Sony Hawk's Under-the-covers-with-Playstation Ground

[ManekiNeko]

That video game documentary on GSN really steamed my broccoli. I should have known better than to expect fair reporting from a network owned in part by Sony, the makers of the Playstation. It wasn't that bad at first... sure, it was sprinkled with the occasional inaccuracy (since when was Frogger released for the Sega Master System?), but it was certainly more entertaining and relevant than the Spike TV Video Game Awards.

However, the producers really dropped the ball when they started discussing the 32-bit system wars. The host of the documentary, Tony Hawk, smugly announced, "Sega unveiled the Saturn in a secret launch, but the Playstation left it in the dust. It's not hard to see why when you look at these pictures..." On the right hand side was the Playstation game Tomb Raider. On the left? War Gods, a game that was NEVER RELEASED FOR THE SATURN AT ALL!!!

It could have been an honest mistake, but if it wasn't, that makes Tony Hawk an accomplice to the biggest hoodwink Sony's perpetrated on customers since its lofty claim that the PS2 would "jack you into the Matrix". If the documentary explained in some detail and with more objectivity WHY the Saturn lost the console wars to the Playstation, it wouldn't have bothered me as much, but they way they handled it seemed like a slanderous hachet job. Shame on you, Sony Hawk, for taking part in it.

JR

[bluberry]

Sony who?

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Oh, Sony Hawk, I get it, that's a great one!

</Dogma reference>

[buttasuperb]

who cares?

[ManekiNeko]

I cares!

Seriously, if you're going to make a documentary about video games, you might want to actually, you know, make it fair and accurate. When you take mean-spirited shots at Sony's competitors on a television show aired on a Sony-owned network like GSN, it seems just a little suspicious.

JR

[wberdan]

what's the big deal, he was probably reading a script anyway


willie

[Garry Silljo]

I care too.

I didn't see this, but if they were showing the PS Tomb Raider, then they should have showed the Saturn one as well, (but then it wouldn't be "obvious" anymore either would it?) At the very laest they should have showed an actual Saturn game... ANY game! I think it's ridiculous.

[Rev. Link]

Hey man, don't blame Tony! He prob'ly doesn't know much about video games other than his own series anyway. Well, that and the basic Mario knowledge that everyone else has.

Blame Sony, sure, but leave the Birdman out of it.

[crashdummycow01]

well if the show or station? is owned by sony, i guess they can say whatever they want on it ... would u make urself look bad on ur own show?... NO u would make the other company look bad... also u cant blame Tony Hawk for anything.. its not like he wrote up the show.

[ClubNinja]

While I enjoyed most of last night's show, I too was put off by the Saturn/Playstation side-by-side. They talked it up like Tomb Raider was a PSX exclusive, which is not the case, and then go on to show a non-Tomb Raider, non-Saturn game in the comparison. That's a pretty lame move.

Having said that, it's also a lame move to blame Tony Hawk for that. The guy's just reading a script and earning a check. I am 110% sure that he didn't create the segment in question. Chill out and start pointing the finger at the appropriate target(s).

[Captain Wrong]

Y'know, if people spent half the energy on something positive that they do on creating yet another damn anti-Sony topic, we'd have the formula for the cure for cancer, AIDS, and every other disease posted on this board by the end of the week.

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

Perhaps, but where else are we going to address the persistent rumors that Ken Kutaragi himself kicks puppies and eats live kittens by the spoonful? ;)

Seriously, for all this effort, why not some kind of a petition to let Sony know how you feel, gang? Venting all the angst here probably won't change anything.

Think of the kittens, please.

[Flack]

Man, this sucks. I was planning on playing Playstation tonight but I guess I won't now that Sony plugged it's own product on a station it owns or whatever.

[ManekiNeko]

Y'know, if people spent half the energy on something positive that they do on creating yet another damn anti-Sony topic, we'd have the formula for the cure for cancer, AIDS, and every other disease posted on this board by the end of the week.

Sony's the disease. We're the cure.

So Cap'n, you have no problem with Sony using a video game "documentary" to misrepresent the history of this hobby? Personally, I find it irksome, but hey, given the popularity of Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine, perhaps documentaries that aren't actually rooted in fact are the next big fad.

JR

[spooie]

I too care. Ignorance is not an excuse. Otherwise, we're just going to get more crap like SpikeTV and people will be forced to accept it.

Of course, I did find it interesting when I was watching an episode of Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot a few years ago and they started talking about their Playstations. Then I remembered... Tri-Star produced BG&R, and Sony owns Tri-Star.

;)

I've got nothing against Sony (although, I do against SCEA). I have over 100 PSX/PS2 games, only 22 games between my N64 and Cube, and nothing Xbox. And my last Sega System was Genesis. I've shown more support to their consoles than any other in the last decade. But if they're going to fudge up something, I have no qualms about speaking out against it. I'll be happy to say something nice about Sony... when they earn it from me.

:P

[Captain Wrong]

So Cap'n, you have no problem with Sony using a video game "documentary" to misrepresent the history of this hobby? Personally, I find it irksome, but hey, given the popularity of Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine, perhaps documentaries that aren't actually rooted in fact are the next big fad.

Personally, I haven't seen the show. I don't know what actually happened, what the context was, etc. I'd be willing to guess that anyone who would be interested in checking out a Saturn will probably seek a more objective source than this one show for their videogame history. I really really really doubt someone watching this would be like "gee...I was gonna get a Saturn, but Tony Hawk says it sucks."

I find it much more irksome that people are willing to blame Sony for every alleged wrong in this hobby without looking at the history and realizing that everything Sony is accused of has been perpertrated by another company at an earlier date. All these things everyone gets so worked up over have been here since the beginning. Yes, Sony does some shitty, strong armed things but so has EVERY other company who has been on top.

It's much more irksome to me that people want to complain about things rather than doing something about them. Like Earl said, petition Sony. Better yet, write these publishers that are supposedly getting shut down by Sony and tell them to port these games to a friendler platform. Even better still, import the games rather than waiting for SECA to approve them. Or when these "gamer's games" get released here actually buy them and show the industry that people actually will buy these games when they are released.

BTW...nice political jab there Zaxxon. :P

[AB Positive]

I hear that you can't get hired at Sony unless you kill a goat, eat it, and have sex with the remains. You don't want to see the employee review process. I don't even want to know how many fetal pigs they go through at that company....


-AG

[wisekrak]

Sigh :(
You know, If this forum was around 14 years ago, we would see the same rants going on with the exception on replacing "Sony" with "Nintendo" :roll:

[Push Upstairs]

I saw some of the show but it lost credibility when it started glossing over details, getting info incorrect and such...you know what i did?


I changed the channel.

[Lady Jaye]

Only thing, tho: has it gone into details, it would not have been a 1 1/2 hour show. I think it was a major improvement over other documentaries of the type that popped up on tv in the past couple of years. Even though it was not perfect, unless a documentary of the sort were to be at least 10 hours long, you can't expect it to be anywhere near thorough. At least, unlike the British one that aired on TLC last summer, they didn't lose a chunk of that 1 1/2 hour focusing on Codemasters.

I too wished it'd be truly objective. But I'm not surprised it wasn't. If you have a documentary about the history of amusement parks on ABC, you wouldn't be surprised if a lot of focus would go to Disney, wouldn't ya? I may seem cynical and jaded, but that's the way the TV industry works. Unless you have a documentary produced by independant producers for, say, PBS, you can't expect it to be objective. Had Nintendo or Microsoft sponsored (or funded) the documentary, the same bias would have happened but in their favor.

As for a lack of focus on Nintendo or Sega during the documentary, we don't know what happened behind the scenes. Did they decline to be interviewed? Were they actually interviewed but not included in the documentary? Only the people who made the show would know.

Oh, and I'm surprised no one is taking a jab at Tony Hawk for the little self-promotion during the show...

[sisko]

I caught that too. While the documentary was interesting on a whole, they left several things out. What about the CDi? Atari 5200? 7800? Virtual Boy? 3DO? Maybe there just wasn't enough time to talk about all of that, but I feel they were significant enough to at least MENTION in the show.

I especially loved the blatant plug for THUG at the end. Without it, I would have never realized that Tony Hawk would recommend people buy his own game x_x

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

I'm sticking by my theory that to properly tell the story of just the 8-bit years and earlier, from Spacewar! to Odyssey to Atari to NES with all of that era's consoles in between, would take anywhere from 8 to 13 hour-long episodes, leaning strongly toward 13.

As long as everyone keeps sticking to 90 minute one-off specials, there'll never be room for the whole story.

[AB Positive]

I'm sticking by my theory that to properly tell the story of just the 8-bit years and earlier, from Spacewar! to Odyssey to Atari to NES with all of that era's consoles in between, would take anywhere from 8 to 13 hour-long episodes, leaning strongly toward 13.

As long as everyone keeps sticking to 90 minute one-off specials, there'll never be room for the whole story.

We need to do this. With our knowledge, and perhaps a funding grant from PBS or a government agency, we could do it real, couldn't we? I mean, we have people that are as close to be 'experts' in the field as we're going to get without having worked in the VG companies themselves (and in some cases they have worked in the companies)... I mean, crap. If the government can give 100,000 samoleans to a group documenting the sex life of the american earthworm and making a 24-episode epic from it, we could get something going, right?


C'mon, who's with me?

-AG

[esquire]

well if the show or station? is owned by sony, i guess they can say whatever they want on it ... would u make urself look bad on ur own show?... NO u would make the other company look bad... also u cant blame Tony Hawk for anything.. its not like he wrote up the show.

No, actually they can't say whatever they want. There is a thing called "slander" which prevents you from stating known (or with a reckless disregard to the truth) falsehoods about an individual (or business) to third parties. Now granted, Sega doesn't make the Saturn anymore, however, they could argue that such falsehoods hurt their business relationships with console makers as they still design software. That my friend is business slander and/or tortiuous interference with a business relationship. Sony cannot do that unless they want to pay Sega money damages.

[esquire]

I saw some of the show but it lost credibility when it started glossing over details, getting info incorrect and such...you know what i did?


I changed the channel.

Good point. If you don't like it change the channel. Just like if you are tired of hearing all the rants against Sony, go to another topic and don't respond. There is a small problem with that logic. As educated gamers, we know crap when we see it, so we can change the channel. What about Joe Blow that doesn't know whether the program is nothing more than an infomercial for Sony? I think if you are going to present a program as a documentary on the history of certain consoles, you should be unbiased and at the very least truthful so that those who don't know better will things as they truly are.

[ManekiNeko]

well if the show or station? is owned by sony, i guess they can say whatever they want on it ... would u make urself look bad on ur own show?... NO u would make the other company look bad... also u cant blame Tony Hawk for anything.. its not like he wrote up the show.

No, actually they can't say whatever they want. There is a thing called "slander" which prevents you from stating known (or with a reckless disregard to the truth) falsehoods about an individual (or business) to third parties. Now granted, Sega doesn't make the Saturn anymore, however, they could argue that such falsehoods hurt their business relationships with console makers as they still design software. That my friend is business slander and/or tortiuous interference with a business relationship. Sony cannot do that unless they want to pay Sega money damages.

That would be so awesome if Sega sued for slander. Of course, I doubt that would actually happen, as it would endanger their licensing agreement. Maybe they could just sue Liberty Media instead... they own the other half of the network.

JR

[Garry Silljo]

I think people are focusing too much on the anti-Sony part of this thread. To me this wans't just another "Sony sucks" thread. This was a "hey look a company blatantly misrepresented facts" thread. People are too quick to defend the act because of the degree of bashing Sony has been subjected to recently. The difference here is that this isn't an opinion matter like in other threads. In this case people witnessed Sony trying to make there system look better than the competitions, by compating one of the games on their system, to one that ISN'T on the competitions?!?!?! Like sony, Hate Sony, we're not talking about that now. Let's talk about whether or not we like being lied to. That's what happened here. Let's not bring the other anti-sony threads into this.

[Captain Wrong]

While I understand what you're saying, some of us have been addressing that as well. I believe Lady Jaye summed it up pretty nicely. And as I said earlier I really don't think anyone who is seriously interested in games is going to take this one show as gospel.

And you're going to have a really hard time convincing me that if a different company was the one in the position to bend things like it seems Sony has done in this case, there would be even a fraction of the "outrage". Right now, Sony is the guy everyone loves to hate and if you so much as suggest another company a made a mistake once, half the board dogpiles on who ever said it.

Like esquire said, as an educated gamer, I know crap when I see it and the Sony bashing, which is at the base of this conversation, is based on some pretty historically shortsighted views and a failry blind eye to the way that the market works here in the US. It's not the Sony bashing that gets me as it is the fact that people who should know better seem to think Sony is the first and only company to do stuff like this. For some reason it's ok that others have done it (and probably would again if they were in a position to do so) but Sony does it and they're "the worst thing to happen to games."

And the other thing, for me, is that it seems like negative Sony topics are the new negative Gamestop/EB topics. I swear, it feels like there's a new one every other day and what do they accomplish? Not a damn thing.

Sigh. What's the point? Logic never has a place in discussions like these. OK, this time I really am done.

[tynstar]

I dont like Sony but I do not spend a lot of time bashing them on message boards. We all know you hate Sony ManekiNeko but is bashing them here hurting them at all?

If you want to get at them then when people ask "What system should I buy?" Tell them X-Box of GameCube. I have done that a lot. Plus when I worked part time at Gamestop I never recommended the PS2 unless they where a RPG fan. I have had complete strangers ask me about game systems in different retail store and I always tell them to get an X-Box or GameCube.

[Kid Ice]

Sounds like an honest mistake to me.

[GamecubeFreek]

I have seen the documentary twice now (i taped it), and I loved the first half. However, the fact that they basically skipped over everything from 8 to 32 bit except for PCs really got me mad. And the one line about Dreamcast -"and it bombed" also got me upset. And the only acknowledgement of Gamecube was that it was launched alongside XBOX AND PLAYSTATION! also got me upset. But whatever, the first fourty five minutes are probably the best documentation of early game history we will ever see made for tv.

[brykasch]

I don't think people would have been so anti nintendo back then as people are against Sony now. There are alot of things Sony does that jsut puzzle me to know end. Plus the blind fanboyism of some owners is incredible. I can see Liking the one system you have, but to not be able to admit that any game is good on another system or looks better, thats just stupid. not to mention Sony's bit of using units shipped instead of units sold to inflate their numbers.

NOA was restrictive on titles, and a little asinine sometimes on censoring things, but the also made great games. You never had a problem with a NES or SNES system breaking. Hell they never really bothered to go against competitor's in ads till Sega started whoopin up on em.

[RJ]

I liked it- I thought it was interesting, entertaining, & informative. Most gamers know just about everything they presented, although they glossed over some stuff, & blatantly omitted others, but generally that's how the average person sees it- they know the bigger names (Atari, Nintendo, Sega, etc) & most likely don't know Astrovision, Channel F, Vectrex, etc.
I liked that they actually interviewed the industry names & authors, rather than paraphrasing them over still pics. I appreciate nearly any show about gaming- this was one of the better ones.

And why not Tony Hawk? Who SHOULD have hosted? Howard Stern? Laura Bush?? Santa Claus???

[sisko]

And the one line about Dreamcast -"and it bombed" also got me upset.

I forgot about that line, and it pretty well cheesed me off too. The NGage bombed. The R-Zone bombed. The Virtual Boy bombed. The Dreamcast did not bomb.

[Ed Oscuro]

Sony Hawk? Goodness, after reading that I think you're onto something o_O