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Sony's Harrison Admits "Mistakes"


Maiky-NiSuTe

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It’s always refreshing to hear some bit of humanity come out of the Sony PR monster. The President of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, Phil Harrison, said that his company’s PR department did a “bad job†in 2006.

 

Studio boss outlines past PS3 PR errors, but talks up finished product.

 

President of Sony’s Worldwide Studios Phil Harrison has said that the platform holder did a “bad job†of communicating PS3’s capability to consumers in 2006 – but that the console represents a “fantastic achievement†for the firm.

 

“We did a very bad job between E3 2006 and the media event in October. [it's] something which in hindsight I wished we had done – but that's 20/20 vision. I wished we had released a movie showing the Xross Media Bar in action to the web after E3 2006. Not maybe showing every single feature, but just to give people something to chew on."

 

“Because it would have, I think, reassured an awful lot of people, like ‘Oh, there's a photo viewer in it,’ and things like that. We showed it in a very hard-to-reach room at E3. And even though it was there, and some people who bothered to queue up got the demo, I don't think we released anything moving as media. I think we released a few static screenshots.

 

So that was an error.

 

“In hindsight we should have done something about that, and we should have said: ‘Here's the photo mode viewer. Here's the music player. Here's the Blu-Ray player. Here's the network functionality. Here's the Web browser.’ And I think we would have addressed head-on a lot of that. Now, we didn't.â€

 

However, Harrison also lauded the achievement of PS3’s Japanese manufacturers in the interview.

 

He added: “We are under no illusions as to the complexity of the challenge. I think what you've touched upon is actually the thing that we wrestle with internally. Our engineers in Japan are unrivaled in their ability. I have unbelievable respect for what they have pulled off from a hardware point of view, a software point view, an operating system point of view, how robust the machine is.

 

The fact that the Playstation 3 experience, which is exponentially more complicated than a PS2 or a PS1, works, does what it says, every time, efficiently, effectively – it's a fantastic achievement.â€

 

Basically he’s saying that they shouldn’t have showed the public non-existent games, but concentrate on the actual features of the PS3, much like Microsoft did during X06.

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This must be the first time i heard sony say something like this in my whole gaming career.

 

but yeah the price, the games, and the marketing dint do good to the PS3 as it did. but this is not something that you can forget when releasing a new console. so it must have been done on purpose.

 

but now they need to work hard and lower the price to get back on track.

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That 'Oh it's got a photo viewer' bit made me laugh. I can just imagine someone saying 'Oh, it's got a photo viewer, where's my wallet?'

He is right though, and it's nice to hear them admit it. Also you have to hand it to them in making a console that doesn't break every 2 months, and is apparently quiet.

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It's kind of ironic that some of those features were things Nintendo persued and showed off. IE look at the Wii photo channel adverts on TV. How the tables have turned. Let's see where Sony go next. They would do well to actively promote the 'HOME' features when it launches.

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his company’s PR department did a “bad job†in 2006.

 

Decapitating a goat, letting people eat offal from its still warm stomach, screwing over Europe by delaying yet another of their consoles by several months and inflicting those god awful PSP adverts onto us? "Bad" is a slight understatement.

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I think the main problem like Hero Of Time said, is the lack of games, espicially first-party ones...

 

September-December though, supposadely will be the total opposite, with the likes of Lair, Heavenly Sword, Killzone, Uncharted Drakes Fortune etc.. etc.. coming out.

 

It was released to early, they would have done better just being the last out of the blocks but having killer games launching with it.

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lol im sure you would f you really wanted to, but consoles never launch with a killer app so it would have been worth the wait if it was gong to hit the ground running, which it didnt.

 

The Wii got Twilight Princess. : peace:

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