Sony's Fall from Grace: To everyone's surprise, observing Sony mess up each step of its launch was one of the more entertaining and curious ongoing events of the year. For two straight generations Sony has kicked everyone's asses. In 2006, when you'd think that Sony had finally polished its strategy to a T, it collapsed. It dropped the ball at E3, cut its hardware feature list, announced expensive pricing, drastically dropped its shipment numbers (from 4 million worldwide to 400,000 on launch day and 1 million by year's end) and then appeared to copy everything that Nintendo and Microsoft did from controller ideas to online capabilities. With each step to launch, Sony proved it wasn't a leader, it was a follower. Of course, Sony could very well come to the fall 2007 showdown with the best lineup ever, but from E3 to launch in 2006, Sony muffed, screwed, and has eaten it.