For some reason, these past two weeks have been mainstream media’s “Bash the PS3” season. Article after article has appeared crying about the PS3’s imminent downfall. From CNN to Fox, everyone’s wanted a piece of the pie, and for good reason. With sales falling in a year-over-year comparison (while the 360's and Wii's increased), the PS3 did seem destined for Dreamcastville. Why (other than the price)? Largely because of the fact that outside of gamers, people don’t know about the things the PS3 is capable of other than playing games.
Sony’s trying to change that, with a brand new advertising campaign highlighting the movie and TV downloading capabilities of their machine. It’s a nice change of pace and a very smart move for Sony (especially with no big games coming out for the next month and a half, and with Microsoft starting a similar campaign highlighting Netflix capability), so hopefully it will pay off. Of course, they don’t bother mentioning the Blu-ray capabilities of the PS3 in the commercial, but maybe that’s the next one? I can only hope so, otherwise Sony still doesn’t quite get how to make their machine appeal to a wider audience.
You can check out the first commercial in Sony’s new ad campaign in the full story.
December 15th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Didn't they get enough trouble for promoting it as anything but a games machine already? Promoting it as anything else didn't work the first time, why get a second round of that?
December 15th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Why don't they just promote as a P.O.S. but beg people to buy it because it is dying on the vine. They are Sony and they have been so incredibly generous in the past to their customers. Try getting one fixed and see how much that will cost you. Sorry Sony, the PS2 was a good machine but you really suck now. Stop cramming your proprietary memory formats down everyones throats you cowards.
December 15th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
I say the problem is that Sony's insisting on still charging $400 for the console during a really down economy. All the advertising in the world isn't going get people to shell out for a PS3 when you could get a 360 or Wii for half the price, especially as every facet of the economy is going in the tank.
December 16th, 2008 at 6:44 am
Nael what you don't get is if u wanna buy xbox 360 with same features as PS3, u'll end up paying more money.
And Mr. SmilingAssasin PS3 is as good as PS2 if not better, have u ever got ur hands on PS3??
December 16th, 2008 at 9:32 am
@Ash: Yeah, I'm aware of how many features the PS3 has compared to the other two systems, especially the 360 (and as a 360 owners, makes me wish Microsoft had done in the first place). But the typical consumer may not really care about the extras the PS3 has compared to the other systems - they'll just notice the price of getting a box to play games, and the price of the PS3 compared to it's competitors puts it at a serious disadvantage. The piss-poor economy may also make people think twice about whether they really need the bells and whistles the PS3 has.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I think the downturn in the economy is actually why Sony is trying to promote the PS3 as more than just a gaming system now. When you have to budget your money, would you rather buy your kids a 360/Wii, get a blu-ray player/media center, buy a box to stream rentals/ppv movies, etc. or get a PS3 that can do all of that for a much cheaper price?
Sure people don't have money to spend, but in a recession (especially around the holidays) they're going to spend money like normal. But they'll still want the best deal, even if things like a blu-ray player aren't on their radar neccesarily. I think instead of the blu-ray capabilities what they need to do is tell people it plays blu-rays AND makes normal DVDs look better.