Sony's Karakker On Turning Around PS3 Buzz 209
simoniker writes "Sony's new PR boss Dave Karakker has been talking about his challenges handling publicity for the PlayStation 3, explaining how Sony will be switching things up: 'We were allowing media to drive the message for us, and interpret it for us. So allowing someone like Peter Moore, who's a good friend of mine, to stand up there and say negative things about Sony, there wasn't anybody refuting that. People just took that for face value. Now we're very aggressively defending our turf.' He also defend the lack of universal achievements on PS3: 'Frankly, how I view it is I don't care if you're great at Madden if I'm playing you in Resistance. Because that doesn't tell me you're that much better in Resistance. An overall score doesn't really tell me much, it tells me you've spent a lot of time online, it tells me you spend a lot of time playing games, but it doesn't tell me how good you are at a particular game.'" Should be noted that Simoniker is a former Slashdot editor -- also, the AP write-up about reactions to the PS3 is quite positive.
I've been positive about it for a while (Score:3, Insightful)
HD support may not be a requirement for many people, but those with HDTV will want some hardware to complement it. Blu-ray might have been a result of pressure from Sony's top level, but the extra capacity is not to be sneezed at.
Early adopters have a lot of money. They can afford the thing. And how often has the most powerful console been a total market failure?
I gave up (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's two of his question on the first page:
GS: Sounds fun!
GS: Woah!
and on the second page, he says:
GS: It did seem like there were a number of mis-statements, and this may be a media misperception, but did you have to work to rein people in and make sure they're on message?
Even the Sony guy didn't claim that (and note the spelling error is the web site's not mine)
And then he asks:
GS: Don't take offense to this, but is the system going to be able to hold up to being always on?
Why worry about if he's going to take offense? This is not journalism, this is a fan blog. Don't worry about offended a PR flac... that's his job. Ask questions that mean something... "The console looks impressive, but it's the most expensive. Why do you think gamers will buy it?". Don't pretend all negative buzz is just from people not being on message.
The guy doesn't have to be combative, but he should ask some questions that are hard and that might be interesting to the readership.
Paid well (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope their new PR guy is good. They do have a lot overcome. However, there has been a lot of doom and gloom viral marketing for the PS3 which is not entirely true. Even though I've speculated a lot on /. about Sony's poor choices on the PS3 and how it expect it to hurt their sales, I have also been (finally) seeing more information on their games and their hardware and I'm pretty interested in it. Some of their screen shots are breathtaking.
Was the most controversial, Blu-Ray, the right thing to do? Hmm... I'm still going to say no. However, like I've said in the past, looking at the perspective of adding it or leaving it, I can only defend adding it, all things considered once I think about it...
While I think Sony has been doing things ass-backwards as far as Public Relations and response to the 'shock' of the new system on gamers, they do have room to make amends if they just started being a little more respectful and talking up their system on a positive aspect instead of the "you're n00b!" approach.
Cheers,
Fozzy
Nice straw man (Score:4, Insightful)
But the gamerscore isn't supposed to fill the role of "how good an opponent is someone," it's to fill the role of providing an official metric for the eternal "my dick's bigger than yours" competition that goes on amongst "hardcore" gamers. And that's a competition that's been going on since arcade denizens started sending Polaroids of their high scores in to gaming magazines.
That's all the gamerscore means, and it's not meant to mean anything else. It's bragging rights by the numbers, and I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that it doesn't matter because it's not a record of how good someone is at a given game.
Re:I've been positive about it for a while (Score:3, Insightful)
Define "Total Market Failure"?
The XBox is certainly a contender after having lost $4 Billion to only sell 20 Million systems (or $200 per system sold); several of the Neo-Geo / Turbo Graphics 16 / 3DO / Jaguar / etc. systems were the most powerful systems of their time and still failed to be successful platforms; and the most obvious choice was the N64, which was much more powerful than the Saturn/Playstation yet sold half as many systems as the SNES did.
HD support may not be a requirement for many people, but those with HDTV will want some hardware to complement it.
This may be true, but how much of an impact on sales it will have is questionable. Currently only about 15% of households have HDTVs, and HDTVs currently make up 50% of new TVs sold; a good guestimate for market penetration would be 25% sometime in 2008, 50% around 2010 and 100% around 2020 (the bottom half of the market will likely stick with whatever TV they have until it breaks). Now, when you start talking about 1080p TVs they have a much smaller market share and will (likely) take 5 years to get the market penetration that 1080i/720p TVs currently have. The "Advantage" of 1080p HDTV will likely only be felt in 2010-2012 (after the XBox 720 has been released).
While it is expensive, and although Sony have been pretty evil in the past, the fact remains that the PS3 is a very powerful system, with a decent level of brand recognition.
Brand recognition is a strong thing, but it can erode quickly and it can not float the wrong product that is released at the wrong time.
Now, I'm not going to make any Doom and Gloom predictions for the PS3 but everyone has to admit that because of the higher price point and low supply the PS3 is (likely) going to sell poorly in 2006 and through the first half of 2007; this (in theory) could discourage developers from producing exclusive games and prevent the stranglehold that the PS2 had on third parties (which would further reduce sales of the PS3). In other words it is likely that the PS3 will sell worse than either the PS2 or Playstation, and the Wii and XBox 360 will gain in marketshare; how dramatic these changes are is still open to debate.
The final question is how well can someone who only has been in charge of PR for the company for 2 months manage the growing problems; if he makes a couple of foolish mistakes it could cost the PS3 even further market share and possibly destroy the brand.
Re:I've been positive about it for a while (Score:3, Insightful)
Almost always. (see: NeoGeo, 3D0, N64, Game Gear, etc., etc.)
Retail Channel (Score:5, Insightful)
I walked into a Gamestop this week, and casually asked about the next-gen systems. The employees there pushed the Wii and the 360 hard, and slammed the PS3.
Why? Because the retail outlets know they will be able to sell a bunch of hardware, software, and accessories for the Wii and the 360. They know that customers who hold out for a PS3 will simply spend the holidays on a waiting list, and not spend any cash at the store.
Sony's shipping projections for the PS3 are shrinking every week, and the retailers don't see any reason to bend over for Sony at this time.
Re:Sony's finally woken up (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, except, fundamentally, it's a games console. There's over a decade's evidence that the $300 price point works well for a console at release. Personally, I'm not willing to spend $599 on a games console. It could be hand crafted, and cost twice as much to make as they're selling it for, for all I care, there's still the fact that it's games console priced outside what I'm willing to spend on a games console.
Heard a lot of similar arguments about the Mac Pro, while trying to argue that it would be great if Apple released an upgradable iMac equivalent. It's brilliant value for money, if you want a quad core Xeon workstation, but fundamentally if you don't need that much processing power it's just not worth it.
> Overheating? Nope, it's cooler than the XBox 360.
Source?
> Shortage? Doesn't take away from the console, just my ability to buy one.
Agree. The late launch may be an issue, but frankly a launch shortage is going to have minimal impact 6 months down the line.
> Free online service
Yup
> Better form factor
Err... no, I'd call both equally ugly. But hey, each to their own
> Linux capability
Good point for the
> Blu-ray
Which is great, if you want HD movies. I'm unconvinced this is going to be a major selling point, especially as so far HD-DVD seems to be doing a lot better than Blu-Ray. It could be an issue for games, but personally I'm not seeing two-DVD releases being a major issue.
> Motion control
I thought general opinion is this wasn't very good, or was it just not quite as good as Nintendos?
The PS3 is one hell of a powerful console, released at a decent price point for the cost to make... I just personally don't think people are going to be willing to pay the extra, and that the XBox 360 and Wii will both gain serious ground before Sony gets around to price cuts...
Re:Wow! (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems I know that kind of managers... They come to take over the project in the end.
Re:I've been positive about it for a while (Score:3, Insightful)
Arguably it lost out to the then-unreleased PS2. Mostly it lost due to Sega's vast ineptitude.
> N64: Reasonably successful but still a flop, lost to inferior PS1
The N64 was an unqualified runaway success. If you consider "losing" to mean not getting 100% market share, I suppose you could call it a loss.
> Xbox: Reasonably successful but still a flop, lost to inferior PS2
How is something "reasonably successful but still a flop" anyhow?
> N-Gage: Reasonably successful but still a flop,
It's becoming apparent you're copying and pasting. Nokia itself considers the N-Gage to have been an unmitigated bomb.
> PSP: Reasonably successful but still a flop, lost to inferior DS
UMD is certainly a flop (and the PS3 conspicuously lacks the UMD slot). The DS is a rather different device.
I actually rather like the PS2, and I think Sony did better for the console gaming industry than Nintendo in the N64 days, but just as Nintendo got taken down a peg, Sony needs to be taken down a couple. I think it'll be good for them.
The most spin on a review I have ever seen (Score:3, Insightful)
So from Access I went to work at Allied Domecq, which used to be the world's biggest liquor company. So they own brands like Stoli, Beefeater, Maker's Mark, Kahlua, and also Dunkin Donuts, Baskin-Robbins, and Togo's, but I just worked on Spirits of North America. But then that company got bought out by a French company, and they laid off everybody here in the United States.
GS: Woah!
See? All of the sudden the reaction seems pretty natural. Bought out by a french company and laid off everyone - whoa!
Re:Nice straw man (Score:1, Insightful)
You could decide to add someone in your friend list based on that information.
Apart from the price, PS3 is a Videogame Dream (Score:2, Insightful)
Hard drive standard - every PS3 comes with an hard disk, which means every developer can develop for it without excluding anyone.
No region encoding for games - THIS IS HUGE! Have we as gamers not been waiting for this since the beginning? It's finally here! We don't have to wait for marketing departments to choose what we may or may not like in a foreign game; it's all ours.
Card reader - hellooooo homebrew. While homebrew isn't officially supported, this makes it much easier.
Blu-Ray - 50GB discs allow for an obscene amount of storage.
But does it run Linux? Yea, supposedly it will, which means even more homebrew goodness.
While everything I've stated doesn't guarantee great games, it seems to me like they've made it so that this system has a bunch of potential.