CEO Kasen

In addition, even if Microsoft is taking greater losses by dropping the price, Microsoft is a much bigger corporation in far better financial straits than Sony, and can afford to take short term financial damage. Microsoft can endure. Sony cannot afford a battle of attrition; Sony's so far in the red that it needs results.

It'd be just like Microsoft to take short term losses to gain greater market share, and thus starve out the competition. I'd be shocked if - forgive me for this, but I still haven't gotten tired of the dying meme - Microsoft did not choose to attack Sony's most visible weak point this November for massive damage.

"It is proof that the important thing in game design is not the graphical processing power of the game console but the power of the designer's imagination."

Now... THAT sounds familiar. Wonder whose philosophy THAT is?

#43 Anoymouse Rep:

A truly fascinating tale! I can see it...

The following is a narrative interpretation, rather than hard research fact; Bear that in mind.


A Sony boardroom. Say, 2002-2003. It comes time to decide a budget. The Playstation department, not resting on its laurels, begins to pitch the project to design the PS3. As the PS2 is a positively runaway success, an elderly, balding Japanese executive decides, with a sage nod, that Kutaragi can have whatever he wants or needs to make the PS3 just as big a success.

It is when that pen hit the paper, those fingers hit those keys, and all in favor said "Aye," that a small, evil smile crossed Kutaragi's withered lips, and the stage was set for disaster.

Every grandiose plan that was cooked up by the development teams could be implemented, because we had billions to play with! Cell processor? Seven Bluetooth controller connectors? Multiple ethernet ports? We can do it all with this budget! Heck, don't we have this new DVD format we're cooking up that we could easily enforce on the market with this thing, especially since it'll sell as well as the PS2?

They spoke long into the night, plans were drawn, and with drunken giddiness the engineers, delighted to be permitted to work on this glory of gaming, worked and worked...

Until the sobering realization that they had done too much hit them. This machine they had put so much work into developing cost $800 to manufacture using current technology. All the delays in trying to make this system gave Microsoft's new system a full on year of a head start - while the developers still hadn't receieved their dev kits.

What could they do?

Well, taking out the Blu-Ray player would have allowed it to compete at the same graphical level without sacrificing that price advantage to the 360. But Sony was adamant.

And now we have the situation as it stands.

Sony's third party developers are pulling out, because the cost of development for the vaunted Cell Processor is too high. Their PR department is uninspired, if not in total disarray, as Phil Harrison tries to find words to describe a product he, if not Sony, sure as hell doesn't believe in. Gamers, save a few diehards, are enraged; Parents turn away from the system the moment I tell them the price. The launch list is filled with titles, none of which have the gameplay or the graphical superiority to justify the price of the system.

And meanwhile Sony's debts continue to mount.


I sincerely hope that Sony concocts some way to pull themselves out of this mess, and thus leave a Sony in existence - one that's learned from this mistake.

I fear that may not be what happens.

"Anyone who says the PS3 cannot last 10 years is a fool," said one of those few diehard, slavering fans, but it sounds like the big question is not whether the PS3 can last, but whether Sony itself can last in the face of all its debt and financial mismanagement.

Man. It's getting significantly more difficult to take anything Sony says as kosher, if they can brazenly attempt to spin sales figures wherein the DS is outselling the PSP (by 5 to 1, in Japan), and say - using any combination of semantics - that the PSP is somehow winning.

Next we're going to find out that it only does "1080p" if 1080 pixels measured in a shape "Kind of like Mickey Mouse with scoliosis" and that Blu-Ray disks only hold 50 gigs if you use not only the top and bottom of the disk, but also the Magic Invisible Third Side We Really Manufactured in Dimension Q.

I realize that the majority of the people actually going to be buying these consoles don't give a rat's severed posterior about the PR and the speeches and whatnot, and are probably just gonna look at two things - games and price, but come on, damnit. You could at least >try< not to sound like either a man with the intelligence of a rectal tear or a disingenuous proto-weasel to those of us eating up the nextgen console info and read a sales figure or two.

I pray that the engineers behind the PS3 are better organized than the PR department, or I may as well expect Kratos to stick an entire salad platter up his ass every time I hit the Circle button.

I'm just curious as to why people seem to be blaming Joystiq for a keynote speech that, boredom or no boredom, did nothing to emphasize - at a >games< show - that the PS3 will be any fun.

I hope the PS3 is a wonderful system and that all the rumors are wrong, I really do, but godsdamn, people, is the thought that >OMG Infallible Sony Might Have Done A PR thing Incorrectly< too mind-shatteringly blasphemous for you to accept, even now after the train-wreck of bad press, mediocre demos, and shipping delays?

26: I hope, in many ways, that Sony will be just fine. By no means can I be considered a fan of their console - Not thinking of picking one up until something genuinely worthwhile like MGS4 comes out - but I'd certainly hate to see Sony destroyed by its PR and logistical failures. I'm Wii60, and even I can see, to an extent, the force that the threat that is Sony's console has exerted in shaping the other two.

Do you seriously think Microsoft would be busting its butt to please us with 1080p graphics right now if it weren't for Sony, or that Nintendo would have gotten off its directionless Gamecube ass and produced the Wii, competing on fun rather than power to provide a contrast to the graphical juggernauts?

I agree - it'd be unlikely and sad to see them crumble.

28: I've read a few of his comments, and AZN_1080 is not worth a shred of your attention. If he is, as the name vaguely implies, asian, then he, if I might be allowed to put it this way, indirectly shames my own ancestors. Just ignore him.

It was seemingly the case at E3, too. Microsoft opened with Gears of War; Nintendo began with the unbridled spectacle that was a tiny flailing Japanese man to the tune of The Legend of Zelda. And Sony? A dull stream of tech-specs and marketing speak, interspersed with Giant Enemy Crab.

Nintendo's cast seems to have fun-loving individuals possessed of exactly the spirit I'd desire out of games designers, while by all accounts I've heard so far this Ken Kutaragi's public appearances could all be done by a an Apple Mac's text-to-speech program and still have the same level of emotional impact.

You might be able to attribute a lot of the bad Sony press since E3 to the simple fact that it doesn't look like anyone there knows how to have any >fun,< and that's not what you want to look for in the people making your games, y'know?

Please don't take this as partisan bickering - this is not a dig at the console...

But is it just me, or does Sony nowadays seem to have the same sense of fun and showmanship as one of those one-celled organisms you see repeatedly banging into walls?