Atari founder Nolan Bushnell has strong criticism for Sony's PlayStation 3 strategy, saying that Sony's success thus far in the gaming realm was almost "accidental."
In an interview with technology site
Red Herring, Bushnell made no secret his unfavorable opinion of Sony Computer Entertainment. "I think Sony shot themselves in the foot [with the PS3]… there is a high probability [they] will fail. The price point is probably unsustainable. For years and years Sony has been a very difficult company to deal with from a developer standpoint. They could get away with their arrogance and capriciousness because they had an installed base. They have also historically had horrible software tools. You compare that to the Xbox 360 with really great authoring tools [and] additional revenue streams from Xbox live… a first party developer would be an idiot to develop for Sony first and not the 360. People don’t buy hardware, they buy software."
Referring to the company's massive success with the original PlayStation and the PS2, he said, "It wasn’t anything brilliant that they did. With the PS and PS2 it was timing. They had the right pricing at the right time [and were] almost the accidental winner. It would not surprise me if a year from now they’ll be struggling to sell 1 million units. [Factoring in the PS3’s price], I think in the U.S. the number of early adopters you have is actually around 300,000."
The interview focused initially on Bushnell's new restaurant venture uWink, which features touch-sensitive table tops on which customers can order food and play games. Bushnell is also founder of the kid-friendly pizza and gaming joint, Chuck E. Cheese's.
As for the Wii and Xbox 360, he said that he was "curious and interested" in Nintendo's upcoming console, believing that it may expand the gaming market. He added that Xbox Live could "potentially become the platform for the living room."
Bushnell also said that today's Infogrames-owned Atari "really isn’t a part of today’s gaming world in any meaningful way. They lost the cachet of being a leading technology company in the games space."
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