Didier Malenfant, Ready at Dawn Studios President, said that the future of Sony and the PlayStation 3 lies squarely with Sony, and is independent of what Nintendo or Microsoft does with its console, according to GameIndustry. Malenfant stated bluntly, "It’s their market to lose. That’s the reality. It doesn’t depend on Nintendo or Microsoft–it depends on them. They’ve got a great platform in the PS3, they’ve got great teams working with them, but every hardware transition is difficult."
He saw Sony’s current predicament as a result of being king of the hill for so long, garnering more than its fair share of criticism because of its leadership position in the industry. "I think that’s the price you pay for being the number one player in the industry. You can see that with Microsoft with operating systems–after a while, you become the favorite target."
But while his analysis has merit, industry pundits point to the various internal problems Sony has dealt with regarding the PS3’s apparent decline in the gaming market–delayed launches, insufficient production of units, a weak advertising and marketing campaign, an absence of strong launch titles, and the ever present stigma of having the highest price point among game consoles.
Despite the negative press, Malenfant expressed cautious optimism for the PS3. He said, "I’d love to see what we’re able to do on next-gen platforms. It’s just a matter of finding the right project that makes us excited. We couldn’t just find any game and work on it–we need to find projects that make everyone here happy and really psyched about working on them… it all depends on the project. It could be PS3 or 360 or both. If we find a game we’re excited about and it happens to be on 360, we’ll go for it. We just work with what the platforms capable of and get the most out of it rather than focusing on limitations."
