You may have missed the most recent tiff between Microsoft and Sony. It was relatively low-key as far as these corporate slap-fights go. To quickly summarize the silliness, Sony came out and said that Microsoft and Nintendo’s consoles aren’t as cool as the PS3 because the PS3 comes with everything you need out of the box. Microsoft took offense to this and told Sony to shove it, not everyone needs Wi-Fi and having a variety of SKUs makes them cooler than Sony could ever hope to be.

The juvenile nature of these comments masks the importance of their subject matter. They represent two seemingly incompatible ways of doing business. However, take a deeper look at what Sony and Microsoft are doing and you will see that both can learn lessons from each other. Even Nintendo could benefit from this sharing of strategies. Put more simply, each of these companies is doing at least something right and one thing wrong.

Let’s start with Sony, since they were the ones to throw down the gauntlet. Microsoft’s point about the Wi-Fi is certainly valid. There are many of us, by accident or by design, who have our routers situated next to our gaming set-ups. With all of the USB ports on the PS3 adding a external Wi-Fi card would be sheer simplicity. However, Microsoft missed out on the easiest attack on Sony which is Blu-ray. Now that the HD format wars are over how about releasing a Blu-ray free SKU. Sure, the PS3 is a great deal if you want a Blu-ray player with your console, but it’s not such a steal if you don’t. As for what Sony is doing right, the fact that you can buy a laptop HD and upgrade your PS3 with instructions from Sony is nothing short of amazing given Microsoft’s draconian attitude toward improved storage.

Microsoft will be damned if they are going to let you upgrade your HD yourself. Instead they want you to pay more than a 100% premium on a 120GB HD. Having proprietary accessories is nothing but greed on the part of MS, as anyone who has scoffed at their $100 Wi-Fi adaptor can tell you. What Microsoft is doing right is offering a variety of console configurations. These multiple SKUs allow the consumer to decide how much he or she wants out of the box. The consumer just needs to be sure and get everything out of the box because upgrading is akin to elective surgery, painful and expensive.

As for the Wii. Well, Nintendo plays nice with third parties. I was able to hook up a spare Linksys Wi-Fi adaptor I had lying around, since Nintendo neglected to add an Ethernet port. As nice as this is, however, Wii owners currently only have the option of adding a handful of gigs of storage since the only solution Nintendo has offered is a SD card slot. For anyone hooked on Virtual Console or Wiiware games, this can be incredibly frustrating.

As you can see, all of three are leaving room for improvement with their consoles. While Microsoft is correct that multiple SKUs are preferable to one or two options only, they haven’t taken it far enough. Apple’s iPod can be looked to as a model for how the industry should start behaving. The iPods range from the barebones shuffle, to the souped up Touch. While I myself do not own an iPod, I can appreciate the Apple way of doing business. They have a variety of accessories available for the iPod but allow third party accessories galore. Why? Because licensing third party accessories is more profitable than fighting them. I’m not saying we need as many variations of each console as there are iPods, but it would definitely make good business sense for Sony to offer a Blu-ray free PS3, for Microsoft to let consumers upgrade their HDs, and for Nintendo to offer an HD or at least let us connect one by USB. None of these things are would be terribly difficult for the company involved, it would simply necessitate the use of common sense and easing up on the corporate posturing. Which is just another way of saying it’s never going to happen.

-Matt Frank

Tags: Apple, Blu-Ray, Microsoft, Nintendo, PS3, Sony, Wii

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