Overview
Okay, maybe “suck” is too strong of a word to use but I have a really hard time with Sony’s Playstation consoles. The Playstation console franchise has given us many a good game (i.e. Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid). Right now I’m playing Final Fantasy XII and I just love it!
What’s So Bad?
But this article is about why it isn’t good and I assure you that list is MUCH longer. First of all is it just me or is the percentage of bad games really high? And much higher than their competition? Certainly Game Cube’s bad game percentage is very low. Sure there are a lot more titles available on the PS2 vs. the Game Cube for instance (or even the XBOX) but what good is that when most of them are so badly done? You might say there are only more bad games for Playstation because there are more games for Playstation. Ok, I’ll buy that, but the problem here isn’t sheer number of bad games so much as the percentage of games that are enjoyable to those that should join the Atari’s ET backfill in the middle of the Mojave.
Ok, aside from the copious amounts of bad software available for the Playstation gaming consoles, what else is so bad about it? Well I have this bad taste in my mouth about the Playstation’s rise to fame. By the time the PS2 came out the Playstation franchise was already well established so for the sake of this discussion I think it is reasonable to focus on how/when/why the PS1 was able to break into the console gaming market. Remember this isn’t a small feat, Atari (the supposed console gaming king of the 70s) didn’t go anywhere (worth mentioning) with the Atari Jaguar and the last reported figures I was privy to on the XBOX indicate that MS lost over $300,000,000 (that’s 300 million dollars) on the XBOX console itself. Now, why do I have such a bad taste in my mouth about Sony’s Playstation having such good positioning in the console gaming market? Simply because I don’t think they deserve it. Why? Because the only reason they are in the position they are in and not just a blip on the console gaming radaar was dumb luck. The ultimate example of right place in the right time. It honestly had very little to do with product quality.
Why Do We Care?
Why is this a problem for us gamers? As video game fans we want the people that are in a position to provide the entertainment to be good at entertaining. The ideal situation would be an underdog system to push through the ranks relying on nothing but sheer entertainment value to boost their base and win market share. What we have with the Playstation phenomenon is the opposite of this. Do we want a good chance of enjoying our gaming experience when we pick up a new game, or a snow ball’s chance in Bowser’s castle?
The Timing Issue
Now, what was this timing issue they took advantage of for PS1 you ask? Simply put, the N64. I am a big Nintendo fan, always have been. That being said I’m willing to admit that the N64 was largely a failure. Here’s why:
- Firstly, Nintendo spent most of their time, money and all of their media exposure on the N64’s “wonderful” new “ground-breaking” controller. I’ll admit I bought into the whole controller hype pre-N64 but after release we all found out how incredibly cumbersome and over sized it was. I mean it’s a controller that looks like a bat wing replica 2x scale! Not to mention the fact that there were buttons on it that almost no games used! Can anyone name more than 5 games that used the “L” button where the same functionality wasn’t exposed through a different button as well? In fact come to think of it name 5 games that used the left one third of the controller. I much much much prefer the SNES or Game Cube controllers.
- Secondly, it was a cartridge based system! This was a huge, huge disadvantage for the N64. Hey, I’m all for the speed you get from cartridges but one of the biggest disappointments on the N64 for me was the fact that Squaresoft broke its ties with Nintendo. Final Fantasy VII (the biggest FF hit of the series at the time) was to be released on N64 originally. Why did Square break it’s ties? Mainly the cartridge media type of the N64.
“Late in the 16-bit generation, Square showed an interactive SGI technical demonstration of Final Fantasy for the next generation. However, 1997 saw the release of Final Fantasy VII for the Sony PlayStation and not the Nintendo 64 as many had originally anticipated. This was due to a dispute with Nintendo over its use of faster and more expensive cartridges, as opposed to the slower and cheaper – though much higher capacity – compact discs used on rival systems. Final Fantasy VII would have required a very expensive large capacity cartridge to work on the Nintendo 64. A cartridge holding the game’s three CD-ROM’s worth of data and full-motion video would have been nearly impossible to market at a price that most people could afford.”
wikipedia.org. Final Fantasy. Retrieved on 2007-06-25.
These are just two examples of market share Nintendo offered up on a silver platter for anyone interested in selling their own gaming console. Enter the Playstation 1 by Sony… right place, right time.
PS3
We all know the biggest problem with the PS3. The sheer cost of the thing! Really this is Sony proving to the gaming community that they don’t deserve the space in the industry that they currently occupy. Why is it so expensive? Not really a question for this article except for two points: the infamous cell processor and Blu-ray.
Cell Processor
The cell processor is a joint effort between IBM and Sony and in all honesty the technology may be a great idea, but as good as it may be it has at least one debilitating flaw. IBM is claiming they would be “lucky” if they got a yield rate (percentage of usable processors) of 10-20% for the cell processors. This means that straight off the assembly line at least 80% of the cell processors are unusable in the PS3. Does this drive up the manufacturing cost of the PS3? It absolutely does and is at least one indication as to why it’s soooooooo expensive.
Blu-ray
Blu-ray itself is a topic that would span its own article. In the context of this discussion however Blu-ray is another piece of brand-spanking-new technology included in the latest console in the Playstation series (PS3) . There is certainly nothing wrong with having new technology in your console, but it shouldn’t be constructed completely of new technology. Not if you want to make it affordable for the consumer.
The real problem with the PS3 using the Cell Processor and Blu-Ray has nothing to do whether the technology is expensive OR new. The real problem is the impetus Sony had for putting this technology into their latest and greatest console. Let me assure you it has nothing to do with consumer benefit. Sure, in a collateral-damage-sort-of way the consumer will benefit from these technologies (putting the cost aside) but cell and Blu-ray are in the PS3 for one reason and one reason only. Sony wants to embed its technology deep into multiple areas of the technology industry. I wouldn’t even say there’s anything necessarily all that “wrong” with that when you balance it out so the consumer and company can benefit mutually. But with the cost at $600 when traditionally consumers should expect to spend at most half that, the balance is is lost and the consumer is on the losing end.
Wrap Up
Sony is a company that has done a lot of good for the electronic entertainment industry in the past. I have a 40″ Sony Trinitron TV at home that I love and before LCDs were affordable I always insisted on a Trinitron for my PC monitor as well. However, recently something in Sony has seemed to change, they appear to be losing some of their consideration for the consumer and with that on the decline it scares me that they are trying to be the source of technologies that will dominate different niches in the electronics industry going forward. Blu-ray, if it wins the HD media war will be in every home in 5 years. This is compounded by the fact that Sony owns Sony Pictures and “could” use their positioning to make their movies more available than other label’s movies. Let’s hope that doesn’t, that would be bad for us.
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