight out of the alley and into the street. We're gonna have a street fight.

A nerdy, nerdy street fight (no hitting below the pocket protector).

Round One

JLK makes the case for PS3:

The best system will win, and why is there any reason to think the PS3 won't be the best?

And I argue:

You have to define best. If you mean best as in best-looking with the fastest processor, then yes.

If you mean best as in best game experience or best practical purchase or best game system to play, then I will bet you dollars to pesos that the answer is a resounding, "no."

I've also got The Librarian in my corner:

Well, I think the ps3 won't be the best system this time. A massive processor and slick graphics do not fun make.

At this point we're all operating from the anecdotal. There aren't any hard and fast facts here, just opinions based on what we think and what we've played. I think SONY has priced the PS3 out of the range of most consumers, and JLK thinks that price isn't as limiting a factor to today's game console buyer - that excellent graphics will win over price point.

But we're just thinking.

It's looking a bit like this fight might just be between the Wii and PS3 - Xbox 360 doesn't seem to have anyone in his corner yet. But we're only getting started.

Round One: Draw

Round Two

The alley fight gets a little more than anecdotal now. I'm ready to start landing some solid hits:

Parents are not going to spend $600 on a christmas gift and another $100 on two games. That's a $700 investment just to get the thing in your living room.

You take your average parent who walks into Best Buy and looks at the game displays: the 3 consoles are all there.

One they've seen before - it's old hat.

The next has graphics that look great, but hardly more impressive than the Xbox they just looked at. And there's a huge $599 price tag on it...

Then they see the last console. It's tiny. The kids at the store are holding the "controller" and swinging it like a baseball bat - and they're actually playing baseball on-screen. To the parent, the graphics look just as good as the other two systems. And hell, look at how much fun they're having swinging that controller around.

Oh, and what's that? The price is less than half the PS3? It's only $250?

Sold!

Your average consumer can buy a Wii and own TEN games for the price of a PS3 and two games.

Xbox 360 sales have been bolstered only by the fact that it's had a year of being the sole "next-gen" console available.

Once it's no longer the only competetor, 360 sales will drop dramatically.

I mean, it was outsold this year 232,000 to 221,000 by the PlayStation 2! And it was outsold by the Nintendo DS and GBA, which moved over 300,000 units this year.

Zing! There are a few good straight rights in there, and the uppercut at the end with those sales figures makes for a good start to the round. I'm feeling pretty spry now - duck and weave, stick and move!

But JLK has been playing it cool, waiting for the moment to land a few haymakers. His left cross makes solid contact:

The gaming industry is huge. Bigger than movies. Gamers are shelling out big bucks anyway, and for what? Great games. That's why when I say best, I mean gameplay. The system that makes the best games with the coolest graphics will win. That's it.

Sony has been the leader since PS1 took hold of the market, and there's no reason to think that with all of the R and D that is going into this thing that Sony is willing to sacrifice at all any quality of gameplay.

Gamers are already spending the cash, and when the PS3 comes out, if it is as good as I expect it will be, then the gamers are going to gladly fork it over to the company that offers the best games.

Damn! I've got to take a few steps back and shake the fuzzies out. I think there's a cut opening over my right eye...

And it looks like JLK has the colonel in his corner - KFC steps in with:

Nintendo has disappointed me with their past two console systems. I only use my Gamecube for Resident Evil and the Gameboy player attachment.

Ow. Firsthand experience with disappointing Nintendo consoles. Say what you want about sales numbers, it's the word-of-mouth that hits hardest. And it stings.

The judges scored this round for the PS3. The Wii is getting that cut looked at byhis trainers. And Xbox 360 receives no points this round, as it landed no punches and took a few crowd-pleasing hits to the face.

Round Two: PS3

Round Three

So rounds one and two were a recap - bringing the viewers at home up to speed. But now we're live, on the street, and I'm ready to come out swinging.

I want to start by addressing a specific point:

1. The gaming industry is huge. Bigger than movies.

Not so fast, my friend. While I don't disagree that the gaming industry has grown exponentially over the last 5 years, that statment is highly misleading - and vague.

It's impossible to find hard numbers on actual net revenues for the game industry as a whole, and it's more impossible to find those numbers for Hollywood. But the most current numbers I can find look like this:

According to the Entertainment Software Association, computer and video game sales for 2005 grew to $7 billion in 2005. In comparison, Box Office Mojo reports that domestic box office totals for 2005 were around $8.8 billion.

I realize that the ESA numbers don't include video game hardware such as consoles, but the Box Office Mojo numbers don't include worldwide releases, residuals, television options, or DVD sales. DVD sales alone made $15.5 billion in 2004.

If you're going to evaluate the "industries" as a whole side-by-side, video games are not even close to being bigger than movies.

But that's not the heart of my argument. The reason I think the SONY PlayStation III will be a failure has much less to do with the PS3 itself, and almost everything to do with SONY.

SONY has been slowly killing itself for the last decade. As a corporation, the company is financially unstable, its retail markets have reached far beyond their ability to support the number of products they develop, and sales of SONY products as a whole have tumbled dramatically.

The problems they had with the proprietary SONY DRM software have been called "the equivalent of a 9-11 event for the tech market." And that's only the tip of the iceberg. Here's a short list:

PS3 launch delays hit Sony's shares
Sony drags Nikkei lower
Sony's PSP stumbles
Sony PS3 delays, cost hurt stock
The civil war inside Sony
Microsoft cleans up SONY's mess
Apple recalls 1.8 million SONY batteries
Apple battery debacle could be big blow to Sony
At E3, Sony stumbles
Sony's huge PlayStation 3 bet
Why you shouldn't buy products from Sony this season
Sony: the rootkit of all evil?
Sony's new music downloading site's a flop

The list goes on.

But I'm not trying to hammer SONY for being a bad company. I love my SONY gear. And I love my PS2. I don't want it to seem like I'm a SONY hater...

I do believe that SONY has pitted a dangerously large portion of the company's fiscal future against an overpriced, unproven game system. When Microsoft did this with the Xbox, they lost money on every single unit sold. But they could do that, because Microsoft is fiscally sound - so fiscally sound that it can afford to pay millions in anti-trust fines.

SONY is not Microsoft.

The PS2 has dominated more than 70% of the console market since its release. Nintendo had nothing comparable to compete with. Microsoft has been content to slowly build its own share of the gaming marketplace, and will undoubtedly be a beneficiary of the overinflated price point on the PS3's release.

The reason I see failure in the PS3's future is that the risks are too high, the viability of the system is too untested and unknown, and the two major competitors will be solid, stable producers.

SONY will be the biggest roadblock to the PS3's success.

...So now it's your turn. Get to the comments section, and I'll post your replies up here on "the street." We'll see how many rounds this knock-down, drag-out lasts!