If there is one thing that Sony has always been recently consistent in it would probably have to be the fact that it generally over-promises and under-delivers. Now, that’s not to say that products - game consoles, for the sake of this discussion - that it releases are terrible or uncompetitive. They wouldn’t be one of the top consumer electronics companies in the world if that was the case. However, the company seems to have grown a bit of an ego and there’s no doubt that its reach is now habitually outpacing its grasp. Despite this fact, the shortcomings and mistakes of others have led the Japanese giant to the leading position in two different generations of gaming and, probably, a third… much to the chagrin of Micro$oft and Nintendo. And, to ensure it remains on top again, Sony will promise everything including the moon to get people excited and then probably deliver something far less exciting, but generally more practical. In hindsight, that’s not a completely terrible thing, but it does tend to rock your faith a bit in the PlayStation brand.
Now, those of you who know me are generally aware of my dislike for Microsoft, but it’s not for what it does, but for how it does it. That’s why I generally love to see the company fail. It’s very rare that it brings anything truly unique or innovative to its products, but rather takes ideas established in other areas and repackages them in a bigger and brighter box. Granted, a lot of companies do this, but not to such a huge and unnecessary degree. To its credit, though, M$ does try its hardest to makes things easier for the developer. In fact, it tends to believe that if developers are happy, they will create good products and good products lead to large consumer spending. Sony, on the other hand, seems to work in the opposite direction. It currently focuses its energies on going after the consumer in a big way. And once it has the consumers, it knows that developers are going to want to jump in to that large pool of potential revenue, regardless of if there’s a Sony lifeguard on duty or not.
So far, the Sony way has prevailed and it’s given the company a false sense of security and much larger degree of “testicular fortitude”. How else can you explain all this recent M$ bashing from one other than Kutaragi-san, himself? There used to be a time when Sony didn’t even mention its competition by name… and it didn’t need to. It was focused on its own goals and path to success and didn’t want to exert too much energy on worrying about the competition. Now days, however, with the cash reserves of M$ and the ever-vocal J. Allard helping to steal more and more of Sony’s spotlight, the house of PlayStation is doing everything to fight back.
That includes building a console that appears to have everything in it including the kitchen sink, creating an amazing assortment of tech and game demos to wow the masses and downplaying M$ any chance it gets. With that trinity in full force, Sony walked away from E3 with the trophy in hand and the first victory over Micro$oft and its Xbox 360.
That’s all great and good, but things are different when you actually have to deliver a fully working console (at an affordable price) and some actually interactive games. Not only that, but the grandiose plans of internet browsing, downloadable content and a digital-hub-in-your-living-room, etc. will definitely now have to come to fruition. Sony has promised us all this stuff before, but to say that it has failed miserably would be an understatement. Need I even bring up the HDD or the PS2’s Firewire ports or the AOL partnership? People are only going to believe the hype for so long before being able to see through all the smoke and mirrors. Once they do and see how the trick actually works, they might very well leave and check out a better performer. Perhaps that’s M$? Better yet, maybe it’s the underdog Nintendo, which can’t seem to figure out how to set up a smoke machine in the first place. One might even compare it to Penn and Teller, who, despite revealing what’s actually going on, still manage to throw enough misdirection into the mix to keep things entertaining. You pretty much know exactly what to expect from Nintendo, but that doesn’t prevent you from still attending the shows. Unfortunately, it seems the audience continues to get smaller and smaller, probably because a person can only watch the same exact show so many times.
Jumping back to Sony, I just want to close with a message to the company that I really do love supporting, despite its many faults:
Dear Sony,
Please stop wasting unnecessary time and energy with your ego trips and child-like bashing and focus it on successfully launching a competitive online gaming network. Don’t make a console system that can power a nuclear submarine and plug into a toaster. Instead, make a system that is practical, affordable and provides the best gaming experience possible. I mean, who really needs six USB ports and three Ethernet ports? You know that in the first revision of the system, most of these are going to go anyway.
Sure, I can understand where you are coming from. You want people to be excited about the potential of the system and dream of what could be possible. The only problem is that when our expectations are that high, it’s a long way to the ground. So, this time, please be there to keep us from falling. Otherwise, I’m sure that there are others who would be more than willing to catch us on the way down.
Your Longtime Fan,
Stephen
