More Bad Press for Sony

EBGamestop' s big yearly show is over, and boy were managers left in a tizzy afterward. I' ve had the chance to talk to a few managers I trust on condition of anonymity, and their words don' t inspire confidence about the system launches coming up.

" I asked the regional manager about PS3 preorders," one told me " and he paused and then said he can' t answer the question. He said there is a plan, but they can' t talk about it; we should know in a week to two weeks." He started to sound tired. " Sony just didn' t seem like they had a plan with the show. No plan at all. Barely a mention of the PS3, and almost nothing playable. On the other hand, I waited two hours for Gears of War. There is a feeling that Nintendo and Microsoft really set out to wow us, and Sony didn' t have much to show. There was a PS3 under glass you could look at, and that' s about it."

The difference between HD DVD and Blu-Ray was striking as well. " Blu-ray had a tiny presence in the very back of the show floor, while Microsoft had large displays and surround sound systems in their hospitality suite so you can take a look at what their HD DVD drives would look like. It was impressive, and gave the feeling that HD DVD was real and Blu-ray wasn' t ready for the show."

I asked him his feelings going into the PS3 launch with no word on allocations or preorders, and no news on what will happen towards the holidays. " It' s going to be ugly, there is no way this launch is going to go well."

I dont think Sony is liking how they look these days! Its not good for them.

" Bad news after bad news: The Tale of Sony' s Demise"

Critics are raving it is the must see downfall of the century.

" Two thumbs up!"
Hails Ebert and Roeper.

" The best decay of a powerful company since Enron"
Raves some guy on the street.

" Worst movie, EVER!"
Claims Comic Book guy.

" Riddddddgggeee Raaaaaaacceeerr"
Screams Sony Fanboy as he is hauled away to the asylum.

" Finally a movie that touches into the very essence of a billion dollar company and comes up with a penny."
Says random Canadian

" Death to all"
Says Lex Luthor and Co.

" Fuck, it' s a PC, MORONS!"
Yells Ken Kutaragi as he is hauled away by officials.

" The End is NIGH, THE RAPTURE IS COMING REPENT"
Exclaims guy on Soapbox.

Coming 2008.
The son will fall, with a Why?

Alright, there is your intellectual stimulant and comedy for the day :)

" What most people need to learn in life is how to love people and use things instead of using people and loving things."
~ Unknown ~

Link VX?!

Silly me

Opposable Thumbs!

Just came back to post the link after I was perusing the Xbox Forums :)

Good thing you got here first VX :P

" What most people need to learn in life is how to love people and use things instead of using people and loving things."
~ Unknown ~

It' s true, oh GOD is it true. I work at a GameStop here in the states, and my store manager was NONE too pleased with Sony. He actually decided to pick up a 360 after the conference (apparently, there was never-before-seen Halo 3 footage at the conference, and he got to play GoW AND Rainbow Six, lucky ****er!!!).

So, PS3 is really not mentioned too much around the store anymore....

Everybody is having link forgetting syndrome.... Is it because of impending
releases?

Ack! I am sick and tired of bad news from Sony, I want some friggin good news
man, seriously... It was all one big joke when I said it would be funny to see them
collapse and fall, but if someone tells you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?

Come on Sony, announce something amazing like:

" Shenmue 3 is fit for Blu-ray, and that is why Sony have partnered with Sega
to produce episodic content on our brand new machine for 5 years... That' s
correct 5 years, not 5 months after the PS3' s release..."

There are two rules to success:

1. Never tell all you know.

Recently, an electronics company was able to create a HD-DVD and Blu-Ray player into one; currently in patents.

Until I get an online article than the one in the newspaper (cos I don' t want to retype from the paper), how do you think a 2-format player would affect Sony? The 360 doesn' t have to worry since it always let HD-DVD be optional (prolly so MS could also offer a Blu-Ray addon if need be), but Sony touts the Blu-Ray player as MAJOR selling point of the PS3.

But if this combo player which handles the two formats comes out, then there really isn' t a console way, is there? Since the technology WOULD eventually spread to other comapnies.

If the 360 manages to do well enough to steal a good portion of Sony' s marketshare I hope Microsoft pay attention and learns from the past mistakes of Sega, Nintendo, and now Sony..

Terry Bogard - currently the most Unhelpful member of the Kikizo forums.

I wouldn' t be quick to call MS a market leader, but it is certainly going to be closer then it has ever been. Its going to be a great generation.

every other day its " more bad news for sony" , why dont they just say, " Sony has just schedualed a press conforence about its death" , or " Ooooops, Sony lied again, what were the chances[:' (]."

If the 360 manages to do well enough to steal a good portion of Sony' s marketshare I hope Microsoft pay attention and learns from the past mistakes of Sega, Nintendo, and now Sony..

MS doesnt really need to worry about sega, nintendo, and sony' s upcoming mistakes, Its a trillion dollar company the odds are like,the amount of its money to 1

Recently, an electronics company was able to create a HD-DVD and Blu-Ray player into one; currently in patents.

I heard about that! I was leaving a friends house, and I saw the article for a breif moment, and I thought I had misread. Apparently the article I saw delved in detail about the adaptable laser they' re using.

Yeah it wouldn' t be that hard to do, it would just cost near their combined prices. btw I just checked how much Blue Ray players cost, $1000 while HD-DVD players only cost $500. Pretty ridiculous. I also saw you could buy a Blue Ray/DVD burner drive for a PC which costed $700.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

Is anybody truly surprised by this? I mean, MS started developing the 360 shortly after the original Xbox came to market. They' ve been planning to release before anyone else for a LONG time. Sony, on the other hand, have been steadily trying to increase the life-cycle of their consoles. It may be better for the consumer to have a system that lasts longer, but the market will gobble up new video game systems when they' re brought to market (except Dreamcast, that is).

I sincerely hope that they' re going to start the development of a new system (ps4) ASAP, even though they' re touting the " 10 year life-span" of the PS3.

As for the hybrid drive, that' s something that was looked at a while ago, as well. Probably like a year and a half or something like that. It was given the death knell from one of the camps (either HD-DVD or Blu-ray) early on. It' s stupid, anyway. I want to see a clear cut winner come out of this, and FAST!! I don' t want to have to buy TWO dvd players!!

It may be better for the consumer to have a system that lasts longer, but the market will gobble up new video game systems when they' re brought to market (except Dreamcast, that is).

I agree with you but i thought it was worth to add that at dreamcast time everyone i knew was tired of 32-bit era graphics but Dreamcast game line-up wasn´t impressive at the time ( even though Soul Calibur was great but you can´t make a console succeed with only one great game) and took too long until they started to give gamers a decent amount of fantastic games like Shenmue, JSF, Code Veronica, etc.

So PS3 doesn´t seemed to fail on that aspect...they will deliver a decent amount of must have titles which will make the fans happy for a while.

Dreamcast had plenty of must haves it was more that the sega as a console brand reputation was very very bad at the time.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

.....and de-void of any decent advertising.. I don' t even remember any Dreamcast
adverts I went to a few Dreamcast based events though! I got to see the japanese
voice actor from Shenmue that played Ryo, I also saw some really lovely females
dress up as Sophitia and Seung-Mina from Soul Calibur.

There was also a giant SOnic running around, but then again, there always is..

There are two rules to success:

1. Never tell all you know.

I hardly think the DC was released here in denmark, iv never seen a stand for it anywhere, but i tihnk its been mostly about PC games here in denmark!

Dood, I walked into the store and just noticed a new SEGA system sitting there! I was like WTF, and bought it on the spot. Really, I never saw ANY advertising for the damn thing. Sad.

The biggest problems with the dreamcast imo are threefold.

Firstly it as you guys already mentioned the marketing for it was weak.

Secondly it lacked a variety of games, the thing was a platform for arcade ports, not much more sadly.

Thirdly, and this is a matter of Segas failure to understand the market. Which is the mistake of their timing, the Dreamcast was released in between two generations. I suspect they did this on purpose but it probably only served to kill them. It was released after the N64 and shortly before the PS2. At the time people were left with a bad taste with the Saturn (even though I liked it, didn' t own one though) and were looking foward only to Sonys second coming.

IMO Sega would have been better off releasing Dremcast after the PS2 and having better hardware and a few killer launch titles while doing so. This combined with a strong marketing ploy, Dreamcast could have killed Xbox completely and damaged PS2 badly. Or releasing something more similar to the Dreamcast when they released the Sega Saturn. As it wasn' t the Dreamcast that killed Sega it was the Saturn.

Ofcourse thats just my view on things...