The New York Times published a story today focusing on Sony's Playstation 3 jumping into the online arena. The story touts Sony's message that the Playstation 3 console is a long term investment worth the price tag. The story mentions Xbox Live and says that Sony will announce how they plan to combat that service at a press conference tomorrow in San Francisco -- OK, so why did this story run in the NYT today, instead of waiting the 24 hours for the real news?The article also quotes Jack Tretton, the co-chief operating officer of SCEA as saying, "Every PS3 owner should be able to plug in Day 1 and take full advantage of everything we have to offer... there is freedom for the development community and freedom from the consumer standpoint." Sounds like Sony's new PR honcho Dave Karraker has Tretton on a tighter leash since the last PR fiasco, as he says almost nothing in this fluff piece.
The NYT story doesn't go into any detail about Sony's interface. It states that the Sony system will not be a central network like Microsoft's Xbox Live, but allows for publishers to set up their own networks. The one gamer interviewed in the article pretty much sums up the free service, "If Sony is going to tout that it's free, it better be good... It just can't be free and bad."
Karraker deserves a bonus for getting NYT to do a story that the Playstation 3 will have online capabilities. Well, duh! Gold star for Karraker suckering the NYT with a story full of analysts and Googleable data. That's what we pretend journalists do here at Joystiq.
