Sony will not ignore core gamers

By: Musa Afridi

  |   October 2nd, 2012   |  

Uncategorized

Despite catering to the family friendly, casual gamer market this holiday season Sony assures its core audience that it is not abandoning them but is letting third-part developers cater to their needs while the finishing touches are added to the Last of Us and Beyond.

Sony’s PlayStation 3 console took a while to get going as it’s launch day price and lack of games put many off the third-generation entertainment product from the manufacturer. However, as time went by a number of quality titles made their way on to the console and the likes of Metal Gear Solid 4, Killzone 2, Gran Turismo 5 and LittleBigPlanet, among others, helped boost the console in every department.

The PlayStation 3 console branded itself as an all rounder, able to cater to the needs of every gamer, unlike the Nintendo Wii, which was heavily focused on the casual gamer market, and Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which focused on the core gamer.

This time around though, Sony is looking to attract casual gamers to the PlayStation 3 with titles such as PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale and Wonderbook. However, the Managing Director of PlayStation UK, Feral Gara, assured gamers that it did not mean they would not cater to the core gaming audience.

Gara explained, “Obviously we don’t want to forget about core gamers, and while we don’t have that big triple-A game this Christmas, we have a stronger alignment with Assassin’s Creed and FIFA.”

The Sony executive went on to concede that he would have liked to see an Uncharted type triple-A game in the line-up but believed that emphasizing on the new segment would reap its rewards,

“Of course we’d love to have a new triple-A game, but we have a great strategy for this holiday period. We don’t have to talk to the same audience all the time. We have a stronger play on family this Christmas, and for the core games we will leverage third parties a bit more.”

At the same time Gara also reminded fans of the other games that were in the works as well, with Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us and Quantic Dream’s Beyond: Two Souls.

“I’m convinced we’ve got some great games coming out next year, such as The Last of Us and Beyond.”

With Microsoft releasing Halo 4 and Nintendo releasing the Wii U with ZombiU, Sony may end up losing some of their turf in the core gamer market if they are not careful.

But what do the readers think; is Sony making a big mistake by not catering to the core gamers or will the risk taken to attract casual gamers to their console pay off? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.