Posts Tagged ‘sony’

A couple of weeks ago I spotted an ad on TV3, it ended like this.

Last year I saw an ad on the PlayStation US Blog, it ended like this.

In fact, I could go through these ads frame-by-frame and you’d see that they’re the same. When I saw it I thought that either TV3 had partnered up with Sony to bring something (well, no), or TV3 are stupid and Sony was going to pwn them.

Turns out there is a third option, Sony will just go in for the ride. After the ad turned up on Joystiq, KB/PR person posted this on Twitter,

Dear TV3: You could have at least put my photo on top of the amp. Sheesh.

He’s referring to how there is a picture of SCEA CEO Jack Tretton on the top of his amp (in fact, I’m pretty sure in all the commercials there’s a photo of him somewhere, except for the ModNation Racers one where he was in the ad).

Well, thinking that Sony lawyers are quickly writing up a cease-and-desist notice, the KB/PR person did one more, posting to the PlayStation Blog,

[W]e’d like to help them out and make our ENTIRE LIBRARY OF COMMERCIALS available for them to copy in order to promote their programming. I only ask that TV3 doesn’t use our actual footage, but all future homages of this sort are now Kevin Butler sanctioned.

He even asks for a box set of the Flight of the Conchords, some thinking he was making reference to this scene in Episode 1 of Season 2.

I guess this was a win for all – TV3 got more publicity for the campaign than they were “expecting” (yeah, they probably engineered this whole thing), and Sony get more mileage out of an old ad and don’t come out looking like a giant corporation beating down smaller ones.

Or, Sony still have their lawyers at full force, they’re just distracting us all.

E3 2010 is over, and now we have a better idea of the motion control systems that the two big companies (Nintendo already has it) have been telling us about for over a year. Microsoft have finally unveiled the name for Project Natal – Kinect. Sony also unveiled some more games, a price point and a release date.

Microsoft had a huge marketing spending splurge, which kinda made me sick just looking at it all. As a gamer, I don’t care what some actor says about a peripheral (cheque please). But then, Microsoft isn’t aiming Kinect at me, they want that whole casual market to cash in on.

Controller free gaming isn’t new, Sony did it during the PS2 days with the EyeToy. It was fun, but you got over it quickly, and came about the same time the SingStar franchise was starting up – the party was always up for more SingStar than EyeToy. But, it never took off, and never got any compelling gaming experiences. As Richard Marks (the guy at Sony behind the EyeToy and Move) has said about it, sometimes you just want a button.

Now Microsoft is trying it on for size, and whilst they’ve got better technology, with infrared and 3D cameras and stuff, they’re still to convince me that it is a better system. There are signs that it is, but they’re going to have to capture me on more than the first round of shovelware. Which I think is the problem, Microsoft is focusing too much on the casual gamer, rather than its core audience. As IGN have pointed out,

Microsoft needs the core audience to tell the casual gamer what is cool. And if Microsoft doesn’t get that long-time Xbox 360 gamer behind Kinect, it will fail. We need some games that show what Kinect will do for someone who loves games like Halo or Castlevania or Gears of War. I’m not saying it has to be a first-person shooter where you are the gun, but we need to see more gamers that have depth to them.

Sony on the otherhand have a system built around the PlayStation Eye. They’ve been trialling ball-on-stick tracking for years now, since about 2000 (here is Richard Marks’ demo from about 2003/2004), but only now got a commercial product. PlayStation Move doesn’t just use the wand though, but it can do head and body tracking, facial recognition, all that fun stuff that’s ripe for exploitation.

There is definitely a broader range of games on Sony’s system, games that cater to the casual and the “core” gamer, and they’re also showing how it can be flexible by enabling support in other games as well, such as Heavy Rain and Little Big Planet. They must be taking their lessons about the EyeToy seriously – no compelling games? No sale.

Whilst this is the “first wave” that any platform has to suffer through, this first wave of games is coming right in the middle of an already mature game console cycle. We are getting bigger and better games all the time, and that was especially evident at the Sony press conference where they just kept whacking you with new, big, better games. It’s all up to Microsoft and Sony to show us the direction they want to head in with their motion controllers.

Meanwhile, Nintendo is laughing to the bank with all the core games they just announced for the Wii.