Ubisoft’s UK marketing boss Murray Pannel has stated his belief that Sony faces an ‘uphill struggle’ if it’s to become the dominate platform holder in the territory, though conceded the brand still possesses mass appeal provided Sony is able to work out some kinks in terms of pricing and value.
Speaking to GI.biz, Pannel, who worked at Microsoft for six years before joining Ubisoft in March, commented, “So if I’m just looking at the UK specifically, we all know that Nintendo has done an amazing job, the 360 has solidified its position and is still doing well, and PlayStation I think would say themselves that they would have liked to have sold more hardware units.”
“Coming at it from a platform perspective, when I was at Xbox we never underestimated the power of the brand for PlayStation – despite the hiccups they had at launch, and the price particularly, there’s still a latent demand for that product. And if they can get their value proposition right in terms of pricing and online, and a software line-up that’s unbeatable, they’re still a force to be reckoned with.”
"But they will take a long time to even get their installed base up to that of the Xbox, let alone Nintendo’s level, so they’ve got an uphill struggle in the UK,” he continued.
"Obviously we support all platforms, and frankly, the more installed base you’ve got, the more games you can sell. So we’d rather have all the platform holders growing the IP as much as they can, so there are more people playing games that we can sell to."
"That’s very much our hope, and we support all the platform holders where we can to push that, if that’s exclusive games, or specific games for specific platforms to help drive those to new audiences."
Pannel remained optimistic for the year ahead, stating he expects the industry to turn in another solid performance in 2009 despite recent economic turbulence. However, he did question how long the market would sustain the kind of growth it has witnessed over the past few years.
"It’s certainly not going to decline," said Pannel. "The question is, how long can it continue to grow at the rate of the last two years? I think the jury’s out on that, but we’re expecting a good year this year.”
"Ubisoft has got some great titles, and if you look at the broader line-up there are some great titles as well – Square Enix coming in with Final Fantasy should be great, no doubt about it, and Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty… there’s a lot of competition out there, and we’ll all be looking eagerly to see what’s coming when, but I enjoy the challenge – and there’s plenty of consumers out there to appeal to, so we’ll make sure we’re getting our marketing, PR and product right to make sure they have a good time.”