An Evening With Sony Computer Entertainment 253
Thursday evening, senior Sony representatives such as Phil Harrison (President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios) and David Karraker (Head of SCEA's PR division) sat down with the posters from a bunch of websites, looking to ease relations between the company and their customers. Along with folks from The San Jose Mercury News, Joystiq, Kotaku, and MTV, we discussed a number of the issues raised in the comments here on Slashdot the day before yesterday. My goal in going to the event was to make sure that your concerns were heard. Over the last several months, I've heard many complaints leveled against Sony and their products, and I was hoping to bring back some answers. To be honest, I walked away not fully satisfied. Read on for answers to some of the criticisms you, the readers, have leveled against Sony in the last several months.
I took notes, but a lot of ground was covered, and not all of it was probably of interest. To give you a sense of context, we were all gathered around a large table in a hotel just off of Union Square. The event was held in the early evening, and lasted for approximately two hours. While everyone was certainly civil, there were a number of tough questions passed around. Here is what I felt was most important to you folks:
- A goodly amount of the discussion centered around Sony's newly announced Home project. The dangers of allowing uploadable content were raised, and we were assured that PSN parental controls will be fully in place within the game world. There will be a few quick button options to black out the screen (in case of offensive images) and to kill the audio (in case of offensive language). Public spaces will be moderated (and instanced, if you're curious), though they were a bit vague on just how those individuals would work economically. They're still working out the details.
- I was intrigued on Wednesday (as were a number of readers) by the possibility of indie games in the Arcade rooms they showed off. Phil Harrison responded by saying that it is something they're very interested in. Originally, all of the games were going to be done in Java but technical problems arose. The games are now done in C. If they can wrap up the tools in an easy package, they'd be very happy to release them and allow community-created games onto the service.
- Revenue for the service will be handled via object sales, advertising, and b2b elements in vendor areas. Those concerned about the 'amount of free' that you'll get as an intro Home user should know that they're hoping to offer a fair amount off the bat. 'Free' includes a basic apartment, access to the public spaces, a 'reasonable' number of avatar customization options, and a 'starter' set of furniture. Better views out your window will be purchasable, along with new apartments.
- Everyone from Sony in the room heavily resisted comparisons to Second Life, and other services. In Mr. Harrison's words "That would be heavily oversimplifying both Home and Second Life." Along the lines of hacking the service to allow Second Life-style sexual animations, the reps were fairly confident that they'd dodge that bullet. The service itself doesn't allow avatar touching, and doesn't currently have emotes that approximate those actions. They eventually hope to have 100% of online-connected users on the service. Currently, the number of online connected PS3's is somewhere around 500,000 in NA; roughly 50% of the North American consoles.
- Right now the download is around 450 megs, but that's going to probably shrink and grow over the course of development.
- The subject of Sony's arrogant public demeanor was broached, as well as the poor public relations message we've been getting in the last several months. The ThreeSpeech blog was broached, and the folks in the room actually clarified the purpose and reality behind the 'semi-official' blog. ThreeSpeech is actually a European entity, intended to be a public forum in which Sony-related matters can be discussed and information can be brought to the public's attention. The people behind ThreeSpeech are some of the most respected games journalists in the UK; it would be like if a US version of the site were staffed by the likes of CNN's Chris Morris, and man-of-many-talents Geoff Keighley. Because UK gamers know and trust the ThreeSpeech staff, there's an implicit understanding (in that country) that the message coming from the site is not 'tainted.' It was pointed out the lack of attribution to posts across the site is a barrier to acceptance, and they took that under advisement. For the most part, it seems, the bad reputation that ThreeSpeech here in the states seems to be a case of cultural misunderstanding. While I still don't like the term 'semi-official', I did feel as though the concept behind the site made a great deal more sense to me after this chat. Some of the other attendees were not as reassured.
- The element that I want to convey, which I took away from the discussion of Sony's arrogance, was that arrogance is not the feeling I get from them in person. These people are, instead, supremely confident in their products and services. Thanks to the impersonal nature of quotes and the numerous (rightly decried) public relations gaffes they've suffered, their confidence can easily be seen as arrogance by third party information consumers. This is not to say the company on the whole is not arrogant; I just want to make it clear the people I was in the same room with Thursday night did not have the attitude of inherently arrogant individuals.
- This discussion went on to include the question of the PS3's pricetag, which was a subject never fully addressed to my satisfaction. There was some talk of the PS3 as a lifestyle, and the still-important question of why Blu-ray technology is necessary. Peripherals such as the EyeToy were mentioned as 'making the PS3 disappear from the equation', which given the cost of the system seemed to be a poor choice of words. Not much of substance resulted from the Sony 'side of the table' on this subject, and that attitude left me feeling a bit frustrated. The system's cost won't be changing for some time now, and there's apparently not much to talk about on that subject. This was the one element that I went into the session hoping to deal with directly, and unfortunately came away feeling let down.
- As a final note, it was stated directly that "There is no direct evidence that Blu-Ray has been hacked." Their attitude is that the encryption is strong, and that it will be a long time before it's cracked.
Re:Asked why did they fuck up Star Wars Galaxies ? (Score:5, Informative)
Everquest
Everquest 2
Everquest in space (SWG)
Everquest in computer (Matrix)
Everquest in space with less content (Planetside)
Everquest alpha
Non EQ related filler (Stationpass)
Re:Home Is Amazing (Score:4, Informative)
Just like with N64 and Gamecube, there were plenty more shelves at EB stocking PSX, and then PS2 titles - but most of those are just filler crap. We're talking about dogshit like American Chopper: The Video Game.
I read an interesting article a while back about Nintendo's position and strategy as an innovative force. They continually try to invent new genre's, and capitilize as they grow, then leave them once mature. Sony and MSFT are focused solely on those mature genres. They'll deliver a very highly polished FPS, or racing game, etc, but wont risk something new.
Nintendo has to do this to stay in business, they focus on cheaper to develop games, and building new genres - the games usually have simplistic graphics, cutting down dev time, for example.
Consider the platformer - a genre nintendo largely defined with Super Mario Bros (and arguably invented with Donkey Kong), and redefined for 3D with Super Mario 64 - yet they currently have nothing in this market, it's too mature and full of competition. How many games would you consider a "Mario Kart" clone?
Sort of a tangent, but basically Nintendo doesn't need to be #1, and nintendo can survive some lack of support from third parties as long as they keep coming up with new stuff. Look at how the DS is taking off, against the PSP which I'm willing to admit is technically advanced. The "gimmick" of the touchscreen has opened whole new genre's of gaming - and this is the whole point of the wiimote.
If the wiimote spawns some successful new genres of videogaming, as it likely will, you'll see similar devices and plenty of clones of those games on Xbox and PS3. The genre will mature, get its rigid fanbase unopposed to change (there is no room for innovation in the FPS genre, the fans are too hardcore and will reject anything that isnt by-the-numbers), and Nintendo will move on.
They surely fail sometimes (Virtual Boy), but the fact that they are a company based on invention means they can keep going and succeed, where Sega failed miserably (Sega being merely another manufacturer, like Sony and MSFT).
Basically, they don't really compete with Sony and Microsoft at all. Sony and MSFT manufacture, Nintendo invents.
Re:Confidence, not arrogance? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Blu-Ray comments (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No questions about the fake PSP fan site? (Score:3, Informative)
No?
So then why did you buy a Dreamcast?
That's funny. I have over 100 Dreamcast games. Given the console's short lifetime and the pallor of doom cast by SCE, that's not bad at all. And in fact I'd say a much higher percentage of them are worth playing as compared to, say, the first hundred playstation games.
Jesus, what is this, a troll? The mistakes they made with Saturn were thus: It was $100 too expensive, and it pissed off developers because it was hard to use, leading to comments like describing the Saturn as a "pile of chips on a board". In fact Sony is the company that made the latter mistake in the following generation, not Sega; the DC has one nice speedy PowerVR and a very approachable graphics system, and the PS2 has a very complex CPU and a very complex graphics system - they have slightly more power, if any at all, and they are FAR harder to use. Meanwhile, the Dreamcast was not unreasonably priced, not that the PS2 was.
Well, I'll agree with that part. But many of the best games ended up on the Genesis, that's something of a fact. And if you played sports games (not that I did) you needed a Genesis. That really helped them go. Not to mention that Sonic was truly impressive.
Sega made more than their share of mistakes. I don't want to argue that point; it's not defensible to say that they didn't either. But the Dreamcast was a brilliantly executed piece of hardware, and it didn't just die on its own.
Re:No questions about the fake PSP fan site? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Zonk, call a spade a spade. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What happened to Lik Sang (Score:4, Informative)
When the PS2 came out, Sony was bragging about how it can can push 66 million polygons per second (reference [cyberiapc.com]). When the Cube came out, the specs Nintendo released were a fraction of that (12 million polygons per second, reference [iexbeta.com]). So gamers everywhere thought the PS2 would simply own the Cube hardware-wise. Problem was, Sony lied. They implied that games could push that amount polygons, when in reality, the PS2 could only display that many polygons if they were untextured, unshaded, and if the PS2 did nothing else but display them.
I have no idea why you are even trying to dispute this.
Furthermore, the closing of Lik-Sang had nothing to do with Mod chips, at least directly. Sony didn't sue over Mod chips. They sued because Lik-Sang was importing Sony hardware from Japan. From Lik-Sang themselves: [lik-sang.com]
Do you have any clue or do you just reply because you like to insult others by implying that things only happened in their heads?