Sony And Nintendo Have Next-Gen Consoles Too

GameDailyBiz has some coverage of the PS3 and Revolution, to contrast with the avalanche of 360 information in advance of the console's launch in November. First up is a look at how making fun of the King of Kings may have been a bad decision. From the article: "Moving from the theological to the practical implications of Sony's snafu, the company couldn't have picked a worse time to offend its customers ... Sony has already conceded a six-month head start to competitor Microsoft in the upcoming market-share battle for the next generation of game consoles. Microsoft's Xbox 360 is expected to debut this fall; Sony's PlayStation 3 will not arrive until the spring of 2006." Meanwhile, Jim Merrick of Nintendo Europe has thoughts on marketing, online play, and the Revolution's potential. From the article: "If we follow what Iwata-san calls 'the past success formula', if we keep refining the existing model - more power, more pixels, more polygons, more levels, more enemies, better AI - we're actually making the games for a narrower audience playing those kind of intense games. We need to take a step back and refocus on a broad audience where we reach to everybody otherwise we're going to see the market start shrinking - as we're already seeing in Japan." Finally, Joystiq interviews Miyamoto, and he says wacky stuff. Who would have guessed?

Comments

Re:Holy SH%T?

[MBCook]

I thought that too. Whether you think it's accurate or not (I'm not sure myself), after reading that I got one of those "wait a minute..." moments. Interesting that when asked about defaming a religion, the guy defamed a religion.

As a Catholic, I'm not entirely sure what to think. I read about the ad and saw a picture, but since I'm in the US I never saw it actually run. I'm offended by it (I don't believe that "you're taking it the wrong way" stuff, there is only one way people would take something like that). I'm sure it would be more so if I actually saw it run.

As for if it will impact sales, I doubt it. Sales are 6 months away here in the US (at least) and I don't know if Europe will launch later. I think (unless it gets dredged up again) it will be forgotten. Would that ad have stopped my sale? If I was going to buy one when they came out next week (hypothetical, obviously) I might decide to delay for a week or two (basically, until I forgot). But six months out will it stop me? Not unless they are dumb enough to run it (or something like it) again.

As for the fact that they even ran this (since I'm starting all sentences with "as"). I've got to wonder how that ad got through. Didn't ANYONE think that this MIGHT be insulting to one of the world's oldest and largest religions? I don't see how any Catholic (or Prodestant, or even most Jews and such) could look at that and NOT think "That's going to offend some people." Didn't they test this ad on a focus group? What were they thinking?

Making people mad may make something "art", but it doesn't win you customers.

Re:Holy SH%T?

[Iriel]

Making people mad may make something "art", but it doesn't win you customers.

Hence the term: starving artist ^_^

Personally, I'm trying to figure out what the intended message was here because the symbol and word 'passion' mesh together so harmoniously, I could have done better by hitting it with a hammer. Does '10 years of passion' mean that we've died on a cross for a decade for Sony's sake? Or do they refer to the gamers who suffer social stigma, lack of sleep, and general lack of money for the games we love? If that's the case, they could have done a lot better. I'm just trying to wrap my brain meats around this to figure out what the ad was even supposed to mean.

Eh, stupid marketing, but it's not as if this is onthe system or anything.

Italy

[zr-rifle]

From the article:

>The Vatican and Catholics in Italy were outraged by this marketing stunt and Sony has since ceased the ad campaign. (...) in Italy has generated quite a stir for its use of religious imagery/symbolism.

Actually, the ad had zero to none resonance here in Italy. Granted, I'm an Atheist, but apart from what we call the "Bigot's Monthly", the Catholic Magazine "Famiglia Cristiana", everybody else didn't give a flying fuck about Sony's marketing stunt, and we'd like to keep it that way.

The national media's coverage of the whole affair is insignificant and will be long forgotten when the PS3 finally becomes available here. Then, what will really matter will be the quality of the games available.