If you follow the games market, you’ll have noticed that the global commercial contest between Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft is heavily reported. The last quarter, which saw the release of Halo 3 – a highly profitable event for Microsoft – actually saw the XBox 360 outsell the phenomenal Nintendo Wii in the US, for the month of September.
Actual figures for the quarter were:
- Sony, PlayStation 3: 1.3 million
- Nintendo, Wii: 3.9 million
- Microsoft, XBox 360: 1.8 million
The contest between these three games machines kicked off with the release of the XBox 360 almost 2 years ago. Some commentators thought that Microsoft had stolen a march on Sony, and indeed it proved to be so, as the PS3 was repeatedly delayed. The PS3 had better graphics, but XBox 360 was first and its graphics were more than impressive, anyway. Nintendo had been virtually written off, but it suprised everyone, including itself ,with the Wii and dashed past Microsoft.
Sony’s PS3 with the best graphics ever finally came to market, but Sony was forced to sell at a high price and lose money, partly because it was using the PS3 as a trojan horse for Blu-ray. Sony did well, but it is struggling to overhaul Microsoft and can only dream of catching Nintendo.
So who is the likely winner?
Well from one perspective the winner is undoubtedly IBM. Its chips are in all of these machines, and, believe it or not, it has collaborated with each of these vendors on the design of their games console. For the record, the Nintendo Wii and the XBox both have Power chips from IBM and the PS3 has the IBM Cell chip.
So if the games companies are selling roughly 30 million consoles per year, then IBM is selling that many chips. Awesome isn’t it. If Nintendo wins, IBM wins, and if Microsoft wins, IBM wins and if Sony wins, IBM wins. IBM, the company that gave the PC chip market away to Intel has gained control of a chip market that Intel can now only dream of, and to be honest, which Intel should have focused on.
And if you look at any of these games devices, or indeed any other devices which IBM chips power, you’ll see no label that says “IBM Inside”. Why? Because who gives a damn. You don’t care who made the jet engines, you just want the plane to fly. Right?
