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Sony And The No-Confidence Vote
Sony continues to spend the goodwill it has achieved over the last generation of consoles. As widely reported over the weekend, last Friday CEO for SCE Europe David Reeves spoke to the press. "We have built up a certain brand equity over time since the launch of PlayStation in 1995 and PS2 in 2000 that the first five million are going to buy it, whatever it is, even it didn't have games." This 'you'll buy it anyway' attitude has further annoyed gamers already rankling from the announced pricetag. Next Gen and IGN talk about the two sides of the coin, with IGN laying into the company for the lack of HDMI output in the cheaper model, and Next Generation saying that Sony is far from defeated.
Tying to sell a console without games is like trying to sell a gun without ammunition. Reeves' blithe assertion that their 'brand equity' will induce gamers to shell out 600 clams for their console, despite the dearth of available games, is pure fantasy. There are other consoles out there, that are far cheaper, and have games now. I personally can't imagine how Sony's going to move any of these consoles before the games become available.
That said, perhaps Sony would have a better chance of moving said consoles if it didn't take its customer base for granted in such a shockingly flippant way. The $600 price tag is bad enough, but Reeves' interview with Computer and Video Games probably cost Sony a lot of business from spite alone.
Also, from the IGN article: Sony, if you've got so much frelling 'brand equity' that you can try to sell us a console for $600 without any games, why do you feel compelled to market a separate, 'tard-box'?
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
After Narcissus, the fictional Greek hero who became obsessed with his own reflection.
Pronunciation
- 'när-s&-"si-z&m
Nounnarcissism
1. Egoism; egocentrism.
2. Love of oneself.
3. Sexual desire for one's own body.
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I grew up on a farm. If there's one thing that pisses me off, it's people who walk around with their noses in the air. Yuppies, politicians, etc. are prone to this behavior.
Sony's elitism sure is getting underneath my skin. I enjoyed their console but anymore of this "only-the-rich-are-worthy-of-experiencing-this" attitude and I'm going to take my ball (money) and play elsewhere.
They do realize that many of their customers also buy their competitor's products, right? By stomping all over Nintendo and Microsoft, they may be alienating a large selection of their consumer base.
My work here is dung.
Granted I don't have my finger on the pulse of the entire world, but the people I hang around have nothing but bad stuff to say about the PS3. Sorry the market's so fickle, Sony, but 2001's "xbox is heavy" and "Gamecube is for kiddies" is this year's "PS3 is expensive"
I looked up the word "hubris" in the dictionay, and there was a picture of the Playstation 3.
It is false to believe that a free market offers any value in "goodwill equity" of any sort. I'm a businessman, and every time I provide a product or a service for my customer, the only equity that exists is the expectation that I will perform exactly as I am supposed to for a given payment, and that customer will pay me for my performance. The believe otherwise is a quick way to end up out of business.
I see it every year -- some kid takes over pop's huge business because the old man had a heart attack. The kid (usually in his 30s or 40s) drives the business into the ground and below within 2 years. He believed that the business didn't need to constantly re-win back old customers solely because they'd been around for years. Sony is no different than the businesses I see failing every year, even ones who have been around for 100 years and are now gone.
Every time a customer makes a purchase, it is with an expectation. No law is needed to protect the customer, because the customer can destroy a business in no time -- if each and every customer who is "hurt" by a previous transaction refuses to make a future one. Does "goodwill equity" give a customer a reason to buy again? Certainly. Does it mean the customer will be willing to accept one grievance or one mistake? Absolutely NOT.
To think that previously happy customers will forgive a mistake is to think that life is all happy-happy puppy-love bubble-gum and kisses. It isn't. This is business. You give the customer what they're paying for, or you go away.
Sony, go away. Please go away. You made too many mistakes, and the only goodwill you should be seeing is the clothing charity.
Then they announced it would cost $600. And did I mention that there aren't really any games I really want to play? Just MGS4 and maybe Assassin's Creed.
Nice try Sony. You lost your brand equity. It was alredy eroeded with the PSP (how about some good games for once?). I was full-on Nintendo before all of this. I still like Nintendo best and will buy their console.
But I won't be buying a PS3 for over $400. I may even wait for $300. I won't be buying a 360 for over $300.
Three consoles, two shot themselves in the foot (as far as I'm concerned). Who will win? The expensive one, the MORE expensive one, or the reasonably priced one with about a dozen games that I want to play?
Hmmmmmm......
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
What does Grandpa Sony still cry about every night? About losing the VHS vs. Betamax war back when he was a lad.
The way to understand Sony's otherwise inexplicable behaviour is this: games on PS3 are just a means to an end. For Sony (and for MS/Xbox), the prize is not to control gaming; the prize is to own every home's entertainment computer, and the format it uses to show movies.
As they say in the interview, Sony have clearly decided that they will still sell five million PS3s, even at this price. And let's face it, when you count the Japanese market, they're probably right.
Sell 5m PS3s and they establish a user base for Blu-Ray - and kill HD-DVD. Thus they hope to win this decade's version of the Betamax vs. VHS war. Thus Grandpa Sony can stop crying at last and young Mr. Sony feels heroic.
That may be the strategy - but of course that doesn't mean it'll work. Sony's repeated desire to corner the market with a new content formats (UMD etc) has led them to disaster before, and may do so again. Perhaps in years to come young Mr. Sony will be crying every night about destroying the PlayStation franchise...
This isn't "politics". Sony is making a product that will sell or not.
Lest our gentle readers forget, a few weeks ago an analyst pointed out that Microsoft could've sold XBox360's for nearly $700 last year and the market would've purchased them all.
The XBox360 doesn't have HDMI at all! (Of course that's coming this year)
The XBox360 was supposed to have HD-DVD and it doesn't. (Of course that's coming this year though who knows what port it'll hook up to. If I'm using the wireless adaptor and have two wired joysticks I have no spare USB ports for an HD-DVD player... oops, guess I'll have to get an XBox360 branded hub.)
Given what tech they were showing at E3 (very little), the truth of the matter looks like Sony can't build enough units to meet demand at an XBox360 competitive price point. So up the price which will cut down on the demand and also maximizes revenue generation. Then, in January, if sales are sluggish (and you've weeded out the production run kinks) drop the price to match the XBox360. If sales are still strong (and they could be) keep it at that price because the market will pay that much for it.
Am I ticked about that? Yeah. I have enough spare cash floating around that I could be an early adopter, but I won't. $500 for a video game system (plus $40 for one more controller, plus $60 for ONE game so you're really looking at $600) is just ludicrous.
But then some people pay $100/month for cable TV with all the frills (not including broadband support).
But I'll pre-order a Nintendo wee-wee at $200 (maybe $250)...
But "No confidence" vote? Sony could be making the *perfect* video game system here and I still wouldn't buy it at that price point. On the other hand, if they make some really cool games for it and don't drop the price, maybe I will...
But that's what capitalism is all about Charlie Brown...
When I was in Gamestop last week, the sales rep told me he had received many more people asking if they could reserve the PS3 than the Wii. Not only that, he claimed that a bunch of people were willing to put up the $600 now (plus some kickbacks to him) if they could get one promised the day it comes out.
Ironically, he said that gamestop as of this time has no plans to allow preorders for PS3 due to the limited numbers they expect to receive (he said they estimate 1-2 per store on release day).
If he wasn't lying, there's apparently a strong calling for it, at least in my neighborhood.
I thought Sony's price point was ridiculous, and I have no plans to buy the PS3 when it's anywhere near $600, but perhaps Sony is right in believing their fans will buy anything with the "Playstation" name, no matter what the cost.
Dear diary: Today I stuffed some dolls full of dead rats I put in the blender.
With that happening to the XBox 360, Sony is going to have real trouble at a higher price point.
On the developer front, the general reaction to the Cell processor is "groan". (Except for audio guys, who finally get their very own CPU.) The Xbox 360 is a 3-CPU shared memory multiprocessor driving a conventional graphics chip, something well-understood by developers. Porting from an x86 PC (or an original XBox, which is an x86 PC) to an XBox 360 is straightforward. The Cell is a new, wierd architecture, little limited-memory CPUs with bulk DMA access to main memory. (Architecture people will remember unsuccessful supercomputers of the past organized like this.) In fact, Sony already has had a huge architectural disaster. Originally, the Cell was supposed to do the rendering. That was a dud, and Sony had to put a conventional graphics chip on the back end, running up the cost.
It's certainly possible to develop good games for the thing, but the extra work required means the games willl be out later. It took about two years before the PS2 hardware was really being used effectively. The PS3 is completely different from the PS2 and will require new techniques. So Sony is launching late on a machine you can't just port to. Not good.
What's really going to happen is that the early PS3 games will be doing most of the game work in the main CPU and the graphics engine, mostly ignoring the Cell processors. If the game talks to the network, one of the Cell processors will be handling that. Audio work will be in a Cell processor. PS3 games will probably have really good sound, because there's plenty of extra Cell CPU capacity to devote to audio. As Lucasfilm people like to point out, good audio will compensate for lousy graphics, but the reverse isn't true.
This deal with the Sony rootkit is getting old, they have learned their lesson from that as they will not try that again. Also, what does the rootkit have to do with their hardware? Personally, I have been very satisfied with Sony hardware, as I haven't had a bit of trouble out of their digital cameras, monitors, televisions, laptops, and game consoles. When the PS3 is released, I will most likely purchase it as you get what you pay for.
Outsourcing is bad.
Particularly outsourcing your marketing department.
Particularly outsourcing your marketing department to Hell.
Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
Atari lost a near monopoly on the console market. Nintendo lost a near monopoly on the console market. Anyone who thinks it's impossible to "magically" (for values of magic equal to misjudging the market) lose a gigantic market lead is fooling themselves.
But what is even more amazing is how unbalanced fanboys can be.
For totally nuts check this out. A lot of 360 owners slam Sony for not having the cool controls of the Wii. Hello? Doesn't the 360 have zero innovation in its controller? So you slam Sony for adding only 1 small feature vs Nintendo redesign while being the proud owner of a console that has that same old controller that been used for the last decade?
Pot calling kettle black?
I seen a lot of complaining about 360 not being fully backwards compatible. Both the PS3 and Wii promise to be different so how come MS ain't slammed for that?
It seems that a lot of people got something against Sony. Perhaps it is just a David vs Goliath syndrome, we love to see the big guy taken down a notch and perhaps it has to do with the root kit (then again if you run windows surely you gotten used to be rooted by now)
However fanboys vendetta's do not make accurate sale predictions.
So far as I can see the consoles all got their weaknesses.
Will it matter? We will know in 2010 when the next-next generations consoles will start to be talked about.
In short the real weakness of the PS3 is that it might just not be able to actually produce any games that are richer then the 360 or even worse, the Wii. Rich for me means AI, Physics, unit count, size of area etc etc. NOT resolution.
Not that any of the console companies are likely to care but I predict that PC gamers will once again look at consoles and go, "nice game kid". Pat the player on the head and go play a real game.
Or put another way. Console fanboys eat my keyboard!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
My major roadblock at this point with getting an Xbox 360 is the cost. I can't drop 399$ on a console. It's ludicrous. To shell out that much on a console with only a handful of playable games is disturbing, almost. Some of the most hyped titles - Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, for example - apparently aren't even worth the plastic the disk is printed on from a playability standpoint.
Bloody hell, I'm consdering just stretching my PS2 until it dies, and then giving up the console gaming entirely. Unless the Wii can blow it all away, then I might keep one of those around, but the Xbox 360, and the PS3 are just too damn expensive.
I really don't care about Bluray, or HD-DVD or this that or whatever. Just want to play some games.
Informatus Technologicus