Despite being a somewhat distant third place in console sales, there are some good things happening with the PS3.

If it’s not too late for the Sony PS3 to overcome the Xbox 360 and Wii — and every day that passes, the odds get worse — Spring 2008 could finally be its time to shine. eFluxMedia summarizes the current PS3 marketing climate:

So far it seems that Sony has given up any intentions to push the sales of its console during this holiday season. But it seems obvious that the company is preparing a strong spring offensive. That’s when the Home project will be ready for launch and also the Blu-Ray’s price will probably go down and along with it that of the PlayStation 3. Until then Sony will have also enough software titles to support PlayStation 3. In fact Hirai has linked the PlayStation 3 price reduction to the release of new games.

From a gaming perspective Sony screwed up by putting too much emphasis on how great Blu-ray was and how powerful the machine was when they had the experience to know that:

1. no system launches with many titles and
2. gaming isn’t about video, it’s about fun

It’s almost like Sony wanted to parlay the success of the PS2 into the movie machine of the future that also, by the way, does games. Microsoft had a better strategy by making the HD-DVD drive an add-on device. They might be upgrading the HD-DVD drive next year, although Microsoft denies the rumor. How do you upgrade your Blu-Ray drive in the PS3? Buy a new PS3? Maybe at $250, but now at $500-600. Nintendo had the best strategy: ignore movies altogether.

But what about the games?
Of two recently released anticipated PS3 titles: Heavenly Sword and Lair, the afterbuzz so far has seemed fairly tame. Heavenly Sword fared the best with an 8.3/10 at 1up. Lair isn’t being helped by reviews (1up: 6.3/10) pointing out its gorgeous graphics but lousy control. Imagine that, beautiful game to look at but unplayable. I’m not a fan of the PS3’s feeble attempt to have its SixAxis controller be something between a Wiimote and the traditional PS2 controller. And Sony totally ripped the middle button concept from the Xbox 360.

Eye of Judgment (no ‘e’ spelling is correct) is a card + videogame hybrid and is coming out October 23 for $70 that we noticed getting a considerable amount of play at the recent Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. I have some video of that and the game Rock Band that will be coming in a future Hmmcast.

Of the PS3 games we’ve bought to date, for multi-player I’d put Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Warhawk near the top. The Playstation Store is getting better with the impressive shooter Super Stardust HD, but still lags far behind Xbox Live which has almost 100 games and grows by at least one more every Wednesday. Sony has been countering on Thursday with a new title, but as I’ve mentioned before they need to release two times a week — perhaps Monday and Thursday? — to truly catch up.

Maybe Sony is going to take the backseat with the PS3 this holiday season, perhaps content (?) with being the chump (#3) and focus on Spring 2008 when Home will be out. They probably want to hunker down and ride out the inevitable Halo 3 that will be sweeping the world next week, or in this day and age of leaked titles, right now.

Picture fun
In the picture at the start of this post is the PS3 SixAxis controller with a somewhat mysterious game circled in red in the background. Gamers that have been around awhile should be able to guess what title this is without too much difficulty. A fun game too.

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