Comment Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want (Score 1) 616
I think this is quite a valid strategy. It's liek Visual Basic, it turns application development into a drag and drop excercise. Anyone can do it, even people who don't really understand programming! However that results in Visual Basic getting a bad reputation because anything that's written by bad programmers is going to end up a bit shoddy. Sony don't want their console associated with shoddy games. They'd prefer that only decent programmers create games for their system.
Does have a large number of poor quality games really hurt a console's sales, though? I suppose it's conceivable (an ignorant gamer buys the console, doesn't bother to research games before buying, and then tells all of his friends that PS3 games suck because he's only picked mediocre titles), but most people that I know judge a system based not on how good the average game on the system is, but instead based on the quality and quantity of top-tier/highly-rated games on the system.
Making the system more difficult to develop may reduce the quantity of shovelware/crapware that exists, but it also reduces the quality/quantity of top-tier games as well. Since those games probably drive sales more than crappy games hurt sales, it seems to me there is a good chance that the strategy is not only frustrating and cynical, but ineffective.