Sunday, February 25, 2007

Sony Sony Sony

Why are you killing the Playstation 3?
Why are you completely screwing over the customer for short term cost cutting because you raised costs so much to try and win the DVD format battle?

I know this isnt an ad comment, but it just completely tarnishes the whole image of Sony; at a time they REALLY need to improve it.

All the good work done by agencies to create good ads is being blown to pieces by a constant stream of stupid moves and bad PR.

Someone at the top of Sony has to start looking into what is going on at SCEJ (Sony Computer Entertainment). What was saving the brand looks like it could end up destroying it; and Sony has so much history and still so much potential... lets hope they dont let it.

5 comments:

lauren said...

**warning mega comment**

hey rob - i'm a girl and it's my job to not be into computer games all that much, but having discovered guitar hero, i'm in love! i don't know a lot about any of the consoles really, so if i'm way off or way behind, just delete the comment, but i was thinking about sony and rest of the gaming crew and what they do to improve their systems was, taking a leaf out of the ipod book.

guitar hero only has a certain number of songs each version (1+2), but how cool would it be if you were able to pay to download new songs all the time. each day/week/month a new song could be transcribed/launched and you could buy it and upload it from your computer. this could work for other games too - you just buy extra levels, or extra villains, extra opponents, etc. instead of buying a disk of a whole sequel game, you buy updates. like computers, they could still release a whole new system and game every once in a while, but having the regular update means that each game has a longer shelf-life and more possibility for keeping consumers regularly interacting with the system.

like the ipod, you'd get P2P sharing, but that could be compensated by them developing new driver software/game library (รก la itunes) which would end up being standard feature on all macs/pcs.

but i'm guessing by your frustration at PS3, they haven't gone with any of that at all.

Anonymous said...

Please know both Howard Stringer [Numero Uno @ SONY Europe / North America] & Nakai San [Numero Uno @ SONY Asia-Pac] are now aware of your blog AND your views on what SONY is doing wrong and I shall report back what they say when I get told.

Point well made, well expressed and well overdue.

Anonymous said...

Apparently the new Xbox 360 version of Guitar Hero will feature that idea; as will the PS3 version of Singstar.

My frustration with the PS3 is that the consumer is being fed lots of PR nuggets to hide the fact that Sony are using the PS3 as an anchor to win the High Definition Movie Format Wars.

Toshiba made a fortune by making DVD the chosen format, and Sony have raised the price of PS3 to include their Blu Ray disc, in order to try and make that the winning format: at the expense of the consumer.

Not only that, they then refuse to pay Immersion for the licence to use rumble in the pads after losing a court case, then they 'pretend' its for cost reasons! Then they copy motion sensing from Nintendo. And we know they copied it because when they announced it some of their top developers werent even aware of it!

I speak this as a huge fan of the Playstation brand. Being an owner of a PS1, PS2 and PSP. I worry that Sony are doing what Nintendo did 15 years ago...

Thanks Rob. Glad to know they are willing to listen. Thats a start!

SchizoFishNChimps said...

Sony make great gadgets, but absolutely sh*t PR. It all boils down to the way they treat their customers as potential pirates.

Anonymous said...

I actually disagree.

I think Sony's PR department are the only thing saving the PS3 right now. Sure they are bullshitting like troopers, but they arent exactly being given good stuff to work with!

Its boiling down to some awful decisions higher up than that.

Removing rumble is one perfect example, how can a machine so exactly positioned as THE powerhouse have some features going backwards?! Just pay Immersion the licence!

etc