Slashdot Mirror
Sony's Karakker On Turning Around PS3 Buzz
simoniker writes "Sony's new PR boss Dave Karakker has been talking about his challenges handling publicity for the PlayStation 3, explaining how Sony will be switching things up: 'We were allowing media to drive the message for us, and interpret it for us. So allowing someone like Peter Moore, who's a good friend of mine, to stand up there and say negative things about Sony, there wasn't anybody refuting that. People just took that for face value. Now we're very aggressively defending our turf.' He also defend the lack of universal achievements on PS3: 'Frankly, how I view it is I don't care if you're great at Madden if I'm playing you in Resistance. Because that doesn't tell me you're that much better in Resistance. An overall score doesn't really tell me much, it tells me you've spent a lot of time online, it tells me you spend a lot of time playing games, but it doesn't tell me how good you are at a particular game.'" Should be noted that Simoniker is a former Slashdot editor -- also, the AP write-up about reactions to the PS3 is quite positive.
While it is expensive, and although Sony have been pretty evil in the past, the fact remains that the PS3 is a very powerful system, with a decent level of brand recognition.
HD support may not be a requirement for many people, but those with HDTV will want some hardware to complement it. Blu-ray might have been a result of pressure from Sony's top level, but the extra capacity is not to be sneezed at.
Early adopters have a lot of money. They can afford the thing. And how often has the most powerful console been a total market failure?
We're talking about the reactions from people who attended a Sony PR event - people who, for the most part, already love Sony. I'd say reactions from them would be slightly biased at the least.
This guy worked on the 3DO and the Dreamcast! This means that the PS/3 will be the best console of the generation and still die a marketing driven death!
He also worked for Martha Stewart and KMart. So that means their is a good chance that this will end in bankruptcy or jail time.
If Sony was smart they would give Steve Jobs half the stock in the company. He would create a Red PS/3 and give $5 to African Aids research for everyone sold. Bono would hawk it for him and people would get on a six month waiting list to get one.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I made it to page 4 of 5. But the interviewer clearly is more concerned with being a buddy than asking anything interesting or inciteful.
Here's two of his question on the first page:
GS: Sounds fun!
GS: Woah!
and on the second page, he says:
GS: It did seem like there were a number of mis-statements, and this may be a media misperception, but did you have to work to rein people in and make sure they're on message?
Even the Sony guy didn't claim that (and note the spelling error is the web site's not mine)
And then he asks:
GS: Don't take offense to this, but is the system going to be able to hold up to being always on?
Why worry about if he's going to take offense? This is not journalism, this is a fan blog. Don't worry about offended a PR flac... that's his job. Ask questions that mean something... "The console looks impressive, but it's the most expensive. Why do you think gamers will buy it?". Don't pretend all negative buzz is just from people not being on message.
The guy doesn't have to be combative, but he should ask some questions that are hard and that might be interesting to the readership.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Hmmm... outside of your world things might be different. The last Ryokan I stayed in Tokyo at, had no less then four Sony computers for guests to use. Including the very sweet L series Vaio, dont think it'll make it stateside tho, shame because that would work great for what my mom needs / wants (functional and good lookin) Plus last I counted they still make the PS2... a product that a few would consider "a worthy product" Plus even tho the software is no iTunes, I actually do enjoy my NWA-3000 Sony Walkman. Showed it to a friend of mine, and if he could buy one over here, he would. I don't run "only" sony... i don't own a Sony computer, I have a Kenwood surround sound setup etc etc... so I don't consider myself much of a fanboy. I'll probably buy a Wii first, then maybe a PS3 (360... if a game of interest for me comes out)
/. here about some PS3 articles i've read on other sites, talking about where they have seen a PS3 in action, seems to run cooler then a 360 etc etc. Still early maybe that article is below, since I know Slashdot doesn't just run negative Sony stories and all that.
With that said... I do agree with the one point where comparing myself vs someone that is on 20x more then me doesnt' tell me much... other then he may not have as much of a life as I do. But then again I never really got "into" XBox Live either so I guess i'm not the target audience.
Ya Sony has done some dumb stupid things, but then again I don't think they're worthy of my hatred yet. I am curious why I haven't read on
I hope their new PR guy is good. They do have a lot overcome. However, there has been a lot of doom and gloom viral marketing for the PS3 which is not entirely true. Even though I've speculated a lot on /. about Sony's poor choices on the PS3 and how it expect it to hurt their sales, I have also been (finally) seeing more information on their games and their hardware and I'm pretty interested in it. Some of their screen shots are breathtaking.
Was the most controversial, Blu-Ray, the right thing to do? Hmm... I'm still going to say no. However, like I've said in the past, looking at the perspective of adding it or leaving it, I can only defend adding it, all things considered once I think about it...
While I think Sony has been doing things ass-backwards as far as Public Relations and response to the 'shock' of the new system on gamers, they do have room to make amends if they just started being a little more respectful and talking up their system on a positive aspect instead of the "you're n00b!" approach.
Cheers,
Fozzy
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
An overall score doesn't really tell me much, it tells me you've spent a lot of time online, it tells me you spend a lot of time playing games, but it doesn't tell me how good you are at a particular game
But the gamerscore isn't supposed to fill the role of "how good an opponent is someone," it's to fill the role of providing an official metric for the eternal "my dick's bigger than yours" competition that goes on amongst "hardcore" gamers. And that's a competition that's been going on since arcade denizens started sending Polaroids of their high scores in to gaming magazines.
That's all the gamerscore means, and it's not meant to mean anything else. It's bragging rights by the numbers, and I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that it doesn't matter because it's not a record of how good someone is at a given game.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Hate to say it, Sony, but your biggest image problem right now isn't coming from the media. It's the retail channel.
I walked into a Gamestop this week, and casually asked about the next-gen systems. The employees there pushed the Wii and the 360 hard, and slammed the PS3.
Why? Because the retail outlets know they will be able to sell a bunch of hardware, software, and accessories for the Wii and the 360. They know that customers who hold out for a PS3 will simply spend the holidays on a waiting list, and not spend any cash at the store.
Sony's shipping projections for the PS3 are shrinking every week, and the retailers don't see any reason to bend over for Sony at this time.
> Overpriced? Nope, it's a better value than the XBox 360 when it comes to technology and cost of manufacturing.
/. crowd, but it's not exactly going to make or break the console.
Yes, except, fundamentally, it's a games console. There's over a decade's evidence that the $300 price point works well for a console at release. Personally, I'm not willing to spend $599 on a games console. It could be hand crafted, and cost twice as much to make as they're selling it for, for all I care, there's still the fact that it's games console priced outside what I'm willing to spend on a games console.
Heard a lot of similar arguments about the Mac Pro, while trying to argue that it would be great if Apple released an upgradable iMac equivalent. It's brilliant value for money, if you want a quad core Xeon workstation, but fundamentally if you don't need that much processing power it's just not worth it.
> Overheating? Nope, it's cooler than the XBox 360.
Source?
> Shortage? Doesn't take away from the console, just my ability to buy one.
Agree. The late launch may be an issue, but frankly a launch shortage is going to have minimal impact 6 months down the line.
> Free online service
Yup
> Better form factor
Err... no, I'd call both equally ugly. But hey, each to their own
> Linux capability
Good point for the
> Blu-ray
Which is great, if you want HD movies. I'm unconvinced this is going to be a major selling point, especially as so far HD-DVD seems to be doing a lot better than Blu-Ray. It could be an issue for games, but personally I'm not seeing two-DVD releases being a major issue.
> Motion control
I thought general opinion is this wasn't very good, or was it just not quite as good as Nintendos?
The PS3 is one hell of a powerful console, released at a decent price point for the cost to make... I just personally don't think people are going to be willing to pay the extra, and that the XBox 360 and Wii will both gain serious ground before Sony gets around to price cuts...
Sure the interviewer was not asking "deep questions", at least at the start - but you have to at least admit the context of one of those questions made the remark reasonable:
So from Access I went to work at Allied Domecq, which used to be the world's biggest liquor company. So they own brands like Stoli, Beefeater, Maker's Mark, Kahlua, and also Dunkin Donuts, Baskin-Robbins, and Togo's, but I just worked on Spirits of North America. But then that company got bought out by a French company, and they laid off everybody here in the United States.
GS: Woah!
See? All of the sudden the reaction seems pretty natural. Bought out by a french company and laid off everyone - whoa!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It seems to me that all the negative press surrounding the PS3 is largely due to it's price, and due to the fact that the average fanboy teenager can't afford it. While I too believe it's a pricey console, the box itself offers a lot of features that I've been waiting for as a gamer for a long time:
Hard drive standard - every PS3 comes with an hard disk, which means every developer can develop for it without excluding anyone.
No region encoding for games - THIS IS HUGE! Have we as gamers not been waiting for this since the beginning? It's finally here! We don't have to wait for marketing departments to choose what we may or may not like in a foreign game; it's all ours.
Card reader - hellooooo homebrew. While homebrew isn't officially supported, this makes it much easier.
Blu-Ray - 50GB discs allow for an obscene amount of storage.
But does it run Linux? Yea, supposedly it will, which means even more homebrew goodness.
While everything I've stated doesn't guarantee great games, it seems to me like they've made it so that this system has a bunch of potential.