Interesting article Love/Hate SONY
http://www.altgaming.net/mambo/index...d=90&Itemid=32
In the first part of a three-part feature, Iun takes a look at how the three main videogames companies have affected the industry. First up, we have Sony.
I hate Sony. I really do.
No other company in this industry (bar EA, but keep reading) has brought down my favourite hobby to such inexcusable lows as have Sony.
You see, it’s the fault of Sony that we have the phenomenon known as the “Casual Gamer”: the gamer that comes in after a night out at the pub or club and plays a half an hour of Grand Turismo before he hits the hay. The gamer that sees the latest iteration of a supposedly “classic” franchise such as Driver and just grabs it off the shelf and runs straight to the counter, no questions asked. They brought forth the gamer that sees any new idea as a threat to a casual hobby that they have taken up and boycott it simply because they don’t recognise the name.
Sony has also brought a lack of innovation and stagnation to the marketplace, hand in hand with the world’s biggest third-party publisher, they have together created a market where innovation and leaps forward are held back by the annual update of the FIFA franchise. A market where small and forward-thinking developers who seek to push the envelope a little bit further are forced to close, or are bought out and broken up by the bigger fish in the pond. They have created a place where great games can be ignored by strategically timing higher profile, but lower quality releases which are used to “torpedo” these great new games.
Sony have created an empire based on arrogance and deception. An empire where poorly-manufactured consoles are the norm and replacement machines are counted alongside sales of new machines. Replacement machines which are not new, one might add, but instead they are old and broken units that have been “reconditioned” to cut costs and shoddy productions values. Sony presides over these vast lands with arrogance, where costs are cut to better improve profits and reports of manufacturing defects are ignored and their customers told to put up with it.
I hate Sony because they seek to monopolise the market through slick marketing and carefully-timed “spoilers” with which their opponents are beaten through quantity and not quality. I remember what Sony was telling everyone around the launch of the Dreamcast, that their machine would be better, that if everyone would be patient, their machine would deliver the goods. SEGA was on its last legs after losing badly to the original Playstation, the Dreamcast spoilers were tantamount to kicking a man when he’s down, everyone held a soft spot for SEGA with their cute characters and endearing designs, why could there not be room for both machines on the market? I hate Sony for helping to kill SEGA.
But most of all, I hate Sony, because they’re big, they’re untouchable and they’re on top of the world. But they do not deserve to be.
I love Sony. I really do.
No other company in recent memory has given more to the industry in terms of growth, recognition and a steady stream of titles.
Sony has brought gaming to the masses: Sony created the “Casual Gamer” and although there are those who would rue this creation, the truth is, it has only been a good one for the industry as a whole. Prior to the advent of the “Casual Gamer” gaming was seen as less of a main stream and more of a niche market, something done by spotty geeks in their darkened rooms while they chat to other spotty geeks in other darkened rooms. Sony has helped gaming come out from the shadows and allowed more people to experience its pleasures. Sony has helped inject interest in the female gamer into the market, while it can be argued that gaming is still a predominantly male pastime, more and more women are picking up Dualshock control pads for their 30-minute fix of Harry Potter and The Sims. Sony has really opened up the market to new people.
In many ways, Sony have been great innovators in the games industry: they were the first to design a truly accessible multi-media console with the Playstation 2 being the first console to play the widely-popular DVD format. True there have been other consoles that movies could be played on, but none of them have matched the quality or mass market appeal of the DVD. Sony gave us the “EyeToy” in all its forms, a nifty piece of kit if ever there was one. The “EyeToy” and Dance Mats have again opened up the market to new gamers who would never have considered gaming as a way of having fun beforehand. And let us not forget Singstar: That infuriating two-microphone setup that has convinced teenage girls the world over that they can sing. Even if Sony did not invent these technologies solely on their own or even if they stole ideas from other companies, one cannot help but admire their ability to bring these ideas to the front of the consciousness of many gamers.
Though their empire may well have been crafted around arrogance and poor workmanship, their empire has endured for a great deal of time and through many crises and still manages to endure. The classic “Suez Canal” story this Christmas only proves this: the shops were full of mums and dads beside themselves with frustration at not being able to secure the console that their children wanted. Yet when supplies started to trickle in, they soon dried up again. No amount of persuasion or pointing in the direction of the Xbox or Gamecube could dissuade them from their purchase. There were even those who were lined up behind the distraught mums and dads who were buying another machine to replace their second Playstation 2 which had died far sooner than the first one. The Playstation 2 sells almost as fast as Sony can make them, no matter its faults.
One cannot help but be charmed by the near saturation of the market by the Playstation brand: in children’s comics one finds adverts for the latest Jak and Daxter; FHM sports a double page advertisement for Need For Speed and selected women’s magazines and journals show off the latest Sims games. Rivals and detractors complain at the monopoly-minded activities of Sony, but to them I say that they should stop whining and take a leaf out of Sony’s book and get their consoles out their and recognised, otherwise their will never be any real challenge to Sony’s well deserved dominance.
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Originally Posted by Poofta!
