Marketing hype often sounds ridiculous when examined in retrospect. I'm finally getting around
to reading Dean Takahashi's Opening the Xbox (tip: buy it used on Amazon). In it, Sony's Chief Marketing
Officer and Group Executive Andrew House is quoted as saying around 2000: "Our goals are much different from our
competition's. We're trying to reach a broader audience. If [the PS2] is just a game console, then we've failed."
Five years later, even Sony would find it difficult to argue that the PS2 is perceived as anything but a game console. By this measure, Sony has failed.
Of course we can't fault the marketing guys for making the outlandish claims that they make. It's their job.
What's more, this is a now-familiar refrain for Sony. In March of this year, Kaz Hirai told attendees at the PSP launch party: "If someone told you that the PSP is a portable gaming device, shoot these people. The PSP is not a portable gaming device, it is really a convergent portable entertainment device."
To be fair, it's not just Sony that makes these claims. Microsoft is selling the Xbox 360 as a necessary part of the so-called digital entertainment lifestyle, an idea that The Economist magazine has denounced as "marketing claptrap." It's clear that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo want to sell their next-generation consoles into more homes, but it's also clear that they've been trying to do this for years, with limited success.
We guarantee that each of the console manufacturers will continue to beat the "this is not a game console" drum loudly over the next year as they launch their new game devices. Will any of them succeed at capturing the mass market this time around?
