Uh Oh, Sony Be Talking Smack!
It seems as if the recent victory of Sony’s Blu-Ray over HD-DVD has injected a not-so-healthy dose of arrogance into the company. Sony, of course, is no stranger to arrogance but this recent interview with SCEA VP of product marketing Scott Steinberg takes the fleeting bit of humble pie Sony had to work with over the last year or so, and then stomps on it and replaces it with pompous pie stuffed with high-fructose conceit. Just how Sony likes it.
Here are some choice excepts from the interview:
“2008 is critical for us. We were distracted or bothered as an industry talking about Blu-ray versus HD-DVD. Those conversations are over; now we can talk about our line-up. We have the best line-up we’ve ever had and that’s the fundamental momentum. We’ve got a deep lineup in 2008, as opposed to maybe having one or two games like our competition. We’ve got a slew of games that represent a host of genres that are both new IP, comfort food IP, [new iterations of] games that people were raised on as PS2 gamers or even earlier. We’re feeling really good about our competitive position right now.”
Ooooh, the ol’ slam the competition by touting their lack of games to your bevy of games, but not backing any of it up. Nice.
“There was a little bit of a Berlin Wall factor going on. We were preparing ourselves for a long, drawn-out battle but from CES, things moved extremely rapidly. It probably moved rapidly for our competition too, in the opposite direction.
Scott, you are just tooooo much. Keep em’ coming.
“We had this Berlin Wall [HD-DVD] and all of a sudden the people decided to tear it down and the next thing you know we’ve got a de facto standard on our hands and it’s our standard.”
So Blu-Ray coming out on top is comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall? Okie dokie.
“Third parties have started to move from the de facto 360 SDK. Of course people designed their next-gen games on it because that was the only one there. The PS3 shipped and so they said, ‘let’s port our 360 games to the PS3.’ But now companies are recognizing that ‘hey, if I start on the PS3 and then port down to the 360, my 360 game is going to look better than if I had just designed it for the 360.’ So the pendulum is swinging. The heads of development thinking ‘what’s going to show off my next-gen game that much better?’ It is to lead with the PS3 and then to port to the 360.”
We have seen no evidence of this as of yet, but maybe Mr. Steinberg knows something we don’t. Speaking about Microsoft’s Xbox 360:
“The time that they had to create huge distance and build a massive install base before the PS3 could really take root; that opportunity is over and there’s no real capitalization of it. They had a great crescendo moment with Halo and it helped catapult them into a pretty strong position towards the back end of last year, but they were still within a stone’s throw of where they were with the original Xbox.
What did the five fingers say to the face…SLAP! Man, this guy is something else. He continues:
“To me that speaks of a failure to broaden their reach beyond the core first person shooter player who was in their back pocket for Xbox. The question for us is ‘are they really going after the PS2 demographic? Are they stealing share from us?’ And the answer is no.”
Alright man, we get it. Calm down. Wait, he’s not done yet:
“Once Grand Theft Auto ships on the platform I think you’ll see those folks on the side line saying ‘I don’t want to get stuck with the wrong one. I’m a PlayStation fan. I waited out the HD-DVD thing and I listened to a lot of misinformation. Now I don’t need to wait.’ There are lots of reasons to jump in, and PS3’s by far the strongest choice.”
So loyal die-hard Playstation fans have been waiting all this time to acquire a PS3 instead of an Xbox 360 or Wii. They wouldn’t dare cross brands.
Sony, do us all a favor and go back to the humble pie. Everyone liked you better.
Source: Next Generation
April 1st, 2008 at 12:21 pm
[…] Microsoft and Sony are gearing up in a big way for what looks to be the biggest retail game of the year, that being Nancy Drew: Double Dare 5. I kid. Of course I speak of the thefting of auto’s 4. And in their spokesperson wake, everyone will be consumed…not literally, of course. But this release is a big deal and could point to where the so-called console war is likely head in the near future, which is why these two behemoth corps are ramping up their marketing and media efforts. Which is why the heat over who will come out of the Grand Theft Auto 4 sales ashes as console victor is palpable. So much so that Sony resident smack talker, Scott Steinburg is at it again with the lip. […]