The "We're Sony" syndrome

There's a bit of a vicious cycle in video game history. Company makes dominant product. Company begins to believe their own hype. Company believes "We're dominant now, we'll always be dominant".

Company suffers hard fall.

Way back in the old days, Atari had this happen to them. Nintendo took over with the NES/SNES generation. Playstation kicked Nintendo to the curb. Then Sony started believing their own hype.

They had ruled the roost through the Playstation generation, and the Playstation 2 generation. Then they started believing their own press.

"We'll make the biggest monster gaming system ever, leverage our video game console market into promoting our DVD standard and no matter what we price it at, people will buy it. After all, We're Sony!"

And then came that fateful press conference.

$599.

Five hundred and ninety nine dollars.

FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE DOLLARS?!?!?!?!?

They tried saying "Consider it a $399 console and a $200 blu-ray player all in one! Think of the convenience."

It didn't work. They started losing ground. Then Nintendo released a new system. Didn't even have really half of the power of the Playstation 3. A gimmick system, destined to keep Nintendo in the dust bin of video game history.

But Nintendo had figured it out. It wasn't which video game console system had the most power, the best graphics, or what have you. It was "which system was the most fun to play, and which system had the best value."

Nintendo beat Sony ragged on those categories. So did the Xbox 360, which was unthinkable previously.

Sony fell to third place in the console wars. But they stubbornly resisted the begging and pleading of investors and analysts to lower the price of the PS3.

"We're Sony. We set the market" they said.

But the market had been set for them, and it wasn't to terms of their liking.

So, now we face the PS4 release at the end of this year.. and the question is, have the powers that be at Sony realized that the phrase "We're Sony" is not enough anymore?

Who knows. The rumored price out there (which has been out for a couple weeks with no response by Sony) is $429 for a base, "Stripped Down" system, or $529 for a base regular system.

If that's the case, Sony will prove that they haven't learned a damn thing from going from first place to last place in a single generation. They'll be saying "We're Sony.." but in this case, it's going to mean "We WERE Sony".