Inside Social Games

Sony doesn’t seem to be doing so well in the current console races with the Playstation 3. Market share for the PS3 is coming in at around 22%, and for those who have been living in a cave, that 22% makes Sony in third place below both Microsoft and Nintendo. Nintendo is in the top spot with nearly 50% market share and 34 million consoles sold worldwide.

Sony refuse to give up its fight however, and during a London conference last month, Jamie MacDonald, Vice President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, was adamant that games like Buzz and Singstar were as popular as ever and still hugely successful.

When asked his thoughts on other companies such as Activision and Nintendo putting out titles like Guitar Hero and Wii Sports, both of which have been widely regarded as ‘casual games’, MacDonald told Videogamer, “I personally am really pleased to see the success of Wii Sports and Wii Play and Guitar Hero and Rock Band in a sense that it’s expanding the market for everybody and it’s expanding the appeal of video games.”

With more social and casual games becoming top sellers, Macdonald went on to say how Sony is at a perfect place to take advantage of such changes: “I think we’re incredibly well positioned in the sense that we kind of, it would be a bit arrogant of me to say we invented, but we were an early pioneer certainly and we continue to be very successful in that space.”

LittleBigPlanet, Sony’s newest and arguably biggest social game is set to give Sony the edge over the competition, as well as the much anticipated application Home, which uses rooms and 3d spaces around a social network. But can these two new social ‘games’ make up for the lacklustre showing thus far? LittleBigPlanet is off to a good start with 165,000 copies sold in the US alone in its 1st week of sales, but with Home lacking a solid release date things might not go as smoothly as hoped.

Macdonald still stands resolute however saying: “I think with things like LittleBigPlanet, with PlayStation Home, with the continuing success of SingStar and Buzz! on PS3 and the things that we’ve done to the experiences that take advantage of the connectivity of the PS3, the rich media capabilities, I think personally we’re very well placed.”