Once upon a time, the big playground battle was over whether Nintendo or Sega were the big gaming guns.
And while Nintendo has carved out an incredibly successful niche all its own, the big money-flinging battle nowadays is undoubtedly between Microsoft and Sony.
Passionate fan raving aside, it’s always been a fairly closely run race (there’s only a 3 million console disparity between the two, with Xbox just nudging into the lead), although it appears some industry bigwigs believe there’s only ever going to be one clear winner.
EA CEO John Riccitiello has told IndustryGamers that Microsoft will always be playing catch-up due to the weakness of its brand.
“The Xbox brand, the Microsoft brand, doesn’t carry anywhere near as much sway as the Sony and PlayStation brand do outside the United States, and so I think the reality is the international marketplace is just so important and it’s a natural advantage that no matter how good Microsoft is at growing their business, Sony has an almost-impossible-to-supersede head start.”
That said, he praised the Xbox’s pricing strategy over the PS3 (which is always battling against the cost of producing Blu-rays), and complimented them on Xbox Live over PSN.
