The Game Overthinker: "Sony Got Lucky"

[The Damned]

http://screwattack.com/videos/TGO-EPISODE-39-The-Emperor-Has-No-Clothes

It seems somewhat inflammatory, like a giant slap across the face of a rather sizable number of fanboys... but when he explains it and cites historic points we all know about, it does makes sense.

Most of us were there in the old days, from NES to PS2, so we know how things went down between companies and the results thereof. But I had never, ever thought of it from this perspective. Did Sony just happen to be in the right place at the right time?

[Gollgagh]

haha xbox, the one game system

[MojoHamster]

I really enjoyed TGO episodes when he first started.

But it might seem like there's some form of journalism going on here, but assuredly there's no journalism going on here.

There's a little serendipity in anything. But Sony managed to create the first viable and ubiquitous CD console, which is no small achievement. Sega at the time were an experienced console company who failed twice to bring in CD technology. While the Saturn is technically pretty competitive with the PS1, certain hardware issues raised the cost per unit which didn't help them alot.

Anyway, I'm doing a short job here, we already discussed it to death on Screwattack. Suffice it to say, there's objective journalism, and then there's making a statement and cherry picking 'facts' that seem to support that statement.

[Overflow]

The TGO always has great points, and I think that the bare facts are indisputable: Sony was facing a crumbing sega, stumbling Nintendo, and newbie Microsoft, and thus had no real competition, so they were able to gain control of the market. Once the Wii and 360 came out, they now had real competition, and we were able to see how they would do, without actually changing any strategies.

And he has a good point: Would a company that really knew what it was doing allow such horrible marketing campaigns? The early PS3 ads were just creepy, the PSP squirrel ads were just annoying (Incidentally:

) and Marcus is really obnoxious. The only good thing I've seen is Kevin Butler, who still seems like a half-baked attempt from Sony to have their own Reggie Fils-Aime. Actually, I'd love to see how those to would interact and if a full out brawl would go down... Then again, Reggie would just stare Kevin down; no contest

[SoulinEther]

the topic intrigues me ("intrigues" not "fascinates" because i've not owned any of the new consoles and have never played on a ps3 or original xbox so i can't judge) but why did it have to be a 16 minute video? I really would have rather read this.

i guess the biggest recurring motif i see here is technical hardware/graphics superiority isn't that important (PSP, dreamcast, betamax, PS3)

[ambinate]

this is pretty interesting and, as he repeats a thousand times in the video, sony definitely benefitted a lot from being in the right place at the right time. but i think he overstates a few things (and overlooks some other stuff, which is natural, i guess). he (along with many other journalists, to be fair) almost acts as if the ps3 is in a far distant third compared to the 360's second place, but in reality, their worldwide sales are only about 2 or 3 million units apart, which isn't too terrible when they've each sold around 40 million units. he's also in the same sort of denial that a lot of gaming fans are in right now when he talks about the psp vs. iphone thing - assuming that the iphone is not a legitimate competitor in the handheld market is sort of naive but i guess it isn't too relevant to his argument (although it is still very silly).

also i think making an analogy between beliefs on bloodletting and beliefs on the playstation brand is a very stupid way to start an argument. so there.

[Bleck]

almost acts as if the ps3 is in a far distant third compared to the 360's second place, but in reality, their worldwide sales are only about 2 or 3 million units apart, which isn't too terrible when they've each sold around 40 million units.

what you're ignoring is why and when these units were sold

[Abadoss]

I really like this guy. He's got a good presentation style and is pretty intelligent. My favorite, so far, has to be this one: http://screwattack.com/videos/TGO-Episode-33-Building-A-Better-Gamer

[Darklink42]

Sony's history has always fascinated me, considering that they started out as a basic electronics company, and became a recognized juggernaut of gaming, and have now forced themselves into a limited market of their own devising by blatantly piggybacking on the success of other models of business without uniquely innovating for their chief consumer market.

I think it's also interesting to look back at Kaz Hirai's seemingly unlimited ego and bizarre departures from reality, Sony's amazing stumble when they discovered the backlash of the 600 dollar price point, and they're attempts to recuperate when their tried and tested business model of limited initial release around a high demand holiday failed them. Messing with backwards compatibility also sunk them later, even though they should have known that it was their one advantage over Microsoft at the time (And who didn't see the downloadable Xbox classics coming once Live took off?)

Overall, I think he makes a lot of good points, and even if he missed a couple of key points, his opinion stands as being close to right. I think what's really keeping the PS3 in the market right now (and has been for some time) is the strangely successful Blu-ray discs over the HDDVD (remember those?) and how the PS3 was, and may still be, cheaper and has more functionality than a dedicated Blu-ray player. Go figure, after decades of trail and error with other alternative media formats, they finally got one right. But then one has to wonder there to: did they get it right, or is it a repeat of the DVD boom?

[Vivi22]

The TGO always has great points, and I think that the bare facts are indisputable: Sony was facing a crumbing sega, stumbling Nintendo, and newbie Microsoft,

You'd be right about the PS2 era, but the PSX came out before the N64, pretty much at the height of Nintendo's power. And he talks about things like FFVII selling the PSX but that they just got it because Nintendo were dicks and Square was mad at them, but it ignores a key thing they did that brought them all of the third party support that drove the PSX and later the PS2. Back when Nintendo were being a bunch of asshats throwing their weight around like they owned the place Sony came in and let people do pretty much whatever they wanted on their console, and do it with a non-proprietary media format. Whereas Nintendo would charge license fees out the ass and force people to play by their rules (it's fairly well known that they were heavy on the censorship, even towards the end of the SNES era), Sony just let people do whatever. That kind of freedom is pretty attractive to game developers and publishers, and despite a bit of a slow start, it just took a few good games to cement the fanbase and have more companies start to follow suit.

Now part of that is right time, right place just like anything. Coming in now and offering that kind of freedom wouldn't make much of a difference since Nintendo and Microsoft pretty much followed suit. But it was a smart move that did come at just the right time to start attracting some third party interest which is essential to the success of any console in the long term.