5 things Sony needs to do to save the PS3
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Things are looking tough for Sony: redundancies, missed shipment
targets, poor financial results; so what's a giant mega-corporation to
do? Take advice from bloggers, of course:
1. Cut the price, now, stupid! And not just a measly amount either.
We'd like to see £125 at least off the UK price. Ideally even more.
That would give away the Blu-ray portion of the console for free, as a
bonus, and put the gaming portion of the console at too tempting a
price to refuse up against the Wii or even a discounted Xbox 360. Sony
right now desperately needs to shake off its "loser" image, or it
risks that bleeding into the PS4, in the way Microsoft has had to
fight twice as hard just to gain a little bit of ground with the move
from Xbox 1 to 360 - the only way for Sony to do this is not by edging
out Microsoft, but by utterly trouncing them.
2. Exclusives, exclusives, exclusives. Where was The Getaway, Ratchet
& Clank, WipEout day one? It's clear now that most third-party
publishers will hedge their Microsoft/Sony bets. So it's all about in-
house stuff. Those games need to be here right now. I'm not talking
about Little Big Planet - sure, it looks neat, but it's quirky. And
one thing Sony doesn't need right now is quirky. It needs big ticket
sellers - mainstream classics. It needs to think EA and go simple. In
the same ballpark, it needs to start throwing money at third-party to
get the edge - three month exclusive windows, exclusive extra download
content etc. Microsoft has done the smart thing with GTA IV, now Sony
must get out an even bigger wallet.
3. Forget quirky. As an addition to the point above, Sony needs to
stop making such a fuss about Little Big Planet and Home. The
occasional quirky classic, as Microsoft have found (with every recent
Rare release) does not sell a console to a new audience. Sony cannot
compete against the Wii on fun. Fun is not what this is all about.
People will not buy a PS3 for Little Big Planet. They will buy it for
Killzone or WipEout, if Sony make them very, very, very good. Or for
Final Fantasy XIII. In the same vein, Sony cannot compete against the
PC for social networking - everyone's got a PC, everyone uses their PC
online, it has a keyboard for chatting to people. Why would teens on
MySpace, Second Life and MSN Messenger suddenly embrace a more clunky,
awkward and fundamentally limited version of these options on the PS3?
It makes no sense, other than as a snazzy showcase to try and explain
how the PS3 is different. Only now we all know the key difference - it
doesn't sell. Forget the differences of the PS3, concentrate on what
sells - the games, stupid.
4. Learn to be cool again. Once upon a time, Sony made the PlayStation
generation something to be part of. WipEout and that "conquered
worlds" advert made gaming cool, edgy, in tune with cutting-edge
culture. While Tomb Raider and Resident Evil radically shook up
existing genres and added a graphical sheen and new sensibility to
make them exciting to mainstream, non-geeky gamers. Is there a single
thing that Sony's done since then that equals these campaigns, in
terms of mainstream culture impact? I don't think so. Sony rode the
crest of a wave of increasing consumer acceptance of videogames as
part of the fabric of our lives through the PS2. But along the way,
Sony, along with many other games companies, started to think "cutting
edge" meant hiring a big-name pop video director to do your ads, or
that games had to demonstrate how cool the licensed music was, or how
many polygons they could push. But cool is an altogether more elusive
quantity - but whatever it is, Sony needs to find it, grab it and use
it. It needs TV ads, viral Internet campaigns and games that make you
sit up and take notice - leave you unsure of what you're seeing. And
that means taking risks and stepping outside the usual game settings
and genres.
5. Embrace the mobile, forget the PSP. Another symptom of Sony's
corporate sluggishness and lack of cool is that it's still pushing its
PSP "connectibility" as a key driver. That boat's long sailed - kids
bought DSs as a cheap novelty, got iPods for Xmas, but have already
gone back to their true love - the mobile. Make a mobile PSP, soon.
And spread PS3 spin-off games and PS3 extras across mobile networks on
all handsets.