Industry Analyst Claims PlayStation Brand Lacks Excitement

Despite a barn’s worth of exclusive games, 2011 was a rough year for Sony. Between the infamous PSN outage and consumer skepticism over the Vita’s viability, the former gaming powerhouse can’t seem to catch a break as it loses consumers to competing systems. Despite 2011 being initially chalked up as the “Year of the PlayStation”, Sony’s third console lost more and more sales ground to the Xbox 360 with each passing month. One analyst believes that brand recognition may be to blame. In a recent interview with Industry Gamers, David Cole of DFC Intelligence remarked:

For Sony, sales of the PlayStation3 have been decent if not spectacular.  The PS3 is an incredibly robust system with a great content library.  Unfortunately for Sony, not all consumers seem to have gotten the word. The Vita also looks like a strong potential contender as it has a reasonable price point now in the time of expensive tablet systems.  However, features like a 3G option may only confuse consumers . . .  It looks like no matter what it will take a while for Sony to build momentum around the Vita, but the key challenge in 2012 is to bring back consumer excitement around the Sony and PlayStation brand.

I’ve always believed that the 360′s market headstart and “cool kid” branding mythos have enabled it to push tons of units with the release of high-profile third-party games, and as great as Sony exclusives like Uncharted and God of War may be, it’s the Call of Duty’s and Halo’s of the world that are really pushing systems this generation. The Vita is poised to deliver complete gaming experiences on the go, but Sony needs to make consumers aware of that. Maybe they should bring in some outside marketing personnel to help them out. Or, maybe they should just push hard for that Call of Duty Vita title to be ready as soon as possible.

Let us know what you think of Sony and the PlayStation brand in the comments below. Does Sony need to step back and re-evaluate its marketing efforts?

[Source: Industry Gamers]

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