While I’ve been giving the Xbox brand quite a bit of praise I’ve also given the Playstation brand quite a bit of grief. For the same reasons that the Xbox has moved in directions I’ve been pleased with the Playstation brand has moved in directions that turned me off. At my core I’m a gamer, and I’ll buy ANY console the delivers what I’m looking for regardless of my opinion of the company. I’m also not one to waste my money on promises and future potential. As someone who spends easily thousands each year on my hobby I don’t have money to waste on products that I’ll just be sitting on. I can say with confidence that as much as I despise Sony I despise Microsoft even more but like a good consumer I buy their products anyway… lets hear it for capitalism.

With that said I will, and without hesitation, buy a Playstation 3 the very moment there is something that console offers that will compel me to purchase it. I don’t HATE the Playstation 3 but I will call out the brand on their missteps (as I feel ALL good consumers should) and I do the same for the Xbox and Nintendo brands as well, they just give me a whole lot less to complain about.

So why haven’t I bought a PS3 yet? Well, at the moment there are a few interesting things on the console but it doesn’t actually offer me anything that compels me to buy it, this is compounded by the fact that the price is rather steep for an item that doesn’t actually do anything I’m interested in seeing it do. I have the cash, that’s not a problem, and many of the promised features and games seem interesting but as I said before I wont part with the cash until those promises become a reality, I have better things to spend it on like games. After all isn’t that really what we’re spending all this money to play with?
I started thinking about what Sony would have to offer for me to go to the store and buy a PS3 tomorrow. Granted I wouldn’t do it unless I could take the console home and see the fruits of these things with first hand immediacy, this discredits everything that comes out “soon” or “this holiday” or “next year”. Again, there are games that are out now for other platforms that I want to play NOW so blowing several hundred dollars for a Chia-pet is worthless when I already own a few full grown ferns. Even still I don’t think many of these would be all that difficult for them to do, heck they’d be well served to do all of them. So without further ado here are the 6 reasons (none of which exist at the present) I would buy a PS3.

1. At least 6 must-have exclusive and original titles a year. A “must-have” title is defined by ME. Honestly Games like Motorstorm and Resistance didn’t really interest me and I would define neither of them as “Must-have” I’m talking about games that I see a trailer for and start salivating at the mouth thinking about how cool it would be to play it. Resident Evil does that for me, as does the Devil May Cry series, both are titles that helped fuel the purchase decisions of the Gamecube and PS2 last generation. In terms of recently released games The Darkness really excited me as does the up coming Bioshock and lots of other titles, unfortunately I don’t see anything exclusive on the PS3 radar this year that falls into that category.

These games have to be exclusives because I already own every other console, so if it’s a cross platform title there is really no good reason for me to buy a PS3 since I can already play it on something else I own. Online wise the 360 has a more compelling offering and graphically the differences between the 360 and PS3 are marginal at best so neither one of those would get me to buy the PS3 version over the 360 version anyway.

I say these have to be original titles because with the exception of two or three franchises within the Sony brand their franchisees don’t really interest me. Ratchet and Clank, F1 Racing, Jax and Dexter, etc. just don’t interest me. so really they’d have to branch out into new franchises if they’d want to create titles that I’d define as a must have.

I say 6 of these titles due to the console’s price. I’m not going to spend over half a grand just to play one or two titles. I’d need fresh and exciting gaming experiences at least every other month from the box. If the console’s price was lower I could justify less titles but at $500-$600 it needs to deliver strong and consistently. By comparison the Wii only had three available titles I was interested in, but that’s all it needed considering it’s price tag.

2. An achievement system standardized across all games with required developer support and accessibility over the web. I’m an achievement whore, if you read my articles with any consistancy you’ll know that. Though, my addiction to these things aren’t just some side effect of the Xbox Koolaide. Actually this is the way I’ve played games for the last decade years or so.

In college my friends and I started logging what we called a “dead games list” whenever we started a new game we’d come up with requirements and if you played through and met the requirements you “killed” the game and could add it to the dead games list. Essentially the requirements were always that you explored every last little aspect of the game to the fullest and defeated the game on the highest difficulties possible. A fighting game for instance would require you beat the game on the hardest difficulty with every character, as well as unlocking every character, costume or anything else that could be unlocked. If the game was on the dead games list you could be assured that you mastered the game and saw absolutely every thing there was to see.

When MS came out with achievements it was like they built my dead games list into the console itself. And making those stats accessible over the web through Xbox.com gave it legs. I’m now a member of several communities of like minded gamers. Achievements for me are like a gift, like someone finally understood the way I liked to play games and built this system just for me. I know for a fact I’m not the only person who feels this way and I must say every other console on the planet now feels like LESS of a console because they’re missing this feature. Even if you’re not achievement obsessed there is no denying that it can extend the replay value of a game substantially, which is always a good thing no matter how you look at it.

I’ve been following this development on the PS3 pretty closely from the copycat entitlement system, to the now planned trophy system. Like most things with the PS3 it has potential, but I can’t play with potential. I can’t have fun with it, and it’s not worth anything, let alone $600. The trophy system could be the single greatest thing Sony’s done with the PS3, or or could be lame, under-supported niche feature only used by one or two games. Once again I’ll hold on to my money until it proves itself as worthwhile.

3. A guarantee of level of service audio visual fidelity: all developers MUST support 720p and 4xMSAA, online must integrate with the console’s built in profile system. While it’s true that most PS3 games offer 720p graphics or better. There is really no standard to that effect, as an owner of a PS3 there is no guarantee that every game you buy will support that resolution. While it’s highly likely to be the case in terms of 720p it is definitely NOT the case in other areas. The lack of FSAA in most of the games I’ve played is some kind of cruel joke. Playing Ridge Racer 7 and Virtua Fighter 5 and having my eyeballs cut on the sharp graphical jaggies is so very reminiscent of when I brought home a PS2 and questioned it’s superiority to the Dreamcast for the very same reason. This is the 7th console generation, High Def, surround sound, X million FLOPS, and we can’t be bothered to smooth out the edges of the 3d models. Maybe MS’s requirement that developers use FSAA and 720p does tie the hands of developers. But it’s those same requirements that IMO made the Dreamcast and the Gamecube keep a consistently high level of graphical quality across all of their games.

This consistancy goes beyond graphics into other areas including the online experience and a profile with all of your preferences and stats built in. This all falls under what I was saying earlier about stuff that MS is doing in the console space that I’ve been begging for for years. I actually played the PS2 version of DOA2 instead of the Dreamcast version despite the fact that I like the DC controller more and thought the DC version’s graphics were better. The PS2 version offered a profile system. Rather than having no stat tracking at all when we passed around the controller during our weekly tournaments on the DC I could keep a personal profile and not have it messed up by everyone else I was playing with. That was with one game, I’m spoiled now that I have a password protected profile consistent across all games. Once again this might tie the hands of some developers but I say: screw em, because I like it this way and it seems to be the only real way to get some consistancy in the industry.

4. A $300 or less price tag with HD cables and a headset included. I couldn’t write this article without bring up the price issue. The Sony fanclub likes to draw comparisons about how the Xbox 360 is more expensive once you buy an HD-DVD player and pay for Xbox Live or how the Wii isn’t so cheap once you buy three more Remotes and a golden chalice. The fact of the matter is I DONT WANT those things. I have no intention of ever buying the HD-DVD attachment, and if Sony offered the PS3 without Blu-Ray for even $5 less I would probably buy that version over the one they offer now because as long as this format war rages on I’m not going to fund terrorism on either side.

You know what accessories I DO need though? HD-Cables so I can actually use more than 1/20th of the console’s performance power, as well as a headset so I can pretend that my multiplayer games are actually more than just single player games with a really “creative” AI. Interesting enough those are two accessories that the PS3 just doesn’t come with. yeah I know I can order an HDMI cable online for $10 but you know what I don’t want to go to Best Buy, spend $600 on a PS3 to take it home and buy a Cable online while I wait 6-8 for the cable to arrive before I can really play it. Nor do I want to drop the $70-$100 that Best Buy wants to charge me for the same plastic wrapped copper.

Considering that, and considering that there are a few (very few) games for the console that I’d like to play right now the optimal price would have to be $300 with HD cables and a headset included. This ties in with the earlier comment on the number of games the console needs. Either they need more games to justify the price or they need a lower price to justify the games. As it sits right now, neither the games nor the price justifies a purchase.

5. PS1 and PS2 games rendered in HD with 4xMSAA. I do love quite a few PS1 and PS2 games, but I do also own both of those consoles. Really the BC feature of the PS3 doesn’t do anything for me. Upscaling graphics is a sham, particularly when I own a projector with a Faroudja DCDi that can scale the games from a PS2 much better than the PS3′s software scaler ever will.

What would make the BC experience enjoyable would be if the PS3 were to actually render those old games in a higher resolution and apply 4xMSAA on top of it. I remember when I first got Bleem! on my PC it was amazing to see all my favorite PS1 games rendered (not scaled) at 3 times their normal resolution. Everything was crystal clear, there were no jaggies and it was just fantastic. I became disenfranchised by the PS2′s graphical capabilities long before the HD generation and now that I’ve been playing games in HD for almost 2 years even the PS2 games that I’d love to go back and play become hard to stomach due to the graphics distracting from the core experience. If the PS3′s horsepower was used to render the games natively in HD I would drive to the store right now and buy one simply because it would let me experience all of the great PS2 games I missed by letting me enjoy them with real HD graphics.

6. Toshiba announces that they’re retiring the HD-DVD format and gives the market to Blu-Ray. Fat chance of this happening but truth be told it would make me buy a PS3. As I said earlier, I don’t buy into the whole format war. I’ve got thousands saved waiting to pounce on a format and start building an HD collection. I’ve got nearly 500 DVDs in my collection, mostly special editions and box sets. I’m a collector. And there is no way I’m going to drop so much as a dime if I think there is even a hint of a chance that it will become obsolete before it’s time. There are even movies I love that I’ve avoided buying because I want to buy them once, and in HD.

While I’m not the biggest fan of using my game console for movie playback I think a PS3 wouldn’t be that bad of an HD player, especially considering it’s software updatability. Despite the back and forth between the two camps and the doom an gloom surrounding Blu-Ray’s ever growing market dominance it’s still squabbling over peanuts. Sure Blu-Ray might have sold 10K more copies of movie X last month but it doesn’t change the fact that both of them combined were outsold by millions of the regular DVD version. It’s like proclaiming your product has market dominance because it has 1.2% of the market while your competitor only has .9%. Wake me up when things actually start changing beyond these petty marketing games about how perception is the new reality.
So those are the six things that would get me to buy a PS3. If any of them happen I will buy one, mark my words. If you don’t agree with these things, I don’t really care because these are the things I care about, not you. Though I do think that much of the market does at least have a few things in common with this view point. I also don’t think it would be all too difficult for Sony to make these changes. Some of them I’m sure will eventually happen, but I’m not about to buy the console just to sit around and dream about that day. I’ll be busy playing all the other consoles and I’ll buy a PS3 when it’s ready to be played the way I like to play games.

The Blockbuster Support:
I’m sure many of you have heard the recent news about Blockbuster’s added support for Blu-Ray. Maybe you’ve even read the subsequent anonymous source from an anonymous location making claims about the aftermath of the news. Before I get into what this means lets look at some facts.

Blockbuster made available for rent both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD movies in 250 of it’s corporate owned stores for a number of months. After looking at the rental data they saw some 70% of the total rentals for the two formats going towards the Blu-Ray format. After those results they decided to start offering Blu-Ray discs at some 1450 of their corporately owned locations.

That’s what we know from the article, now some other facts you might not realize: Blockbuster has over 7000 locations, so 1450 is still a small percentage of their stores, they also still carry HD-DVD both through their mail based rental service as well as the original 250 test locations. This also doesn’t say anything for other rental services and stores such as Netflix or Movie Gallery or any other place that hasn’t even made a token effort towards picking a side. So what we’re seeing here is added support for Blu-Ray for a small percentage of one rental chain.

In terms of Blockbuster’s intended effect this really doesn’t mean much, it’s more of an extended test bed, Blu-Ray making it into Beta testing if you will. In all likelihood the higher percentage they saw was due to PS3 owners looking to try out the Blu-Ray feature on their new console. Even home theater fanatics who have purchased players for both formats are probably renting more Blu-Ray simply because there is more content available on the Blu-Ray format.

What this really means is something a lot bigger, I don’t think it was Blockbuster’s intent but in terms of where consumers put their money, perception is everything, and this genuinely small potatoes story has been blown very much out of proportion to the point where it actually does make difference. It doesn’t matter what the facts are, what matters is how consumers see the news and this news has been presented and hyped such to look like the beginning of the end for HD-DVD. The real support for Blu-Ray here didn’t come from Blockbuster, it came from the news outlets that hyped it up to be a much much bigger deal than it really should have been.

The Install Base:
According to the Digital Entertainment Group Blu-Ray hardware has outsold HD-DVD hardware by a five to one ratio. with Blu-Ray having an install base in the US of about 1.5 million and HD-DVD having an install base of about 300 thousand. That seems like a pretty big differentiation between the two. When you take a closer look at the numbers you’ll see that only 100 thousand Blu-Ray players are stand alone players while the remaining 1.4 million were included with the PS3. Meanwhile 150 thousand of the HD-DVD players sold were standalone players with the remaining 150 thousand being sold as Xbox 360 add-on drives.

It stands to reason that all 300 thousand HD-DVD hardware owners made their purchase because they wanted an HD-DVD player, and at least 100 thousand Blu-Ray owners made their purchase because they wanted a Blu-Ray player with the remaining 1.4 million Blu-Ray drives from PS3 sales being a big uncertainty.

That big uncertainty could be used to make the market look which ever way you want it to look. The reality is that uncertainty aside the HD formats on a whole are selling pretty poorly when you compare it to the market it’s attempting to replace. Looking at DEG’s numbers for DVD hardware sales in the US some 33 million DVD players were sold last year in the US with an install base close to 200 million. When you compare it to those numbers you find that Blu-Ray and DVD combine equate to less than one percent of the entire disc based movie market.

DEG also reported last year that HDTV penetration broke the 30 million mark last year in the US. When you compare the sub 2 million penetration of both blue laser formats combine they’re still not even selling to a sizable chunk of HDTV market on a whole. Even if they were to reach 100% penetration within the HDTV market it still has a substantial ways to go before it could hope to sell even close to the level of DVD.

Once again none of the facts matter when you’re dealing with perception If people think your format is squashing the competition they’re more likely to bite.

The Media Sales:
Certainly if there is uncertainty in whether or not the PS3 owners are using their console for Blu-Ray movies or not it would be apparent when comparing the sales figures of Blu-Ray movies to that of HD-DVD. Up until recently there actually haven’t been any real figures released. Most figures were extrapolated from Amazon.com rankings and other very unscientific sources. Luckily Neilsen VideoScan released some concrete numbers last February.

Looking at the year to date numbers Blu-Ray is outselling HD-DVD by 2:1. Certainly not reflective of the hardware penetration but definitely beneficial for Blu-Ray. Alternatively HD-DVD has still sold more overall since it’s release.

This can be interpreted in two different ways, either Blu-Ray is simply riding high off it’s relative newness since last holiday was when it first started getting a decent library together while HD-DVD owners had already got past the initial excitement. Or you could look at it as Blu-Ray simply selling at a higher rate then HD-DVD and likely to surpass them eventually. Either way, it’s still far too early to tell and in general these figures simply tell us that it’s still a really close race.

Once again when you look at the cumulate HD movie sales in comparison to DVD the two formats are really just squabbling over peanuts. Seeing as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD have sold about 2 million movies cumulatively since their inception DVD sold over 1.6 Billion movies in 2006. At the level that both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are selling all it takes is one major release to turn the tides one direction or the other, and with the numbers so close and so low neither format is really going anywhere fast.

The Studio Support:
In the end content is king, all sales figure aside looking at the studio support should give the clearest view of what the market holds in the future, right? So lets look at which movie houses support which format:

Blu-Ray Exclusive:
Columbia Pictures
MGM
Disney
20th century Fox
Lionsgate
Starz Home Entertainment

Cross Platform Support:
Paramount Pictures
DreamWorks
Warner Bros. Pictures (Although a number of titles are HD DVD exclusive at the present)
Warner Music Group
New Line Cinema
HBO
Studio Canal
Image Entertainment (including the Discovery Channel)
Magnolia Pictures
Brentwood Home Video
Ryko
Koch/Goldhil Entertainment

and adult films by:
Vivid Entertainment

HD-DVD Exclusive:
Universal Studios (including subsidiaries Rogue Pictures, Focus Features and Polygram Filmed Entertainment)
The Weinstein Company (including Dimension Films and Genius Products)
First Look Studios

and adult film studio support by:
Wicked Pictures
Pink Visual
Bang Bros
Digital Playground Inc.
ClubJenna Inc. (now part of Playboy Enterprises)

In terms of sheer number of supporters there are more studios making movies in both formats then there are on either side of the fence definitively. World wide HD-DVD has the most exclusive support while Blu-Ray has the most support in the US. Big studios like Universal, Disney, and Fox picking sides does a lot to shake things up, but you also have big studios like Paramount, Dreamworks, and Warner Bros. that are cross-platform. So looking at this aspect doesn’t tell us much except there are a few good moves that will either come out on one format or the other, and a lot of movies that will come out for both.

The Adult Film Issue:
Lots of people cite the overwhelming support from the Adult film for the HD-DVD format as the kiss of death for Blu-Ray. This support is more of a political issue as Sony, much like in the Betamax days, refuses to license the technology to adult film makers. Adult film studio Vivid Entertainment managed to find someone to manufacture them unofficial Blu-Ray discs despite Sony’s refusal, even still they’re a cross-platform supporter.

Support from adult film studios was certainly instrumental in helping VHS win over Betamax back in the day. Being able to playback movies in the privacy of your own home for the first time was a big advantage for VHS. These days many would argue that it’s not as important as a majority of adult content is now accessed online. Looking at this argument from a factual standpoint sales of DVD content sold made roughly 24.1 Billion in the US in 2006 of that 3.62 Billion was contributed by the Adult film industry in the form of DVD sales and rentals. That means the adult film industry controls more than 15% of the market for all DVD sales and rentals.

Cost of Ownership:
Certainly being a cheaper format has it’s advantages in terms of luring in consumer dollars. But which format has the lowest cost of ownership? HD-DVD certainly came out of the gate at a lower price point in terms of hardware as well as discs. This isn’t all that surprising as the players completed development long before Blu-Ray and was released earlier than Blu-Ray. The design of the disc also lends itself to looser tolerances within the hardware which in-turn allows them to be produced cheaper, the disc similarities to DVD also allows them to be manufactured on DVD machines with few changes. Blu-Ray on the other hand requires completely new machines to manufacture.

How has this played out? Well the cost of HD-DVD ownership has dropped substantially. Xbox 360 owners can pickup an HD-DVD drive for $200 and stand alone players are selling for as low as $300 these days. On the other hand Blu-Ray’s cheapest players are still up in the $500s.
The cost of the media has gone the other way. While HD-DVD is easier to manufacture it would seem the economics of scale have worked in Blu-Ray’s favor as most Blu-Ray titles are selling around $5 cheaper than similar HD-DVD movies. This holds true not just for cross format releases but on average. I can only assume this is due to the numerous PS3 games being produced on Blu-Ray and helping to drive down the cost of the format on a whole.

Again this makes it difficult to judge the two formats, on a long enough timeline cheaper media would win, however as time goes on I’m sure both formats will drop in price, Though, the stark difference in player costs today would allow any consumer entering the HD market to purchase quite a few movies before even approaching the cost of just a Blu-Ray player. The price differences will play a bigger role this holiday season, but right now neither seems to be making much of a difference.
The End Result:
From a purely technical feature and manufacturing standpoint I’ve always felt that HD-DVD was the superior product. At this point I really don’t care which format, I just want one of them to disappear so I can start buying discs on the other one, I suspect my sentiments are not unique. I collect DVDs as it is and I’ve bought nothing but TV shows and Anime over the last year (generally SD/ED only content) as I wait for signs of a clear cut winner. At the moment I think Blu-Ray has the better ‘vibe’ going for it what with the recent Blockbuster announcement, cheaper media prices and a whole lot of PS3 owners who just happen to also own a Blu-Ray player.

The problem with determining a victor at this point is the market is so incredibly small that even something as pathetic as Blockbuster announcing that they’re increasing Blu-Ray from 3% of their locations to 20% of their locations seems to have a monumental effect on the feeling in the blue laser disc market.

The real winner? That would be video streaming and download services like Comcast’s “On Demand” which by the end of 2006 was serving some 12.7 million people in the US. When you consider that is just one provider out of many others that offer similar services you have to question of either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will ever reach the levels that DVD enjoys today. When you consider that the supposed revolutionary IPTV services haven’t even rolled out yet you have to wonder if HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will wind up the DVD-Audio and SACDs of the Movie world where services like “On Demand” play the role of the MP3; coming in from behind and sweeping the consumers up while the fancy new physical media formats fade away into obscurity. I really hope this doesn’t happen, I like my physical media, I still buy CDs and I even buy DVD-Audio discs when I can (I’ve yet to find a single album on SACD that I like). I just call it like I see it and from what I see both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD have a very very long road ahead if they want to replace DVD and remain strong in the face of alternative content delivery systems.

Here is an excerpt from the Gamepro interview:

The PlayStation 3 has come under fire recently for its steep price. How is Sony corporate handling the criticism? Is Sony’s corporate culture changing? We posed these timely questions to Dave Karraker, director of Sony Computer Entertainment America’s corporate communications.

* Are some of those [negative] perceptions justified, assuming you feel they exist? Why or why not?
* A lot of the perceptions are not justified and seem fueled by people who don’t have all the facts or have some kind of axe to grind. I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who wouldn’t say PS3 is an amazing piece of technology. Yeah, the price of PS3 is higher than other system, but look at what you get – the Cell processor, Blu-ray Disc, built-in hard drive, HDMI 1080p, Wi-Fi, the SixAxis. That is a lot of truly cutting-edge technology in one box. It is funny how myopic people can be when a new system comes along. They seem to forget that launching a truly next-generation gaming platform is never easy and it never has been. I like to say it is like birth: “The actual labor may not be all the pretty, but the result is pretty darn amazing.”
But, as a gamer, I like to concentrate on the gee whiz factor when something new launches. No matter who’s platform it is, I look at what is truly new and exciting. I am confounded by people who say they are true gamers but all they do is look for the negatives in a system, or a company, or in the industry in general. Some media, in particular, are just too easily caught up in all the bashing. It feeds on itself, and to what end? How do you benefit the real gamer by bashing on something? These are very smart people who can see through most of the BS.
Sure, there were some perceptions on PS3 that were justified. For example, we didn’t have nearly enough hardware at launch to meet consumer demand. That was difficult for all of us and contributed to a tough climate with press and analysts. That’s behind us now, but a bit of that still lingers. Frankly, I have stopped talking to media about the launch and am now really just focused on the games.

* What is your vision for overhauling Sony’s perception in the media? Should the company be more accessible to journalists and bloggers?
* Access and education are the two things I talk about most over here. We want to be as accessible as possible and provide as much information as we can so media can properly cover our products and give the gamers all the news they want and need. That focus will never change. At launch of PS3 we gave an amazing amount of access to media. Kaz, Jack, and Peter must have done hundreds of interviews. That kind of access hasn’t stopped, and in fact, I think it has increased with the amount of contact we have on a daily basis from folks in the blogging community.

In response: Twistedsymphony’s guide for turning around the negative image of the PS3, in 8 easy steps.

Step 1: Stop lying
If people don’t trust you, it’s probably because you’ve squandered that trust a number of times in the past. I’m going to extend this one step further to include talking out of the side of your mouth in an attempt to side step a direct question. If you can’t answer a questions say “I can’t answer that” maybe even give a reason WHY you can’t answer it. If you look like you’re hiding something people will always assume the worst. If you don’t want to answer a question because it invalidates a previous lie or otherwise makes you look bad, answer it anyway and be humble (we’ll cover why in step 2). If you come clean about your mis-steps people feel like you’re making an effort to make things right. If you ignore or deny them they assume you’re either oblivious, arrogant, or just plain don’t care. None of those are things you want your customers or the media assuming.

Step 2: Be humble
Even if the truth sucks a little honesty with a warm cup of humble seasoned with humility will go a long way towards earning the respect of gamers, or anyone for that matter. Acting Big is a good strategy when you’re the little guy trying to become the big dog; however, once you ARE the big dog you have to work the other way around, otherwise you just come off as arrogant, self-centered, and tyrannical.

When a company is small and acts big it creates an underdog complex. People feel they can relate to the company and they cheer it on toward success. When a company is big and acts big it creates and image of being cold and soulless, people can’t relate and there’s a disconnect there. If you speak straight, down to earth and humble it gives people something to relate to again and they get that human connection back and feel like they’re standing behind the best company.

It’s about relating to your customers. People can’t relate to CEOs who bark jargon with a forked tongue. They CAN relate to people like Cliffy B and Miyamoto who come off like your average Joe. They speak straight and are all smiles because they feel like they’ve been given the opportunity of a life time. You see pictures of those people and you don’t think about all the money they make or the corporate meetings they attend all day. At very least your first thought is “man they seem like a cool guy. I’d like to meet them. I bet we have a lot in common.” You don’t think that about any of the people representing Sony, they act, dress and speak like they’re above their customers and that creates a vast disconnect between them and their customers. I should be clear here though, I don’t think it’s right to have these people suddenly trying to act hip (remember step 1, pretending to be something you’re not is still lying) but you should at least use people who can genuinely relate to your customers as your poster children. Keep the suits out of the public eye. Your customers can easily sniff a fake (see: alliwantforxmasisapsp.com).

Step 3: The customer is always right
One thing I see frequently with interviews with Sony execs is that they complain that the customers and media just doesn’t understand (even in the interview above). Here’s an idea: explain yourself better. If the customer doesn’t understand your message then change the message. It’s not the customers job to understand you, it’s YOUR job to connect with the customer. Not taking responsibility for your own actions is one thing, passing the blame on to the very customers you’re trying to convince is just plain ignorant. This is also a call to stop your whining, acting all aggravated and depressed because “no one understands you” might work for the Emo kids at the local middle-school but it should be very much removed from your companies PR. Playing the sympathy card wont work, no one has sympathy for a multi-million dollar conglomerate.
Step 4: Sell the software
Every time I see an interview with Sony they spout off about Cell, Blu-Ray and SixAxis. Read an interview with Microsoft and they’re talking about Halo 3, Guitar Hero, and Blue Dragon. Read an interview with Nintendo and they’re talking about Mario and Zelda… do you see a pattern here? In the grand scheme of things gamers don’t care about the hardware they care about the games. Hardware simply becomes a means to an end.

[Car analogy time] It doesn’t matter how fast a car can go or how good the gas mileage is, or how safe it is; if there aren’t any roads you can drive it on, that car is completely and utterly useless. All of your expensive technology is squandered. [/Car analogy time]

Cell and BluRay are empty vessels until you have games that can use them and gamers don’t even care about those things once the games are available. All gamers need to know is that the game is good and you need a PS3 to play it. When was the last time you heard an MS exec mention Xenon? How about the last time you heard Nintendo talk about Broadway? ok now when was the last time you heard Sony talk about the Cell? How much does Karraker know about current and upcoming PS3 games? How excited is he about the games coming out this month, or next month, or next holiday, or even the games out now?

Step 5: Sell what you’ve got, not what you might have
It’s also a good idea to sell heavy on what you have and light on things to come. Lets say 80/20. If you convince someone that you have an awesome game that they can play RIGHT NOW there’s a lot of motivation to go out and get it RIGHT NOW. Selling the games in the future should ONLY be used to help convince the consumer that it will be a lasting investment beyond the immediate purchase.
If there is no reason to make the purchase now then why should anyone buy it now? Giving your consumers ample time to mull it over will eventually give them idle hands and you run a very high risk of them just spending the money elsewhere instead. Maybe not necessarily on your competitors but maybe they’ll buy something else completely. Selling promises instead of products isn’t just bad for YOU it’s bad for the industry as a whole.

Console launches are a little different but not by much. They’ll have a definite release date *cough* or at least they should *cough* which allows your customers to mentally prepare for the purchase. Selling promises after the release there is no definitive time when it will be worth it. A game here, a dashboard feature there, there is no immediacy or time line that on X date everything will be ready. Similarly with a launch you don’t want to announce things too early, you’ll wind up breaking a lot of promises and people will get bored waiting even if you do have a set date. (you can’t see my face but trust me, I’m rolling my eyes right now)
Step 6: Do on to others….
I think it’s incredibly ridiculous that any one at Sony should expect positive input from gamers and the media when they themselves use nearly every available opportunity to bash their competition (read: the rest of the industry). You get what you give. When you insult the Wii or 360 you insult the people that respect those products, people take those things personally, it puts those people on the defensive and they start hurling insults back. Considering the number of follies Sony has had recently they should know not to throw stones when you live in glass homes. While Nintendo and MS might take the occasional pot shot at Sony both of those camps laid relatively quiet about Sony at the start of this generation, and both of those camps were positive about the industry and their competition in general.

Step 7: Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin
Sony’s a big company with lots of divisions but the gaming company is like a separate entity with lots of it’s own divisions. The difference is that while the different larger divisions within Sony have a synergistic relationship and help support each other, the divisions within the gaming division are cannibalistic.

It seems that Sony’s gaming division is trying to balance maintaining PS2 sales while trying to improve PSP sales and as a result the PS3 is left to succeed on it’s own merits. The impression I get is that the efforts are spread far too thin. Games made on the PS2 take away from potential PS3 titles and the catalog suffers. The PSP gets new media and marketplace features before they arrive on the PS3; again the PS3 suffers. Whenever you see an announcement from Sony they’re only talking about 1 of their three gaming segments. They work on building up one while the other two don’t get any attention and then they switch focus.

Look at Nintendo by comparison. Whenever a new announcement is made they have equal parts Wii and DS. It’s clear that Nintendo is dedicated to both platforms and that they always have new things going on with both of them simultaneously. Nintendo seems to approach the portable and home gaming markets the same way Sony approaches the Media and TV markets. That is to say efforts are always running on both fronts and they work together creating value beyond the sum of their parts. Microsoft has taken a 1 track approach, they don’t have to worry about spreading themselves too thin because they only have one product to promote from their gaming division. The Xbox 1 was dropped almost immediately after the 360 launched.

You need to divide your efforts evenly, don’t mention one platform without mentioning all of them and if you have something new to show for one platform have something new to show for all of them. Without this customers for any one of your platforms feel like they’re being left out in the cold. PSP owners assume you care more about PS2 and PS3. PS3 owners assume you care more about PS2 and PSP, and PS2 owners assume you care more about PSP and PS3. It’s not a good position to be in.

Step 7: Sell your strengths not your diversity
Nintendo Wii = fun and easy to play, Microsoft Xbox 360 = connect and play online, Sony PS3 = ??? What’s your core message? You don’t seem to have one. The PS3 is a very capable machine but the message seems to be “we do a little bit of everything” which isn’t a good message to have. Figure out who you’re trying to market to and market to them. It doesn’t matter if you neglect 80% of your console’s capabilities to concentrate one aspect of it. What gaming aspect of your console makes it better then the competition? Once you figure that you promote the games the exemplify that aspect. Nintendo doesn’t say “look at the Wii Remote” they say “Look how easy and fun Wii Sports is to play”. Microsoft doesn’t say “Xbox Live is the greatest” they say “Millions of gamers are playing Gears of War together online”.
If the Wii is a bottle opener and the 360 is a meat cleaver then the PS3 is a swiss-army knife, it does a little bit of everything and doesn’t seem to do anything the best. If I want a good knife I’m going to buy the 360… if I want an easy to use bottle opener I’m going to buy the Wii… The PS3 might offer both but it does neither exceptionally well; or at very least that’s the impression I’ve got from Sony’s PR.

Sell your strong point and make that your message, I don’t know what that is, but it’s not my responsibility to figure it out. Once you have your message exemplify it with the games that prove you are the strongest console in that area.

The State of HD Gaming – Past Present and Future