Sony Finally Brings Good News

Just when you thought Sony couldn't get some positive press if they opened a dry cleaning business (groan) ... they manage to drop a couple bombs at the Tokyo Game Show.

First up, Ken Kutaragi announced that they're dropping the price of the 20GB PS3 to roughly $430 US. However, this price drop is confirmed to be ONLY for Japan. I don't get that move, and it probably has something to do with how the allocation of units is spread out amongst the territories.

In conjunction with that announcement, they also stated that the 60GB model would be "open price", which means that the retailers can sell it for whatever they want. That's NOT good news for consumers, as you can expect the price gouging to be widespread and rampant, since Japan is only getting 100,000 PS3 units total.

The second piece of good news is that they have relented and put an HDMI port in the 20GB model, meaning that the higher priced model has less to differentiate it. I'm not sure who'd buy a 60GB model now. Still, these changes mean that Sony realizes that they've painted themselves into a corner, and they need to get back in the good graces of the "core gamer".

What Would You Do If You Were Sony?

Jesus ... I'm not sure if Sony could be acting more like the fucking Keystone Cops if they tried. So what would you do if you were Sony, in the middle of what could only be classified as a PR disaster?

Apparently, Kazunori Yamauchi would feel free to make sure that the biggest game on tap for the PS3 launch ends up being the giant fucking albatross around the company's neck. In an interview with Famitsu, he revealed that the standard version of Gran Turismo 5 would ... get this ... come with no cars or tracks. You'll have to buy them all. For completists, apparently the pricetag to do this rings in at very close to $1000. The premium version of the game will have 30 cars and only two courses. All of this is far less than Gran Turismo 4 shipped with for a far inferior system.

Of course, if Microsoft were Sony, they would make sure that a Sony BMG music artist would be helping promote the biggest console launch around, in a delightful bit of synergy. Sony must have gotten wind of this and stole the whole idea, because how else could you explain Jessica Simpson and Epic/Sony BMG music running a contest where you can win an Xbox 360?

I keep wondering if things could get worse. I should probably stop doing that.

Sony PR Goes From Worse to Brain Dead

Update: OK, and killing all of your brand-positive advertising in Europe (where you're going to need a lot of it) isn't what I had in mind either. Apparently, SCEA's hired a new PR guy after Molly Smith bolted from the company, which certainly explains part of the company's complete disfunction. It'll be interesting to see if Dave Karakker can translate his experience shilling for Kahlua into getting people to buy the PS3.

Of course, when I suggested below that Sony needs to fix their PR image, I in no way indicated that a good way to do that would be to have Ken Kutaragi (the head of Sony Computer Entertainment America) tell everyone that the US is only going to have 400,000 units at launch, and Japan? Yeah, they get a paltry fourth of that (for a machine that should be far more popular in Japan than Microsoft's Xbox 360).

So who's going to be standing in line waiting for a PS3? Before any of you Europeans raise your hand, you'd better re-check the calendar, because none of you will be seeing a PS3 until March 2007.

Sony needs some good news, and pronto. At this point, I'd suggest that they either start making things up, or start paying bloggers like myself to start writing nice flowery prose about them. Anything to stop the bleeding, because there's only so much more of this that people will take before they just give up and either buy the console that's already out, or the one that will cost just a third the price of PS3.