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This isn't really your realm, but
you can probably comment on it at least a bit:
In terms of developer relations, a big part of the equation is you look
at some of the really successful third-party games. Some say that Fallout 3 is not as good on the PS3. Technically, sites like GameSpot claim it's inferior, and the game doesn't
support DLC. Those are big hits for a game that just won the Game Developers'
Choice Game of the Year Award. You don't
want to see games like that handicapped, so how do you address those issues?
PD: Well, I can't speak to if the game doesn't play as well on PS3, but
whenever we have a situation -- if something's not supporting our platform from
a DLC perspective it certainly gets our attention. We try to work aggressively
with our third-party publishing group to understand what the issue is.
Sometimes
the issue is that our competition has paid people a lot of money for DLC; there's
some notable titles that fall into that category. Sometimes they're things that
we have to be smart about, and we're working to improve those types of
situations. If our model or our platform is creating questions for publishers
that they'd like to work with us in a different fashion, we want to be open to
that.
The days
of Sony saying, "This is the only way it's going to work; it's our way or
the highway." that's not the way we want to work; we want to make sure
that the publishers have an opportunity to make money on our platform, and so we
want to hear their feedback. But I can't speak specifically to the Fallout situation; I'm sure that the
answer is there.
As you alluded to earlier, there had been complaints about the
difficulty of developing for the PlayStation 3 compared to the Xbox 360 -- or the tools
not being mature compared to the 360 -- because they had a year head-start, and
also because the PS3 has a very unique architecture.
PD: That's
exactly right. We've tried to address the tools, and I think we'll continue to
do that. I just spoke about this big studio organization; when you're
specializing in PS3 development, they're coming up with some great tools and
dev support. Rather than just hoard those so that our games are better than
everyone else's, we're looking to release those to the community and share them
so they can raise their game too.
On the
network side -- again, the PlayStation Network has not been around as long as
Live. There's things that we've learned since we launched; I think that the PlayStation
Network is very different than it was on November 17, 2006, and it will get better a year
from now as well. At this point, we think
it's a great experience; it's got a wonderful content offering and user
experience, but there's also things we can do better, and we're focused on
that.
When I
hear myself say things like that, sometimes I'm like, it sounds rehearsed, but
I can tell you I spend a lot of my time working with our third-party group and
our development teams and our network team obviously to improve what's going on
with the network to make it better for consumers but also better for our
publishers.
I guess this is kind of a
different way of asking this, but this sort of comes together alluded to by
some of your answers: You've said essentially that the PlayStation 3 is not
going to drop in price, and there are good reasons for that. I can accept that,
but how do you change the public perception and make them aware that this is
actually worth what it costs?
PD: Well, what I've said is that it's not going to drop in price today,
first of all.
Right, sure.
PD: I'll
be candid with you. One of the things that we're spending a lot of time on is
our marketing approach. The PlayStation 3 is a complicated machine that does a
lot of things. What we find again and again when we do focus groups is folks
don't understand everything it can do, and that's on us.
We've got got make sure
people understand everything that the thing can do because if you're asking
people to spend $399 for a premium piece of consumer electronics equipment,
then they need to understand everything that it can do.
We're
looking to change our playbook and change our advertising approach to be a
little bit more explicit and specific about the hardware. The model in this
business is directly software drives hardware, and I think that's still true;
that's why it's important that we have those exclusive titles I just talked
about. But there's something about the PS3 that requires us to educate people
about the hardware itself so hardware sells hardware.
We say
this a lot and we joke about it, but if we could go door-to-door and talk to
every consumer and explain to them, invariably they'd kind of, "Well,
gosh! Why would I buy something else?"
The conversation flips, and no longer is it a discussion about price being a
concern; it becomes the value inherent in the device even at its $399 price point.
When they
understand Blu-ray and a hard drive and Wi-Fi included and free online access,
again you stack those up to the competition and what you have to pay extra for
versus the PS3 -- a light bulb goes off.
It's hard
to include all that into a 30 second commercial. I think the marketing that we've
done to date hasn't really hit the mark; we're going to try to do a better job
of that going forward, and I think you'll see created from us this year that
reflects a different approach.
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Does he think that everyone is so stupid that we would find such an argument persuasive? Let's see, a lot more 360s have been sold with hardrives than PS3s. There are many more users of Xbox Live than PSN. So how is the fact that EVERY PS3 has a hard drive and the DLC a big differentiating factor? What an a**hole.
Curious about how Rock Band for PSP would play. Music games are fading away. Also, the fun of those games is sharing it with others... having to bring four PSP together when playing... I am skeptical.
Games created for systems usually must adhere to the lowest common denominator. So a 360 game engine cannot assume there is a hard drive to help optimize performance, while a PS3 game can. That's not to say a 360 game can't make use of performance if a hard drive is available, but it is more difficult.
The point that is trying to be made is that there is a lot of value to a PS3 console, whether that comes from a built in hard drive, internal wifi, free live play, etc., and he wants to educate consumers on that fact.
If you are personally a 360 fan and don't like the PS3 then there is nothing wrong with that.
I still play a lot of PS2 games (which look great upscaled on the system - THANK YOU Sony for that!), and what I am hoping to see are more 3rd party exclusives, especially the niche titles like all the JRPGs and SRPGs that make the PS2 library so unique.
...also I feel Sony needs to bring back backwards compatability. They did a great job with the first-gen PS3s, and one close friend of mine is holding off on buying a PS3 until this feature returns.
I do understand the single SKU consideration for developers, but while they can't count on every single solitary 360 having a hard drive, they can count on the lions share of them having one. And they can count on having more 360s with hard drives than the raw number PS3s. This makes his claim that "Those types of differentiating factors are a big deal when we're talking about some of the co-marketing." seem spirious and disengenious. (By the way I actually favor the PS3 as a better value than the 360, if I could only have one, I would have the PS3).
However, he uses a qualifier with his differentiating claim of being significant in terms of "co-marketing." However, what does he mean by co-marketing here? Why is this important when the numbers themselves don't support his premise? I am baffled by the use of co-marketing here.