The Market Rag took a little election-week vacation, but it's back now and ready to talk shop.
We have entered the age of Playstation 3 and Wii.
Sony will sell its 400,000 American units promptly and unleash 6 million units by March, according to a CNNMoney article. The same coverage also points out a glitch in backwards compatibility rendering dozens of previous Playstation and Playstation 2 games unplayable. Sony does plan to fix the problem though. Almost 90,000 units of Playstation 3 left store shelves bare in Japan after its launch there last week.
The Nintendo Wii launches on the 19th to high anticipation and one of the better backward compatibility options which enables users to obtain and play games from the NES days.
Interestingly enough, both companies have been quiet with advertising lately. CNN noticed this too:
While there's been plenty of talk about the PS3 and Wii, television ads have been scarce. Sony (Charts) started running some unusual PS3 ads in the past week, but Nintendo has been silent. Fils-Aime said that's very deliberate.
Both companies have poured their coffers into development and the hype is certainly there, but something is missing for the PR guy in a useless yet entertaining advertising sweep; a cola-wars commercial battle between Sony and Nintendo with Microsoft scarily coming in as RC Cola just hasn't been there. Wouldn't you have loved to see a commercial where a Playstation 3 eats a Wii, or a Wii moves its magic "nunchuck" wand and makes a Playstation 3 disappear?
Alas, nobody does it like Coke/Pepsi and Bud/Miller.
The advertising clearly wasn't a necessity, however, as even Ebay has to put limits on how much the Playstation 3 can be sold for.
Shares of Sony and Nintendo had been mixed today with Sony finishing slightly down and Nintendo finishing slightly up today in trading.
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