Yes
Alan Giles, chairman, Fat Face
The UK games market has trebled in value to £4bn in 10 years, and is now less dependent on young male consu-mers. A market this big therefore lends itself to a seg-mentation strategy.
Wii has proved that an innovative consumer interface, coupled with an ecosystem of third-party developers creating games beyond the shoot 'em up, driving and fantasy genres, can open up a broader demographic. To some extent Sony is already tapping this wider market, but it suffers from a perception that it's a complex beast only to be used in a darkened room by qualified teenagers.
Clearly, the risk of overt reposition-ing is undermining credibility with hard-core gamers. However, Sony has successfully resisted the temptation to change the fundamentals of the product. Instead, it has modified its communication strategy and encour-aged the development of appropriate content. With all three consoles approaching the end of their life-cycles, Sony has saturated the serious gamer market. Pointing to a newer, less-developed segment makes sense.
Maybe
Cheryl Giovannoni, European president, Landor Associates
So PlayStation is trying to attract a new audience by introducing an interactive PS3 alternative. Ultimately, opinion-formers and influencers will decide whether the PlayStation brand is robust enough to appeal to both ends of the gaming market. Sony's recently announced 'repositioning' is an attempt to lay the foun-dations to broaden the brand's appeal, but it is the motion-sensitive technology that could be the killer application to allow it to compete aggressively against Wii.
As the credit crunch continues to bite, home entertainment that is inclu-sive and fun, with a focus on sharing and family, is unquestionably a grow-ing need. Sony PlayStation has both the brand equity and technical capability to satisfy this. If it can augment these strengths by securing world-class interactive games to run on the platform, it could well enjoy success.
However, as a note of caution, Sony does not have a good track record of playing 'catch-up'. We will see.
No
Stephen Maher, managing director, MBA
Slugging it out toe to toe with the Wii would be expensive with no guarantee of success. When Wii launched, Nintendo was languishing way behind Sony and Micro-soft, both of which were fighting for the attentions of the traditional gamer with ever-more realistic graphics and game-play.
The genius of the Wii is that it changed the rules and invented a type of gaming with massively enhan-ced interaction between player and game. Microsoft is already entering the fray with 'Project Natal' where you don't even need controllers. Yes, Sony should increase interactivity, but taking the leader on head to head seems futile.
The main question is of 'family'. Typical PlayStation fans don't play Mario Kart, they like F1 simulators. The thought of playing cutesy tennis against their granny would be mortifying.
Play-Station needs to 'do a Wii' and think differently to find a way to enhance the type of game that has made it a demi-god to its fans.
Yes
Alex Batchelor, executive vice-president of marketing, TomTom
Gaming was once seen as exclusively for men, and young men at that. The core age group used to be a tight demogra-phic of 14- to 34-year-old men.
If Sony wants to continue penetrat-ion growth, which must be the primary revenue source for a console manufac-turer, it must appeal to a broader demo-graphic and be seen as typical to a family living room. This is especially true of households in which there may only be enough money or room to have one TV and one console.
I am married with three daughters and one son. I bought a Wii with the spurious parental justification that it provides entertainment for all my children, rather than the probably unfair perception that a PlayStation would just be for sports and shoot-em-up games for my son.
Appealing to a broader demographic is always a harder marketing task, but it has not been a problem for Sony and over time should not be one for PlayStation.