Is Sony Being Far Too Overconfident With The PS 4 This Holiday Season

With over 13 million units sold of the Playstation 4 system and several impressive looking exclusives doing the early part of 2015, it may be easy to think that Sony is well poised to continue their enviable position as the top-selling of the next-generation consoles. Microsoft however is being more aggressive as the holiday shopping season begins by touting a Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Sunset Overdrive console and bu and dropping the price of their unit $50.

Also factoring in the pending release of the Master Chief Collection, Microsoft has made strides to improve their market position an image with gamers and the buying public.
As anyone who’s turned on the TV in recent weeks will tell you we’ve been flooded with ads for the latest Call of Duty and Sunset Overdrive games all of which have the Xbox logo prominently displayed in their advertising.

Sony on the other hand has gone with their Expect Greatness campaign which is pretty much what they have is for the better part of the last year. The games they feature however our NBA 2K 15 and Destiny both of which are available on their rival system.

As we reported earlier, Little Big Planet 3 is the premier exclusive game do for the PlayStation systems as their big guns or not such drop until February 2015. While we can debate the impressive array of third-party titles and hardware I prefer to ask this simple question. Is Sony being too complacent and overconfident with their position going into the holiday season?
Consumers can be a fickle bunch and there is an out of sight out of mind mentality for many shoppers. Consider the fact that you will have parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles outdoing holiday shopping, many of which may not be gamers and would not know the difference between the three systems in much detail. They are likely to go with the recognizable brand name and also the one that they have seen and heard the most about if the people on their list are not specific about which system they want.

Grandma goes into the mall and decides to get her grandchild a videogame system, work with me there are some grandparents are actually this cool. She sees Xbox logos and posters all over her store touting Call of Duty, Thge Master Chief Collection, Sunset Overdrive, and others. While in the Sony camp Destiny and perhaps Littlke Big Planet 3 are being offered.
I will not even bother with factoring Nintendo in as despite having two interesting exclusives, their marketing is been pretty much nonexistent for either the titles to this point over the major media outlets but that goes in keeping with them as we’ve chronicled some of their marketing miscues in recent months.

One thing that anybody on top will tell you is that once you have achieved the pinnacle, all you’re doing is setting yourself up for the best shots from your competition. Sony may indeed have some interesting things to reveal in the coming weeks but as for now, it may look to some consumers that they’re standing still and gearing their efforts for next year while Microsoft is making aggressive plays to close the gap now.

In college I studied Japanese history and culture as part of my core program, and I understand that one of the key tenets of Japanese business is to take a look at the big picture. Do not look at the next couple of quarters as many American-based companies do, but rather look at the long-term picture several years down the road. I am sure Sony has a very well developed vision of where they would like their system to be in the next couple of years however Microsoft doesn’t have the patience nor the market position to wait and fall further behind and in a race for the the top position, Sony runs the risk of being too overconfident and seeing their lead dwindle by not taking a more aggressive approach this holiday season.

Check out our preview for the Master Chief Collection

2 Comments

  1. AmUnRa said:

    Please stop bloging this noncence, jou dont know what you are talking about, same as your PSN hack bullshit blog.

    December 31, 2014
    • gareth said:

      Let the anger go. P.S. it is not a blog. A blog is one persons rants. This is a site with over 20 writers, a magazine, a syndicated radio show, and newspaper syndication. P.S. they were hacked, and that is why arrests were made in the U.K. today. You know the leak of data.

      December 31, 2014

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