Hacking the PSP Blog

What Sony, Microsoft must do to win in North America

From the same Forrester report we've been blogging about for the past few hours comes an analysis of the next-generation console war and what Microsoft and Sony need to do to win the battle for North America. Differing from the Japanese and European markets, North America is looking like a relatively even playing field. It's here that the battle between the next-generation consoles will be the most obvious.

If Microsoft wants to topple the PlayStation's dominance in America it's got to do a couple of things. Firstly, the company has to capitalize on the early success of the Xbox Live Marketplace by allowing more Internet delivery of content. In other words, Microsoft needs to prepare to bust open its Trojan horse and enable full game downloads via Xbox Live. Downloadable movies, MP3s and similar content couldn't hurt either. Secondly, Microsoft needs to push its Media Center Edition connectivity feature to the forefront of the home entertainment niche. Vista's built in Media Center functionality should help Microsoft in this respect.

If Sony wants to hold onto its crown and deflect the Xbox 360 it needs to make its own products and departments work more effectively together (we'd say the same thing for their PR teams). With the Sony PSP, PlayStation 3 and Sony Ericsson cellphones, Sony has the opportunity to increase multi-platform sales by allowing games to persist across its platforms. The report offers the example of seamlessly transferring a customized Killzone squad from the PlayStation 3 onto your PSP. This standardized networking has great potential in strengthening game franchises. That means Sony has to kick its habit of creating pointless media formats (ie stop with the proprietary formats already!).

More from the Forrester report:
PC market healthy, shows signs of growth
Consumer attitudes to gaming are slumping
Sony's PlayStation brand strongest in the industry

Source: Joystiq