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?

[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.

The interviewer interrupted Miyamoto.

[Strell]

I was hoping for a smiting after that grand injustice.

Talk about bad taste...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what it would've been like in the pitch meeting that ended up in that ad?

"Okay, picture this: a guy sitting in front of some giant ovens where people are being forced into, with the blurb "Playstation: Too hot to handle!"

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.

Re:Holy SH%T?

[Guppy06]

News flash: One religion bad-mouths a major competitor! Film at 11!

What exactly what were you expecting? Have on seen who they elected as pope? They're not interested in making friends and playing nice, they want to convert people to Catholicism, period.

If you looked at the ad...

[MMaestro]

You'd see how incredibly offensive it is. It has the image of a teenage male wearing a gray crown of "thorns" with the PS1/2 controller symbols along it. For those who aren't informed on Christianity, the crown of thorns refers to the crown Jesus was forced to wear while being tortured, while carrying his cross and while being crucified.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050930/tc_nm/italy_ad vert_jesus_dc has an image of the ad, although it is not a perfect scan, it captures the most important part.

Re:Does it really matter?

[cowscows]

Please don't refer to them as "religious enough to be offended". A more proper term would be "out of touch with reality enough to be offended". There are many of us who have religious beliefs that we take very seriously, but those beliefs don't require us to take offense and whine anytime someone mocks our religion, or uses a part of it for something is strange as this bizarre ad campaign. Many of us are even the catholics that you despise so much.

It's not religious nutjobs trying to turn people against the devil. It's nutjobs who have lost perspective, and have for whatever reason, chosen religion as the outlet for their need to complain. It's not a problem strictly endemic to religious folk, there are plenty of people of all beliefs who are just looking for something to complain about.