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Each console generation brings with it fierce competition between the consoles/companies.  While it’s undisputable that Nintendo did what was necessary this generation to securely capture the casual gaming market (as Wii sales clearly indicate), the battle for the attention of the more hardcore gaming crowd was, again, between Microsoft and Sony.   

Could it be that simply making it to market first is the reason Microsoft is faring better than Sony this console generation?  It very well could be – and if that’s the case, it’s all due to some smart business decisions by Microsoft, and a bit of embarrassing oversight by Sony.

In their new book, “The Race For A New Game Machine,” David Shippy and Mickie Philips (two people direclty involved in the development of the Cell processor chip), shed some light on the intense battle to bring the Xbox 360 and the PS3 to market. 

From a Wall Street Journal article on the book:

All three of the original partners had agreed that IBM would eventually sell the Cell to other clients. But it does not seem to have occurred to Sony that IBM would sell key parts of the Cell before it was complete and to Sony’s primary videogame-console competitor.The result was that Sony’s R&D money was spent creating a component for Microsoft to use against it.

Some might see this as IBM being deceitful but most of us are well aware that, in business, money is the bottom line – and Microsoft had made quite a generous offer to IBM for the technology. 

From the book’s prologue:

Akrout told me that over a billion dollars (from Microsoft) was involved, spanning the entire spectrum from development to chip manufacturing.

In addition, as pointed out above, Sony neglected to make sure their agreement to not sell the cell technology until later covered individual components of the chip instead of only the completed processor.  So IBM was on firm legal ground. 

Both chips, the Sony version and the MS version, were on the same design timeline for IBM, but one key decision made my Microsoft and not by Sony is a big part of what allowed Microsoft to beat Sony to market.

Both designs were delivered on time to IBM’s manufacturing division, but there was a problem with the first chip run. Microsoft had had the foresight to order backup manufacturing capacity from a third party. Sony did not and had to wait another six weeks to get their first chips.

So Microsoft actually got the chip that Sony helped design before Sony did. In the end, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 hit its target launch in November 2005, becoming its own success. Because of various delays, the Playstation 3 was pushed back a full year.

Most of the other delays the PS3 suffered in getting to market were related to manufacturing difficulties and shortages for components of the blu-ray drive (a big risk by Sony at the time, since the format war had not yet been decided).  However, the delay in getting the manufactured chips meant a delay in Sony getting development kits to the game developers.  This may not seem like a big deal, but it had a major impact on the first few batches of PS3 game titles to hit the market.

The early, non-exclusive titles that appeared on the PS3 all suffered from one unfortunate criticism: they all looked worse than their Xbox 360 counterparts. 

PlayStation loyalists worldwide didn’t understand.  How could this be?  Sony had been touting the PS3 as a far more powerful system (part of their justification for the PS3′s initial price tag of $499/$599), yet the games were looking better and sharper on the Xbox 360. What was going on here? 

Let’s take a moment to think back a generation.  Technologically, it was quite clear last generation that the Xbox was superior to the PlayStation 2.  However, for the first year or more of the Xbox’s life cycle, every non-exclusive title that came out looked better on the technologically inferior PlayStation 2. 

The reason has to do with typical game development practices.  Designing a game concurrently for two different platforms from scratch is a lot of work, and far more clostly than developing for a single platform and then ‘porting’ to others. 

This is what happened last gen.  Since the PlayStation 2 came out first, it was the development platform of choice for the majority of game developers.  A game would be developed for the PS2 and then simply ported to the Xbox without any enhancements to take advantage of the Xbox’s more powerful processor and additional memory. 

This generation, the opposite occurred.  Since the Xbox 360 arrived first (and Microsoft provided excellent developer tools to game designers), the Xbox 360 became the development platform of choice for most game developers.  This meant that, for the first year or more of the PS3′s life cycle, it’s games were developed on the Xbox 360 and then simply ported to the PS3. 

Since the Xbox 360 and the PS3 use such similar technology, however, even if the developers had spent the extra time and money to develop those early titles for the PS3 seperately, from scratch, the PS3 versions wouldn’t have looked any better than their Xbox 360 counterparts – just as good perhaps but not better. 

The only percieved advantage the PlayStation 3 has over the Xbox 360 is the inclusion of a blu-ray drive.  Once blu-ray won the format war against HD-DVD, this became an ever greater advantage for PS3 owners.  However, deciding to include the blu-ray drive was a major reason for the delays in bringing the PS3 to market, and gave it an initial price tag that put off a lot of gamers (many of which felt that Sony was ‘using’ them to further blu-ray’s position in the movie format war). 

Is the PS3 a good gaming machine?  Yes – witout question.  However, it appears Sony may have helped themselves lose the battle this console generation due to some unfortunate business decisions along the way.  The delays those decisions caused are the main reason Sony is struggling this generation.  If not for the stellar sales of the Wii to the casual gaming crowd, Microsoft would surely have taken the crown this generation. 

Game on!