Is Sony Messing Up?
Having watched the Sony press conference and thinking about things a little bit more, I think I actually do have to agree that Sony is just following what everyone else is doing. Granted, it has always been a company that has taken innovative ideas (generally from other companies) and brought them to the mainstream audience.
Today, however, all I see is a console that is filled to the brim with so much new technology in the hopes that some of it will stick. Not only that, but it now appears that Sony is backpedaling on some of its initial system specs and removing the HDMI, 802.11 and memory card slots from the lower SKU model ($500) and only including them in the higher-priced version ($600). For the price they are asking, that is just plain crazy and maybe a sign of them becoming far too complacent in the #1 spot.
To make matters worse, the company is even including some new features at the cost of some older, but well-established ones:
"Pursuant to the introduction of this new six-axis sensing system, the vibration
feature that is currently available on DUALSHOCK® and DUALSHOCK®2 controllers for PlayStation and PlayStation®2, will be removed from the new PS3 controller as vibration itself interferes with information detected by the sensor."
Is the electronics giant really stumbling over its own mistakes? One poster put it like this:
Behold the PS3: the worst decisions made by industry hardware providers in the past 15 years conveniently amalgamated in a single console:
1. The price of the 3DO
2. The size of the Xbox 1
3. The waggle of the Wii
4. The retard pack pricing model of the 360 SKUs
5. The overpriced proprietary media of the N64
He might not be completely right in his analysis, but he does bring up a good point. Sony managed to lead this indusry by being able to predict what people wanted and throwing just enough innovation into the hardware. That skill seems to have virtually disappeared and left a company who just watches and copies.
I'm a big Sony fan, but even I am starting to have major doubts about some of the recent decisions it has been making.... the biggest of which is the price. Who is going to pay $500 for a console that doesn't do that much more than a $400 Xbox 360? It's going to take some serious convincing before the mainstream audience latch onto the PS3. Its only real selling point is technology that most people can probably live without... so why should they pay a premium for it?
I'm going to let today's press conference sink in a little more and provide some more opinions over the next few days. There are still Nintendo's and Microsoft's events to check out... so we'll see how that influences people's new opinions about the Cell-powererd console.
Today, however, all I see is a console that is filled to the brim with so much new technology in the hopes that some of it will stick. Not only that, but it now appears that Sony is backpedaling on some of its initial system specs and removing the HDMI, 802.11 and memory card slots from the lower SKU model ($500) and only including them in the higher-priced version ($600). For the price they are asking, that is just plain crazy and maybe a sign of them becoming far too complacent in the #1 spot.
To make matters worse, the company is even including some new features at the cost of some older, but well-established ones:
"Pursuant to the introduction of this new six-axis sensing system, the vibration
feature that is currently available on DUALSHOCK® and DUALSHOCK®2 controllers for PlayStation and PlayStation®2, will be removed from the new PS3 controller as vibration itself interferes with information detected by the sensor."
Is the electronics giant really stumbling over its own mistakes? One poster put it like this:
Behold the PS3: the worst decisions made by industry hardware providers in the past 15 years conveniently amalgamated in a single console:
1. The price of the 3DO
2. The size of the Xbox 1
3. The waggle of the Wii
4. The retard pack pricing model of the 360 SKUs
5. The overpriced proprietary media of the N64
He might not be completely right in his analysis, but he does bring up a good point. Sony managed to lead this indusry by being able to predict what people wanted and throwing just enough innovation into the hardware. That skill seems to have virtually disappeared and left a company who just watches and copies.
I'm a big Sony fan, but even I am starting to have major doubts about some of the recent decisions it has been making.... the biggest of which is the price. Who is going to pay $500 for a console that doesn't do that much more than a $400 Xbox 360? It's going to take some serious convincing before the mainstream audience latch onto the PS3. Its only real selling point is technology that most people can probably live without... so why should they pay a premium for it?
I'm going to let today's press conference sink in a little more and provide some more opinions over the next few days. There are still Nintendo's and Microsoft's events to check out... so we'll see how that influences people's new opinions about the Cell-powererd console.
posted by Frosty @ 8:21 PM
3 comments
