Case Study Sony Playstation 3

Group Analysis Case Study: Sony Playstation 3

Past marketing of video games was simple and advertising was done mostly through word of mouth. The video game industry is one of the most rapidly growing industries over the past ten years. The history of video games dates back to 1951 when Ralph Baer, who was an engineer with the Loral Company. He was given the task of building the best television in the world at the time. His ideas were to include interactive games with the television, but his management decided not to pursue those ideas. During the 1950’s and 1960’s various ideas were introduced, but not acted upon. In 1960’s Ralph Baer resumed his development of interactive television games. He succeeded in 1968 and patented an interactive game, which could be played on a television screen.

Different events in the 1970’s were the catalysts for moving the video game industry into the mainstream of the United States (U.S.) populace. In 1971 the first arcade game was introduced and released. In 1972 Magnavox started producing the Odyssey, which was the first television game system for home use. They released the stand-alone units with several game cartridges, which introduced the game Pong to the U.S. public. In 1977 Atari released their video system with promising results. Finally, in 1978 Nintendo entered the video game industry and the video console age had begun (Nintendo, 2013).

The video game industry has become the fastest growing segment of the entertainment industry with a growth rate of 15 to 25 percent. In 1993 the Sony Corporation established Sony Computer Entertainment specializing in a variety of areas in the video game industry, concentrating its efforts in the video game console arena (Sony, 2013). Three console manufacturers dominate video game console market. The three are Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. These three companies differ in business background and each company approaches the video game market differently. Sony and Microsoft have...