Sony: "360 irrelevant."

A brand spanking fresh interview of Sony’s Peter Dille from the oh-so-lately exclusive laden online gaming pub, MTV Multiplayer. Mr Dille mentioned the viability and advantage of developing for the PS3.

"... if you look at the global footprint, PlayStation 3 dominates in Japan where the 360 is really irrelevant. In Europe, the PlayStation 3 is already past the 360. And in the United States you have a dogfight. You've got PlayStation 3 and 360 going at it and we've swung the momentum our way outselling the 360 during the first half of the year," said Dille. "So back to the third-party community, they're looking at what's going on, they're realigning their development resources to exploit PS3 and I think they understand that if they want to have a global return on their investment, PlayStation 3 is the only place they're going to get it."

360 irrelevant in Japan? MS must've felt a pinch. The PS3, arguably, is catching up with 360’s hardware figures in the US since the better half of the year due to Live issues late last year, bad PR, and hardware unreliability issues plagued the system and adding insult to injury, mediocre and pockets of below average game releases. However, post-E3 that’s just not the case. Microsoft seems to be ready for a fight for consumer dollar this busy holiday season with big changes, big games, and big marketing.

Having a revamped dashboard, games for the core and casual, peripherals targeting the novices and veterans, the 360 has become a jack of all trades, covering as much consumer ground as it can. No, it doesn’t translate to an identity crisis but merely an evolved system marketed to the masses and an ambitious move on Microsoft’s end to massively expand its consumer base.

The harsh reality is, the core market’s saturated. That’s what Sony’s currently after, due to its price, and Sony knows this, the 360 has covered that ground. Microsoft’s challenge is to expand its demographic and consumer profile through an aggressive diversification of their product offerings. They’ve executed quite well on numerous fronts although one consistent thorn is the 360’s price. The temporary price cut just won’t do and a $349 SRP for a 360 with a 60GB seems overvalued in contrast to the features a $399 PS3 offers out of the box.

For Mr. Dille to claim PS3’s viability in significantly improving returns of respective third party investments, is short of saying “Develop for PS3, you win, develop for 360, you lose.” One can’t ignore the fact that the core consumers 360 has is a generous bunch –repeat purchasers translating to record attach rates for a console. Plus the fact that it’s still less costly to develop for compared to Sony’s system. Publishers and developers are aware of this, and if there was so much value as Mr. Dille claims then why did a long time third party exclusive developer go multi? (Yes, SquareEnix, you and you’re money making FF franchise)

It’s a tight race, for either side to proclaim victory is an outright reckless and irresponsible message to its investors, partners, and most of all gamers.