Sony’s Scott Steinberg has said that Microsoft has failed to capitalize on its one-year lead over the PlayStation 3, stating that the Xbox 360 has been unsuccessful in its attempts to “reach beyond the core first person shooter player.”
"The time that they had to create huge distance and build a massive install base before the PS3 could really take root; that opportunity is over and there’s no real capitalization of it," said Steinberg, Vice President of Product Marketing for Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA)
"They had a great crescendo moment with Halo and it helped catapult them into a pretty strong position towards the back end of last year, but they were still within a stone’s throw of where they were with the original Xbox”, he continued.
"To me that speaks of a failure to broaden their reach beyond the core first person shooter player who was in their back pocket for Xbox.”
As such, Steinberg feels that Sony is in no danger of having shares swept from under its feet, adding, "The question for us is ‘are they really going after the PS2 demographic? Are they stealing share from us?’ And the answer is no."
Finally, he then pointed to the PlayStation 2’s worldwide installed base, referring to it as the company’s “secret weapon” in terms of users making the transition to the next-generation with the PlayStation 3.
"That’s the secret weapon, that’s what goes unreported. It’s this 41 million universe of PS2 owners that will be targeted very, very soon to upgrade to a PS3 Blu-ray machine," he concluded.