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June 9, 2006

games

Only a game: is Apple in bed with a console maker?

Posted Jun. 9, ’06, 9:48 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Games

Nintendo and Apple?Yet another serendipitous pairing: today it’s Apple relationship with game console makers. First up is Sony Computer Entertainment’s president, Ken Kutaragi, saying that he’d like to emulate Apple with the PlayStation 3.

Regarding the PS3’s high sticker price, Kutaragi explained it was all a matter of brand perception. “Steve Jobs could slap an Apple logo on the PS3 and sell them for $2,000 each,” he said. “We couldn’t do that. That’s the difference between the PlayStation brand and a computer brand, like Apple.” He also expressed Sony’s wish to make “PlayStation” a byword for “entertainment computer.”
Okay, sure, I can get behind that. Apple’s a pretty powerful brand, and while Sony has commanded that kind of respect in the past, they’ve lost their cachet in recent years.

But more interesting was Kutaragi’s next comment…

He further emphasized the PS3’s PC-like abilities, stating there would be no problems running popular flavors of OS, including Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X: “to the PS3, an OS is like any other application.” However, he added that “I think that perhaps you’ll see a general purpose Cell [built-in] OS.” Previously, the company has said that the PS3 hard drive would come with a Linux-based OS preinstalled.
I’m not sure exactly how Kutaragi thinks OS X will be easily installable on the PS3; Apple has gone to great lengths to make it hard to put OS X on generic hardware. Unless, and this is utter speculation, Sony and Apple have been quietly chatting somewhere. Then again, much more likely is that this is merely sales talk from Kutaragi; of late, he has been repeatedly referring to the PS3 as a computer instead of a game console, probably in part to justify the $500-$600 cost of the machine.

And then there’s Nintendo. An article at CNet this morning suggests that perhaps Apple should look into teaming up with Nintendo. Not to toot my own horn, but I made this suggestion way back in one of my earliest posts. What I said there still stands today: Nintendo and Apple have both clearly similar mentalities, as well as sharing the same rivals, Microsoft and Sony. A partnership between the two seems like it would be mutually beneficial, especially given Apple’s current rumored circling around the game markets.

[CNet via MacSurfer; GameSpot via The Mac Observer]


1 Comments

Greg said:

Apple and Nintendo would make an interesting pair, especially when it comes to playing Zelda on a Mac (and not a PC)

June 9, 2006 12:37 PM

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