Console Post of the Week
Sony used a decapitated goat for marketing purposes and still had a better week than Microsoft.I was very tempted to make that first line the entire post, and after I finish writing this, I'm sure I'll wish I had.
I realized today that the non-hard drive, $299 Xbox 360, in retrospect, should be considered a pretty spectacular achievement. Remember, it came out at the same launch price as the PS2 and was what--ten times more powerful? At least? And high-definition by default. I think if Microsoft had focused on that comparison, the "Core" system would have gotten more credit.
I didn't want one at launch, and I don't want one now--downloadable content has made a hard drive for the 360 essential--but it's still remarkable.
Microsoft had a bad week, though, at least if you're a customer, and it mainly centers around how they've locked up their console. With the launch of the Elite this week, people want to migrate the content from their original hard drive to the Elite's larger drive.
Now, if you have the opportunity to get someone to buy a more expensive version of something they already bought, there should be the consumer version of a red carpet rolled out. Even better, that larger hard drive is going to store all kinds of crap that they have to buy from you.
Microsoft, though, didn't figure any of that out. They didn't include the data transfer kit with the Elite that comes standard with the insanely expensive 120GB drive upgrade. And the data transfer process itself, which should be totally idiot-proof, was confusing enough that the Major Nelson blog actually posted a video stepping people through the process.
At first, Microsoft had the stones to say they were going to charge people for the data transfer kit. Please! By the end of the week, they'd backed down and were offering to send them for free, but it's still inconvenient, and it was incredibly stupid not to include them in the first place.
And it gets worse.
As punishment for giving Microsoft more money, even though you can transfer downloaded content to the new hard drive, you have to be connected to Xbox Live to actually play any of it. Here's an excerpt from the Gamerscore Blog ("the inside scoop from Microsoft Xbox and Games employees"):
You should also know that licenses for downloaded content like Xbox LIVE Arcade games and TV shows from Xbox LIVE are tied to the console they were originally downloaded on.
--This means that while all of your Xbox LIVE Arcade games and TV shows will transfer, you will have to be connected to Xbox LIVE (to verify your identity) in order to access that content.
--This process is permanent, so do not transfer your data if it is important to you to be able to access this content offline.
--Consumers that purchase the standalone 120GB HDD will not experience any change in the way they access their data online or offline since they are using the same console and only upgrading to a larger hard drive.
WTF? Why is this our problem? Again, Microsoft is punishing us for trying to give them more money!
Bad, bad, bad.
From what I can tell anecdotally, the Elite is selling much better than I expected. Which is crappy news for us, because it will convince Microsoft that they don't have a pricing problem--even though, clearly, they do.
Sony next, and what a week of brilliance for our boys.
In case you missed it, Sony held a press event in Europe on March 1 to promote God of War II that included a decapitated goat. Originally, the story (which, incredibly, appeared in Sony's own Official Playstation Magazine, although the issue was frantically recalled) included allegations that people reached inside the goat to eat still-warm intestines. However, in Sony's totally mealy-mouthed apology, they said that the whole intestine thing hadn't happened, and that the misunderstanding was based on the invitation to the event, "which employed a degree of hyperbole in order to encourage attendance."
I don't know about you, but when I get an invitation to go somewhere, if I see some phrase like "reach inside a dead goat and pull out some warm intestines," I am so there.
Really, the bigger issue than this is the question of Sony's marketing in general. Remember the infamous PSP billboard in Holland? A white woman grabbing a black woman by the chin (the word "subjugation" and "domination" immediately comes to mind--look at the image in the billboard link), with this caption:
Playstation
Portable
White
is coming
It was incredibly, unbelievably stupid. That was last July, and Sony's marketing for the PS3 has been just as bad, if not worse. There's the baby commercial, the infamous German commercial, and don't forget the classic commercial for MLB 07: The Show, which features a guy in a fish market hitting fish with crowbars before you see any game footage.
What makes the commercial for The Show so incredibly bad is that they show the fish's head skittering along the floor toward the camera, plus other customers at the market pulling pieces of raw fish off their clothing--in other words, plenty of graphic details that have absolutely nothing to do with what they're trying to advertise. Gloria modestly dubbed this "the worst commercial in the history of television."
So it's not one headless goat--Sony's advertising for their game machines has been one long WTF montage for at least the last year.
Lastly, let's go to Nintendo.
Nintendo continues to print money at a staggering rate. However, after the flush of inventory in the last 2-3 weeks, the Wii appears to be available in the U.S., even if not easily available. So it may be that supply and demand is moving toward more of a balance--finally.
Which is going to be very disappointing for the fellow who said last week that Nintendo wouldn't be able to meet demand until 2009, or well into the twenty-second century, or whatever.
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