Friday, May 19, 2006
Five million mindless drones
Check out this quote from David Reeves, the CEO of Sony's European PlayStation division: "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."
I am actually embarrassed for Sony at this point. Think about this for a second: they had a horrible E3 by all accounts. Warhawk was pretty fun and Heavenly Sword fills the God-of-War-with-a-chick genre well enough, but they didn't have one marquee game. Resistance would have been completely ignored had it not been publicized that the creators of Ratchet and Clank were at the helm. As recently as a few months ago, though, Sony was still saying they were going to release their system in the Spring of '06. When they should have been launching their system they showed a few shoddy games that honestly looked no better than some Xbox titles (the original Xbox). Then they announce this ridiculously high price. I still believe they only announced the price to gauge consumer reaction. Remember when they showed off that boomerang controller and everyone laughed? They changed that pretty quick, eh? I assume the same thing will happen with the price. But, for now, we have to take Sony at their word. We have to assume they'll actually release a system that costs twice as much as the PS2 did upon release.
However, it's comments like the one I posted above that really make me worry about Sony. I honestly think they have lost touch with what makes gaming fun. They have been sitting in their tower for so long they don't know what people want anymore. Look at the PSP. No one wants to play a complex 3D game on a portable. The best games are 2D titles that could have been done on the Gameboy Color. Do Exit or Loco Roco really need all that processing power? Nope! But you'll have to pay for all those wasted specs. Sony wanted to compete against Nintendo and Apple, so they created a system that does a poor impression of the GBA and the iPod. Sony proceeded to push out retreads of console titles and Nintendo, with their original hardware, made genre creating software like Nintendogs and Brain Age. Now that Nintendo has built a huge lead, guess what's coming out on the PSP? There are versions of Nintendogs, Brain Age, Animal Crossing and Advance Wars coming out (or already out in Japan). Sony expects people to shell out more cash to play the PSP version of these games, even though the NDS versions have been out for a while already. Does this make sense?
They are doing the same thing with the PS3. They have built a monster system that costs way too much but completely forgot to make compelling software. Do we really need Blu Ray built in? Is this Cell chip really worth the extra money? The $400 MS is charging for the X360 is already too high for the casual gamer. MS has the luxury of chopping that price down to $300 when sales dry up. What is Sony going to do? How will they ever get a large enough user base so developers can take a risk with the next Katamari? I still think Sony needs to remove the Blu Ray player (or make it optional) to make this system affordable. They may be arrogant now, and I'm sure they'll have no trouble selling out this year, but what happens next year? What happens when everyone has played the rich kid's PS3 and realizes it isn't even as fun as the PS2? What happens when Halo 3 come out? And Mario Galaxy? There's no way the PS3 will have better games than those. They'll have their own version of these games out at some point, but why pay more money for an imitation?
Seriously, what is Sony doing? And just so people don't miss the point of my column, I do not doubt the PS3 will sell out this year. There are probably more than 5 million gamers out there just itching to throw their money away. I'm just concerned about Sony's thought process. Shouldn't they think "We better have something good at launch or we won't sell a single system!" Wouldn't that make you more confident that Sony is actually trying to convince people the PS3 is worth buying rather than relying on a stupid name? Need I remind anyone how crappy the Rolling Stones have been in the last decade or two? You aren't going to make the most engaging product if you assume people will buy it regardless of the quality.
I am actually embarrassed for Sony at this point. Think about this for a second: they had a horrible E3 by all accounts. Warhawk was pretty fun and Heavenly Sword fills the God-of-War-with-a-chick genre well enough, but they didn't have one marquee game. Resistance would have been completely ignored had it not been publicized that the creators of Ratchet and Clank were at the helm. As recently as a few months ago, though, Sony was still saying they were going to release their system in the Spring of '06. When they should have been launching their system they showed a few shoddy games that honestly looked no better than some Xbox titles (the original Xbox). Then they announce this ridiculously high price. I still believe they only announced the price to gauge consumer reaction. Remember when they showed off that boomerang controller and everyone laughed? They changed that pretty quick, eh? I assume the same thing will happen with the price. But, for now, we have to take Sony at their word. We have to assume they'll actually release a system that costs twice as much as the PS2 did upon release.
However, it's comments like the one I posted above that really make me worry about Sony. I honestly think they have lost touch with what makes gaming fun. They have been sitting in their tower for so long they don't know what people want anymore. Look at the PSP. No one wants to play a complex 3D game on a portable. The best games are 2D titles that could have been done on the Gameboy Color. Do Exit or Loco Roco really need all that processing power? Nope! But you'll have to pay for all those wasted specs. Sony wanted to compete against Nintendo and Apple, so they created a system that does a poor impression of the GBA and the iPod. Sony proceeded to push out retreads of console titles and Nintendo, with their original hardware, made genre creating software like Nintendogs and Brain Age. Now that Nintendo has built a huge lead, guess what's coming out on the PSP? There are versions of Nintendogs, Brain Age, Animal Crossing and Advance Wars coming out (or already out in Japan). Sony expects people to shell out more cash to play the PSP version of these games, even though the NDS versions have been out for a while already. Does this make sense?
They are doing the same thing with the PS3. They have built a monster system that costs way too much but completely forgot to make compelling software. Do we really need Blu Ray built in? Is this Cell chip really worth the extra money? The $400 MS is charging for the X360 is already too high for the casual gamer. MS has the luxury of chopping that price down to $300 when sales dry up. What is Sony going to do? How will they ever get a large enough user base so developers can take a risk with the next Katamari? I still think Sony needs to remove the Blu Ray player (or make it optional) to make this system affordable. They may be arrogant now, and I'm sure they'll have no trouble selling out this year, but what happens next year? What happens when everyone has played the rich kid's PS3 and realizes it isn't even as fun as the PS2? What happens when Halo 3 come out? And Mario Galaxy? There's no way the PS3 will have better games than those. They'll have their own version of these games out at some point, but why pay more money for an imitation?
Seriously, what is Sony doing? And just so people don't miss the point of my column, I do not doubt the PS3 will sell out this year. There are probably more than 5 million gamers out there just itching to throw their money away. I'm just concerned about Sony's thought process. Shouldn't they think "We better have something good at launch or we won't sell a single system!" Wouldn't that make you more confident that Sony is actually trying to convince people the PS3 is worth buying rather than relying on a stupid name? Need I remind anyone how crappy the Rolling Stones have been in the last decade or two? You aren't going to make the most engaging product if you assume people will buy it regardless of the quality.
// posted by Tom @ 12:36 PM 
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