Back in 1977 at the dawn of video games and revolutionary system came out called the Atrai 2600. Those were the good times, before dark times, before the empire. Every day held new promise, the next great game was just around the corner and rumor had it that some day soon, the arcade classic ‘Pac-Man’ was coming to your living room. Atari announced that an even bigger and better console was being developed and others were being developed with names like Odyssey and ColecoVison. The video game ‘gold rush’ was on, and just like the real gold rush a lot of good things got trampled in the head long rush to riches. By 1982 greed took the place of common sense and with the release of the twin disasters of the E.T. and PacMan games, the goose that laid the golden eggs was killed, plucked, roasted and eaten. With so many programmers pumping out games independently of the console manufactures, the glut of inferior product finally turned off the public to video games and video games systems.

Now fast forward to the present day. We now have the ‘big three’:   Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Each one is vying for celebrated golden ring on the merry-go-round, each with its own console complete with a marketing strategy. Sony heads for the high end, expensive ‘state of the art’ unit (read BetaMax), while Microsoft takes the simple to produce but very comparable unit (read VHS), and Nintendo goes for the somewhat outdated but fun to use unit (read LaserDisc).

Microsoft, learning from its earlier system launch mistake, hits the ground running with the Xbox 360. Because of Bungie™’s Halo®, they realize that it is the software that ultimately drives console sells and they make sure that there is no lack of playable titles at launch. Even if there are a few losers mixed in with genuine hits at least even the clunkers will look good.

Nintendo took a different tack all together. Aiming for the so-called ‘causal’ gamer, they radically redesigned their control system to accommodate a less structured approach to gaming leaning toward intuitive responses. Unfortunately they never seemed to learn the lesson of the GameCube and at the launch of the Wii there was a shortage of software able to adequately display the system’s unique game play.

This brings us to Sony and the Playstation3. Sony started with the idea that they would produce a very advanced system, one that would be around as long as its predecessors the PlayStation and the PlayStation 2. For years Sony ruled the roost for in home gaming consoles. So much so that even with the introduction of their new PlayStation 3, they didn’t abandon software production for the PlayStation 2. With over 120 million units sold, there where in just too many homes to abandon the unit. Thinking to capitalize on this tremendous fan base, Sony got careless and forgot the lessons of both the Atari 2600 and the Betamax video cassette player.

At the launch of the Playstation 3, there was only one game of true quality (i.e. one that showed off the ‘next gen’ features of the new unit) available for the very expensive ($700 US) system. The other launch games were either of low production quality (reviewers were saying that they weren’t even up to PlayStation 2 standards!) or they failed to show off what the console was truly capable of doing. Similar to what happened to the Atari 2600, Sony allowed third party developers to rush games out the door without true quality control which severely hurt initial sales of base units. To make matters worse, while the system was indeed highly advanced and arguably had marginally better graphics (as the Beta-Max had over the VHS) and a state of the art ‘blue-ray’ drive, its’ price point of $700 was far too steep for all but the most avid gamer. Add on to this the shortages of in store models and it is a wonder that the PlayStation 3 survived its launch date at all!