Sony Opens The Gates For Communication
Sony’s president of worldwide studios, Phil Harrison recently admitted to Newsweek that the whole company needs to be more open when addressing their fan base. In the interview, Harrison stated:
There is a cultural thing about our approach in Japan that has to change. Our approach in Japan is, "Once it's perfect, we'll share it with everybody else." Whereas I think in order to engender trust in our users, we have to share some things that might be not quite perfect, but are ready to give you an indication of what's coming. So we could say, "You know, we're not sure when it's coming, but we're going to have DVD upscaling on Playstation 3." There you go. There's a scoop for you. In my view, we should have a slide on a Web site, or a blog. We should have [Playstation head of platform development Izumi] Kawanishi blog his road map for the Xross Media Bar for Playstation 3. I think he would probably have the biggest blog after yours in the world.
The recent launch of the Three Speech blog, funded by Sony, is a testament to their change in attitude. The blog will address PSP and PS3 questions and issues with the products. This will be a more grass-roots means of addressing their public, than making public statements to the press.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and our confidence in Sony won’t be as easy to build. If they are trying to change public opinion of their smug, bullying, condescending attitude, it’s going to take more than a blog to salvage their image. When you consider their recent debacle with Kotaku, over trying to censor an article on their page, they have a long road ahead of them. At least, they might be trying, quite possibly. We’ll see.
Sony: We Need to be More Open [1up]
Toots
Posted to Video Games on 2 March 2007
· Comments (5)
Other stuff like this: blog, phil harrison, sony
Funny interview. Especially since I only need to scroll a bit down this page to read about Sony's backpaddeling concerning rumble function and their bs concerning backwards compatibility of European PS3s.
Yeah, I don't think I'll believe a word Assy McLying has to say.
Definitely not impressed. The blog just looks like more of their standard "technical superiority" and "Playstation 3's unique selling propositions".
Hey Sony, how about releasing some games that I might want to play at a price I can afford? Spending more money telling me how great you are isn't helping.
Three Speech is about as genuine as those Xmas PSP ads...it's false front for a company that knows it's lost street cred and can't seem to keep themselves from making lame attempts to reclaim their image.
All they've done is paint a gloss of "blogginess" over their usual pathetic PR bullshit.
The 360 looks better & better.
Halo 3 will be the tipping point, if I haven't given in to the inevitable by then.
As I recall, when Three Speech launched, Sony tried to be as secretive as possible about their involvement with the blog. Had they been completely upfront instead of trying to hide their funding/thought control/PR iron fist, I might've at least considered Three Speech to not be a giant load of BS.
Has anyone started keeping a tally of all these things that they've been doing wrong lately?