In one of the most desperate spin jobs ever perpetrated upon the gaming public, Sony has released a chart intended to explain the PS3's value to an audience who is obviously too stupid to realize that Nintendo and Microsoft have pulled the wool over their eyes. As established in its latest press release, the Playstation 3 is a full gaming experience right out of box, while the two other competing consoles must "peddle add-ons" in order to "keep up."
Where does the PS3's value come from? It's gaming library, right? After all, we are talking about a gaming machine here - content is king. But no, Sony conveniently ignores the opportunity for pointing out some of the cool content available on its console, instead opting to compare technologies that no one cares about instead.
I'll leave the Xbox comparisons for more Microsoft-oriented writers, but it's worth pointing out some of the "features" that the Wii supposedly lacks. Let's look at them right down the line:
- Hard Drive
- Online Gaming Service
- Blu-ray gaming/movies
- HDMI output
Now, the hard drive is a valid point, but only for Nintendo's most core audience. The majority of Wii owners will probably never even need the "storage solution" that Nintendo plans to release this year - the 512MB of built-in storage is enough to keep game saves for most peoples' disc-based game library. (It's not enough for me, but I'm one of the most core.)
As for online gaming, Sony characterizes the Wii's as "limited." Once again, true for the core gamers, but the Wii has always been geared toward multiplayer in the living room, not across the wire. And Nintendo has what's arguably the best local multiplayer experience between the consoles of this generation. Judging by the insane sales of Wii Play, consumers tend to agree that online play is less important than local.
The Blu-ray and HDMI items are basically a wash, tossed in there for no other reason than to have more than the measly three comparison points that they were able to come up with that sort of mattered. The simple fact is, these two points are meaningful only to a very small fraction of the gaming demographic. The difference on an HDTV between RCA/composite cables and HDMI is huge to that fraction. Others might see a difference, but it's not going to be the deciding factor between a $400 console and a $250 one.
Now, Sony does have a very nice console on their hands. It's technologically more advanced than its competitors, it's far more stable and reliable than its closest relation (Xbox 360), and it even has some great exclusives. But taking shots like this press release does, it's obvious that Sony doesn't understand the gaming market as much as they think they do.
The gaming library is the most important aspect of any console. There are a lot of other selling points you can use as supplements, but if you don't have great content, your product is dead. Sony has great content, but somewhere early in the PS3's development, they decided technology was more important. So they bet the farm on it and put their most focused efforts into technology.
What Sony needs to do is change its focus. It's unlikely they'll be able to turn things around this generation, but the Playstation 4 had better show that its creator has learned its lesson. Its most recent PR spin doesn't look promising.
Via Edge Online
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Oh, Michael Pachter. Your blustery musings are so transparent that you must continue to make more and more outrageous assertions. Your laughable "analysis" has certainly made our headlines.
In the GameTrailers interview below, Pachter points to the Wii's similarity in "architecture" to the original Xbox to support his claim that Nintendo rips people off. Not only does his definition of architecture defy industry standards, he brings this accusation against the very inventor of modern video gaming - to say nothing of the fact that the Wii can't be two GameCubes duct-taped together and a blatant copy of the Xbox at the same time... that is, unless the original Xbox was a blatant copy of two GameCubes duct-taped together.
Watch Pachter make a fool of himself in living color:
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Nintendo Fanboy, among other news outlets, reported yesterday on a Forbes interview with Reggie Fils-Aime in which the ever-popular Nintendo exec was quoted:
"Nintendo has always had a vision on community," he says. "The issue is that we define community differently than our competitors. ... Our consumers do want a sense of community, and we're going to deliver that--but in a way that is unique to Nintendo."
What Reggie is saying here is that Nintendo's focus is the same now as it was two years ago when they released the Wii. He's also saying (paraphrased), "Don't look for us to be following in Microsoft's and Sony's footsteps."
Do you read anything in Forbes' tiny little snippet that indicates Nintendo is about to launch a major online effort? No? OK, just making sure. Because it seems some overeager reporters interpreted Fils-Aime quite differently. Take a look at some of these statements!
"Reggie promises online Wii community that's 'unique to Nintendo'"
"Nintendo Plans to Build Online Community Says Reggie File-Aime"
Whoa! First of all, maybe we should take a step back here and remind ourselves that Reggie said nothing to Forbes about expanding Nintendo's "online" community. He simply said that Nintendo has "always had a vision on community."
The funny thing about all this hoopla is that in order to see Reggie's statement that "we're going to deliver that [community]," people first have to read "we define community differently than our competitors." But it appears those words simply fell on deaf ears. The media forgot about Nintendo's different definition of community and applied Reggie's statement to the more popular "online" definition instead.
Nintendo does have an online strategy, but that doesn't mean Reggie was referring to it when he talked about delivering community. As we said here yesterday,
"The company will no doubt continue to increase Wii users' online exposure, but it will do so gradually and deliberately. Nintendo doesn't want to be marked as just another online service. Whatever they produce will be different from Microsoft's or Sony's solutions."
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