Kazuo Hirai had some interesting things to say about the PSN recently, like the fact that it doesn’t turn a profit at all. Hmm, I wonder if that could be because they just recently began charging for their service? I would venture to say that PSN has been running in the red since its release, and the only reason they started the premium service was that they didn’t see an increase in profits from downloadable sales (considering it’s basically a place to buy extras for your PSP anymore) and had to make money somewhere. The real problem has always been that the PSN basically sucks, as does the online experience on the PlayStation 3. My experiences playing online on the PS3 haven’t exactly made me a believer in their free online gaming product. The user interface is clunky and not designed to provide a seamless online experience, and forget chatting online because there isn’t a headset of any kind that comes with the console, and syncing a bluetooth headset to it is a huge headache. hence the reason most people just forego chatting altogether.
Needless to say, Sony has a long way to go before they even come close to touching what Microsoft has done with their online experience. First, they need to respect their customers, find out what they want and give it to them. Until now Sony has simply been dictating to their customer what they should like, and the response has been that they like the Xbox 360 (in the US anyway. The 360 sold 10.9 million more units in the U.S. than the PS3. Granted, worldwide the PS3 is up on the 360 by 800k units). I suppose that their dominance in Japan and increasing popularity worldwide has kept them from caring too much about us US gamers. But we still amount for a huge percentage of the financial pot, so I think they’re losing out on a lot money with that strategy.