Sony: MS has failed to reach beyond FPS players

Microsoft made "no real capitalization" of its one-year head start over PS3, and failed to "reach beyond the core first person shooter player", SCEA's Scott Steinberg has said.

"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," Steinberg stated.

He went on to add, "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.

"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," he added.

"The question for us is 'are they really going after the PS2 demographic? Are they stealing share from us?' And the answer is no."

Steinberg counts on the millions of PlayStation 2 fans in the world to turn the tables for PS3 in the next two to three years.

"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," Steinberg told Next Gen.

Read the full Q&A onNext Gen.

Courtesy of CVG

Mar 6, 2008