“We want for consumers to think to themselves, ‘I will work more hours to buy one’. We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else (…) The PS3 will instill discipline in our children and adults alike. Everyone will know discipline.”
So it’s official: Sony has lost touch with consumer reality.
After the pre-Christmas scarcity (read: nobody could get one) of PS3 consoles, I was surprised to see a handwritten sign at the door of a local game shop reading, “We have the PS3. No, really. In stock.” When I asked about it, the response echoed the same concerns I’d been hearing since before the holidays: $600 is an unrealistic price for people in the real world, especially when the bugs haven’t been worked out, and the lineup of launch titles is questionable at best.
Incidentally, they couldn’t keep the $249 Wii in stock, though Nintendo shipped almost three times as many units as Sony.
There are two types of folks who buy consoles: parents investing in family entertainment and gamers, who are usually in the lower-middle income ranges. Parents simply aren’t going to fork over that kind of cash, especially with the Wii going for a third of the price. Add the fact that the units were almost impossible to come by during launch, and that the flagship title is a violent shooter, and Sony has completely dropped the ball in the family market.Even hardcore gamers pause at a price-point that high. The system really has to offer something different, and the plain fact is, the first round of PS3 titles doesn’t do anything that you won’t see on the Xbox360. Even Resistance, the only worthwhile launch title, has to struggle against the 360’s stellar Gears of War, with many opinions swinging in the favor of the latter.
Of course, Sony can truthfully claim that the PS3 includes the cheapest Blu-Ray DVD player out there, but is that really a valid selling point? After all, who really watches movies on a videogame console? One of the reasons I upgraded to the PS2 from the original PlayStation was the fact that the newer console had a DVD player, and like many other people, I was dismayed to find that it was mediocre at best, and that it failed to play a large percentage of titles at all.
Then there’s the whole question of whether or not Blu-Ray will even become the standard.
So now you can get one, if you want it. Based on the sales figures, it looks like most folks have chosen to pass. And it’s all Sony’s fault.
I’m hardly a fanboy, but two of Sony’s products have found themselves a central spot in my life: the PS2 and the MiniDisc. It’s somewhat frustrating to see Sony fumble with both, often spouting hubris along the way.Sony has done all they can to botch any chance of MD surviving in any market besides Japan, despite the fact that it’s still the best portable recording option out there, 12 years after its inception. I know of no stateside brick-and-mortar retailer that carries the units, nor can I find blank discs, as most retailers have stopped carrying them. Why? Because nobody asks for them.Sure, I know I can get them through mail-order, but what chance does a format have if potential adopters never see it on store shelves?
Ironically, Sony tried their hand in the MP3 player market here, but the players didn’t read MP3 files natively, and transcoding to a proprietary format is something the average consumer doesn’t want to deal with. Then Sony’s insistence on DRM reared its ugly head when their copy-protected CD’s installed malicious rootkits on customers’ computers.
This is Sony we’re talking about, right? The company that invented the Walkman, solidified the VHS format and defined home entertainment in the 1980’s? What the heck is going on?
The PlayStation and PS2 were, despite some faults, wonderful consoles with a huge groundswell of developer support. Between the two, there are over 5000 titles published (and granted, the PS2 lineup of launch titles was pretty lacking, too), and making the PS2 backward-compatible with PS1 games was a smart choice. Sure, some things on the PS2 could have been improved, but expecting people to pay that kind of cash for the upgrade is ridiculous.The PS3 has wireless networking, a hard-drive, support for HDMI, and it finally includes a wireless controller, but the Xbox 360 has been doing all this for a year now. A month’s rent is alot to pay for an upgrade that essentially catches Sony up with the competition.They might have made inroads if they’d handled things more gracefully. Instead, they claimed their console was the Second Coming of Pixel Jesus, with Kutaragi flaming on the competition. They made it virtually unavailable to people who wanted it, and they expect folks to pay an exhorbitant price for a huge, curvy black box that’s yet unproven.
In a nutshell, they expect you to skip a couple of car payments to invest in potential. No thanks.
Oh, and did I mention they’re losing $241.35 per console sold? These are not the decisions of a company with any sort of clue.
I’ve never had any plans to buy a PS3, but in a sad way, it’s fascinating and horrifying to watch Sony’s descent into madness, like a car accident you just can’t turn away from. It’s ironic that the PS2 continues to sell like hotcakes, six years after its introduction, proving that the old warhorse still has some life left in it. We’ve seen some great games developed for it in the last year, proving that talented developers can still wring some new tricks out of the old black box.
If you’ve not played Okami, you should do so as soon as possible. Buy a PS2 if you must (they’re $130US these days), but play it. If you ever need proof that there’s still room for originality, that games can be art, that new things are possible, this game is a great example. And it’s written for a six-year-old console.
Faster hardware and better shaders aren’t always the way to a richer experience.