The one single thing that made the original PlayStation such a smash hit was a variety of things. Its quality of titles in conjunction with the large library it had.
Furthermore, the PlayStation had the ability to draw in non-hardcore gamers, the casual gamer. That trend carried over with the PlayStation 2 but what about the PlayStation 3?
At a recent interactive entertainment conference, Tal Kerret, Oberon Media chairman, pushed the issue that the PS3 is currently not really for casual gamers.
Oberon Media just recently bought into the rights of iPlay and PixelPlay, which expands their casual games reach into mobile, interactive TV, PC and console softwere. Oberon Media has had strong success with the Xbox 360 in relation to Xbox Live Arcade, but this has not yet transitioned onto the PS3 or even Wii.
Tal Kerret commented that he does not believe that the Wii is a great outlet for people to download games, but when asked about the PS3, he commented:
"We focus on where can we get the fastest reach to consumers, the fastest way to provide them with the content, and the easiest way where we can provide some service to the developers. If we can’t bring value to the developers, then for us it is just yet another outlet that we take our content and port it to.”
"If it is a porting question, then I would ask my self many other questions. What comes first? We are dealing with so many things, as you’ve seen."
However it was hinted that they will look at content for other consoles besides the Xbox 360: "So we’ll take some of these games, yes, to the Wii, the PS3…the PS3 is not yet ready for it, but when they are ready. “
Interesting, they believe that the PlayStation 3 is not on par yet to appeal to casual gamers but yet they did not give a clear definitive reason as to why. Hopefully with the release of Home their stance will change, as it [Home] will be a unique form of online interaction that could allow for an easy and manageable way for Oberon to place downloadable content.