Sony's Harrison on Sony Arrogance

Joystiq had the chance to exchange a few words with Sony's Phil Harrison at the UK Develop Conference. They asked him some hard questions about the crazy comments that have been coming out of the company since E3. From the article: "There's always going to be a risk when you are market leader for ten years that we start to lose perspective; and we have to make sure that we don't lose perspective. But I don't think we're arrogant, I think we have to recognize that we're in a highly competitive industry and that anything that we say will be eternally editorialized by professionals and consumers alike. So we're always in the spotlight." After the tape was off he snarked that he hadn't been asked very nice questions. Poor guy, having to answer questions that aren't 'How awesome is the PS3 going to be?'

Comments

Not about the PSP, they're not.

[Rachel Lucid]

Hard to be arrogant when you just shelved your main media distribution...

One "zonked" tag to go please

[SuperKendall]

And can I get a few comments from the people that think Slashdot has no console bias on the side please?

Re:One "zonked" tag to go please

[MBCook]

No kidding. Delays in the system, delays in the cell, delays in Blu-Ray, the price, last-minute half-features (the controller tilt), feature removal (Ethernet hub, rumbling), cell yields of 10-20%, and low laser diode yield. Sony hasn't had ANY good news. Even at E3 when they were expected to make a killing they didn't show a ton of impressive stuff. Sure it looked good, but they didn't look as good as the target renders and they didn't have a large variety of games. They also didn't have much in the big name department (GTA, just a video of Jak and Daxter).

Compare that to MS who while not great did show a wide variety of games and had some good announcements (GTA no longer exclusive to PlayStation for one).

Then there was the "little guy", Nintendo. A fantastic showing of tons of games that got tons of press. People were interested in much of it. Wii Sports, Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Red Steel, Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, and more. Name 7 big upcoming games off the top of your head for either other system.

I've gotta say, I thought the PS3 would be a scarce but big hit with great graphics. Now I'm starting to get much more interested as it seems the PS3 will be overpriced with great graphics and a fair helping of "what are they doing now."

Re:One "zonked" tag to go please

[Kohath]

What bias? How do you expect him to report anything good about the PS3 when there isn't any good news about it available?

This isn't a negative story. This isn't a story at all. This is 100% content free. The non-biased thing would be to ignore it.

And that's my comment on your comment on zonk's bias for posting an article about a Sony exec's comment on joystiq's question about the feeling that there was arrogance percieved in Sony execs' previous comments. Write a blog post about it. It's sooooo relevant to whether the PS3 games will be fun or not (which doesn't matter until they are available anyway).

Re:Arrogant?

[Aidski]

And the Wii's other gimmick... fun games. Shame Sony rarely thinks of that one. (and I bought a PS2 and not a gamecube, yet own 2 games for the PS2 and have spent more time playing gamecube at friends' places)

Re:$599 is fine

[MBCook]

On the one hand, you're right. I think MS should have done that. Just put all the console up for bid in one giant eBay auction and let people pay what they are willing to.

That said, it doesn't have to be that way. I bought TWO PS2s on launch day in a major metro area for the launch price without having to sit in line from 2:00 AM or something. I could have easily done the same for the 360 launch or the XBox launch without any problem.

But with the PS3 instead of having a choice of trying on my own or paying $1000 on eBay, I will be FORCED to pay $600 if I get it at retail (which I won't until the price is half that).

Have you stopped r00ting your customers?

[NickFortune]

"Ok, we're arrogant" is just as stupid.

Well, Sony have given some world class stupid answers lately. I think the ones that did the most damage were.

• "Rootkit? What rootkit?"
• "That's not a rootkit"
• "The customers don't even know what a rootkit is why should they care?"
• "This program removes the rootkit"
• "OK, that was a bug. This program really removes the rootkit"

Now that was arrogance.

Is it surprising if their other business interests get tarred with the same brush? I know it changed my mind about buying a PS3. .

Re:Have you stopped beating your wife?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I don't know, I'd call the CD spyware thing arrogant. Selling portable audio players that required users to convert their entire libraries to ATRAC in order to play them is pretty arrogant. Sony thinking they could sell movie UMDs at nearly the price of the DVD counterparts was pretty arrogant, in my opinion. The DVD "+" writable standard was pretty arrogant, IMO, they didn't get accepted so they joined HP in making it anyway. I don't think the Blu-Ray standard counts as it's not a Sony format, but a format co-developed by at least a half-dozen major companies like Pioneer, Matsushita (Panasonic, JVC), and all the other hardware makers on the DVD consortium save two.

And $500 is better

[SuperKendall]

A correction, the base price that contains everything a gamer would need is $500, not $600. There has been a lot of confusion around this because many people like to pretend the $500 model does not exist even though it offers all the features of the premium 360.

$500 is also very expensive, no need to raise the figure any to complain about price.

That said, I totally agree with your point. Pretty much all through December I don't think a 360 sold on eBay (any model) for less than $800 - Sony I think is just being smart about collecting some of the money that would otherwise be going to eBay. A lot of people in lines at midnight were there just to get a 360 to scalp, I can't help but think it would be nice to reduce the occurence of this.

Well there's a story

[SuperKendall]

last-minute half-features (the controller tilt)

Well now that you mention it, there was an interview with the same Warhawk developers that were the ones that stated they got the controllers just a few weeks before E3 - in the interview it said the statement had been misconstrued; Sony in fact had let them know about the tilt feature much earlier but had only delivered physical controllers with the tilt sensors built in a few weeks before E3. The exact words:

Actually, Incognito has secretly been working with Sony on the tilt technology for a while, but it wasn't until the last few weeks before E3 that they received a working controller.

So the combination of a developer talking about what looks to be a pretty good PS3 game (how meany Gears of War stories has Slashdot seen?) along with a debunking of one of the more commonly held myths about the PS3, you'd think would be newsworthy. No mention of that on Slashdot though...