With Final Fantasy XIII less then a month away everyone is interested in learning as much about the game as possible. Here's a video preview and explanation of the game's new battle system courtesy of the IGN crew. Enjoy.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Another Gamestop Deal
Always looking to save you money so once again here's another deal from gamestop.com
Free overnight shipping on Major League Baseball 2K10 or MLB 10 OR $7 off any PS3 title $39.99 or more!
Add Major League Baseball 2K10 or MLB 10 OR any in-stock PS3 game priced $39.99 or more to your cart.
Enter coupon code PLAY2 into the coupon code box on your shopping cart page.
Note: Only one code allowed per checkout.
Proceed to checkout as normal. If you are purchasing Major League Baseball 2K10 or MLB 10, select USA Overnight as your shipping method. Your discount will be applied at checkout!
TERMS AND CONDITIONS:
Terms of offer subject to change at any time. No dealers or resellers, please. This offer is available online only while supplies last. Valid only on orders shipping within the continental US. Offer expires 2/26/10.
Free overnight shipping on Major League Baseball 2K10 or MLB 10 OR $7 off any PS3 title $39.99 or more!
Add Major League Baseball 2K10 or MLB 10 OR any in-stock PS3 game priced $39.99 or more to your cart.
Enter coupon code PLAY2 into the coupon code box on your shopping cart page.
Note: Only one code allowed per checkout.
Proceed to checkout as normal. If you are purchasing Major League Baseball 2K10 or MLB 10, select USA Overnight as your shipping method. Your discount will be applied at checkout!
TERMS AND CONDITIONS:
Terms of offer subject to change at any time. No dealers or resellers, please. This offer is available online only while supplies last. Valid only on orders shipping within the continental US. Offer expires 2/26/10.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Heavy Rain is coming
Heavy Rain, to say the least, is highly anticipated. Featuring a very different take on game play, the PS3 exclusive promises to be an intricate and compelling experience. Look for Heavy Rain February 23, 2010. Until then here's the video review by IGN.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Bioshock 2...Welcome back to Rapture
Bioshock 2 has finally dropped and looks even better than its predecessor. Anyone who played the first game knows thats saying alot. Anyways here's the video review from the people over at IGN. Enjoy.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
The Deals...Get Em' While You Have A Coupon
Over here at GEA! Certified we keep you informed on the latest games and ways to save on those games. With that said heres a deal from the people over at gamestop.com . This particular deal expires on the 2/8/10. Thats two days from now so move quick!
Receive 10% off any game priced $49.99 or more!
2. Enter coupon code BIGGAMEDEAL into the coupon code box on your shopping cart page.
Proceed to checkout as normal. Your discount will be applied at checkout!
Receive 10% off any game priced $49.99 or more!
1. Add any game priced $49.99 or more to your cart.
Note: Only one code allowed per checkout.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS:
Terms of offer subject to change at any time. No dealers or resellers, please. This offer is available online only while supplies last. Valid only on orders shipping within the continental US. Expires 02/08/10 at 11 am CST
Thursday, February 4, 2010
The Tide is Rising
The upcoming weeks and months are beyond promising for gaming. A-list titles are preparing to drop like panties at a frat party...trashy I know. Haha anyways here's a few release dates for some big name titles coming soon.
Bioshock 2 - PS3, Xbox 360, PC - February 9, 2010
Set during the fall of Rapture, players assume the role of a Plasmid test subject for Sinclair Solutions, a premier provider of Plasmids and Tonics in the underwater city of Rapture that was first explored in the original BioShock. Players will need to use all the elements of the BioShock toolset to survive as the full depth of the BioShock experience is refined and transformed into a unique multiplayer experience that can only be found in Rapture.
MSRP: $59.99
Heavy Rain - PS3 Exclusive - February 23, 2010
Heavy Rain is a cinematic and evolving thriller from Quantic Dream, the developer behind the critically acclaimed Fahrenheit. Dealing with a range of adult themes, the game revolves around a sophisticated plot and strong narrative threads that explore a complex moral proposition. You assume the role of multiple characters, with very different backgrounds, motivations and skills, in a world shaped by Bending Storylines - a dynamic narrative design where your actions and decisions will shape your story.
MSRP: $59.99
Final Fantasy XIII - PS3, Xbox 360 - March 9, 2010
In Final Fantasy XIII, players will embark on a journey through the cityworld of Cocoon and the outerworld of Pulse, encountering and fighting alongside a diverse group of allies. Execute powerful attacks with weapons and magic, and summon the enigmatic Eidolons with an evolved Active Time Battle system. Experience seamless transitions between real-time gameplay and in-game cinematics. Do you have the courage to face your destiny?
MSRP: $59.99
God of War III - PS3 Exclusive - March 16, 2010
Set in the realm of Greek mythology, God of War III for the last time puts Kratos at the center of the carnage and destruction as he seeks revenge against the Gods who have betrayed him. A single-player game, this final chapter allows players to take on the climatic role of the ex-Spartan warrior, Kratos, as he treads through the intimidating heights of Mt. Olympus and the dark depths of Hell once more to seek revenge on those who have betrayed him. Armed with double-chained blades, Kratos must take on mythology's darkest creatures while solving intricate puzzles throughout his merciless quest to destroy Olympus.
MSRP: $59.99
Oh boy looks like the pockets are going to be hurting in the near future...
Bioshock 2 - PS3, Xbox 360, PC - February 9, 2010
MSRP: $59.99
Heavy Rain - PS3 Exclusive - February 23, 2010
MSRP: $59.99
Final Fantasy XIII - PS3, Xbox 360 - March 9, 2010
MSRP: $59.99
God of War III - PS3 Exclusive - March 16, 2010
MSRP: $59.99
Oh boy looks like the pockets are going to be hurting in the near future...
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
State of the Union: Sony's Peter Dille on the PS3's past, present, and future
Today the guys over at IGN.com brought us an interview with Sony's Peter Dille, the marketing and PSN chief for the Playstation 3. Sony fans...smiles are ahead.
IGN: You supported the PS3 launch with some out-there ads. One which featured a scary demon-doll-baby crying comes to mind. What was the message behind those commercials?
Peter Dille: I'm thinking back to that point in time. I think there was a lot of focus from our previous ad agency on communicating the power of the PS3. There was also a lot of discussion about being provocative for provocativeness's sake. And really just getting people to want to learn more about the system. It was an ad that was not intended to convey everything you need to know about the PS3, but just get people talking. I think it did that. It was also part of a broader effort -- that whole white room campaign. It was really just an introductory effort that people really seemed to feel passionately about -- and still to this day.
IGN: Now that you've launched the new PS3, you've done a 180 and gone in a completely different direction with these very well-made, very funny ads. What prompted the change?
Peter Dille, SVP of marketing and the PlayStation Network, SCEA.
Peter Dille: Deutsch LA is the agency responsible for the new ads. They weren't our ad agency for the initial campaign that we just spoke of. We'd been with our old agency for many, many years and I think oftentimes, clients and agencies -- after great partnerships of more than a decade -- decide to see other people and make a change. Deutsch came in and, frankly, what I was looking for was a campaign that really encapsulated everything the PS3 can do. It became very clear both from our own observation and a lot of market research that because of how powerful the PS3 was and is, it's really kind of impossible to encapsulate everything it can do in one 30-second ad. So what we were looking for was an ongoing campaign. We wanted to have a conversation with consumers. We wanted to reestablish the PlayStation's brand mojo, if you will. The brand has always been one that people have a special place in their heart for and it wasn't foreboding; it was welcoming, open and funny. We've got a long history of ads like that and that was a big part of what we were looking for. Really harkening back to that PS2 brand that was quite frankly ubiquitous.
We came up with this whole 'It only does everything' campaign and the whole Kevin Butler effort not accidentally. Because this was a campaign that was incredibly well researched. We had this idea right under our nose because we had used Kevin Butler with the MLB launch. The agency came back and said, "We think we've got something here. We can work with a spokesperson like Kevin to communicate everything the PS3 can do and have a conversation with consumers." There were a lot of misunderstandings about what the PS3 could do. I'll go back to the format war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. People didn't know what Blu-ray was. People didn't know what this powerful machine was all about. And we needed a campaign that could kind of walk people through it step by step. So very literally we have a campaign where consumers are contacting and asking us very specific questions about what the PS3 can do and Kevin Butler is our ultimate answer-man who not only addresses the question but has a lot of fun doing it.
We think that combined with the tagline of 'It only does everything,' it really is something that crystalizes the message. It's been tremendously successful. Consumers love it. It's great to hear people like you guys love it. And the results are really in the sales because it's really been flying since this coincided in September with the launch of the new PS3.
IGN: And you guys have more ads like these planned throughout the year?
Peter Dille: Yeah. You may have seen -- we just launched one for MAG. So that's out there now. From my perspective, this is a campaign that has a lot of life left it in and a lot of legs. We love the campaign and we love what it's doing for the PS3. Frankly, 'It only does everything' is kind of a future proof message in and of itself. We talked about future proof technology and 10-year life cycles. And if you think about what's on the rise for PS3 with motion-controlled gaming, that fits right into this positioning that 'It only does everything.' 'It only does everything' means everything it does up until today, but when motion control comes onto the scene, the message ties directly into that type of functionality as well. You can expect to see Kevin Butler inject a lot of life into the PlayStation brand between now and the rest of the year.
IGN: What's the reasoning behind the PS3 brand redesign, right down to a new logo?
Peter Dille: Kaz [Kazuo Hirai, Chairman and CEO, SCEA] came onto the scene and he wanted to align the platforms around familiar nomenclature. You've got PS2, PSP and PS3. This kind of brought that into the family of logos and icons. It wasn't much more than that, to be honest.
IGN: What would you say is Sony's biggest win so far?
Peter Dille: I think the biggest win is just the trajectory that the product is on. We talk about the 10-year life cycle. I think sometimes the press maybe thinks it's a talking point that Julie [Han, corporate communications, SCEA -- also present for this interview] makes me say. That's not the case. It's something that we believe in. We've done it twice already with PS1 and PS2. We've talked about it. Even going back to the launch of the PS3, we kind of reminded people: it's a marathon, not a sprint. And at this point we're at 31 million units worldwide, 11 million here in the U.S. and I think that we've got the product to a point where the manufacturing efficiencies are in place and the volumes so that we can get the price down to where it is today at a point where consumers are responding to. It's resonating like never before. We're well on the way to where we want to be on the platform. We've got the software support from a first-party perspective. The third-parties are making some great games. We're off to the races.
I think the PlayStation Network has also grown into its own. We're up to 40 million registered users worldwide on the PlayStation Network.
There is nothing but momentum behind the PS3 at this point. I could go on and on, but you'll probably want me to shut up at some point. You know, we've got two consecutive years where the Game of the Year for the category is on the PS3 platform. Of course, Uncharted 2 and last year it was LittleBigPlanet. Our first-party studios are hitting it out of the park. We just shipped MAG. We're about to ship God of War [3], which is going to just completely blow people away and be a big driver for the platform. We've got GT5 coming later this year. Everyone is just extremely excited about what's going on with PS3.
IGN: And what would you say is your biggest failure?
Peter Dille: Well, it's not a failure in that it was fatal, but it's well-documented that we didn't have as smooth a launch as we would have liked to. I think we primed the pump with a lot of interest in the platform. People can point to the ads and whatnot. We talked about that. I think the shortcoming was getting a lot of people whipped up and having them wait in line and then only having a very, very limited amount of hardware supply globally, which meant that we had a kind of start and stop effect with our launch, which is hard to recover from. It was a speed bump that we had to overcome and we overcame it.
IGN: So let's talk about PSN. From my point of view, you have a lot of catching up to do compared to Xbox Live, especially with regard to community features. Will you address some of these shortcomings, and might there ever be a point where you'll charge for the service, as Microsoft does?
Peter Dille: If I may, I'm going to answer a question with a question. We have made tremendous improvements and enhancements to the service, from my perspective. We feel like we have closed the gap. So what are some of the social aspects that you like that you're not getting on PSN?
IGN: Well, everything's more hidden, for starters. If I tune into Xbox Live, I've got my friends list right there and the community is popping up all around me as I'm doing things. It seems that I actually have to go out and seek that functionality on the XMB. It's just not as well integrated.
Peter Dille: Okay, but it's not that we don't have it -- you just like the UI of the other service better?
IGN: Well, it's just there -- I don't have to look for it.
Peter Dille: Sure, sure. So I think different people are used to different things. The fact of the matter is, their service was out first and people grew accustomed to the way they were doing it. So when I hear people say that we don't have what we have, I sometimes just want to check expectations because I think a lot of what you're talking about is on our service but we're doing it a different way. We're talking to our consumer all the time about what they want from our service and how we can do things better.
I think we've been incredibly responsive to that and, again, let's go back in the way-back machine to what the PlayStation Network looked like when we launched and what it looks like today -- you wouldn't recognize it. We've made amazing enhancements and improvements to the PlayStation Network both from a functionality perspective, from a UI perspective, revamping the PlayStation Store, adding features like Facebook and Netflix. Home has made incredible changes over that time frame. Up and down the list there's been, from my perspective, tremendous improvements. We're not done yet and frankly we'll never be done. We're going to continue to iterate on the service. Try to address consumers' wants and needs. And try to also surprise and delight consumers with things they didn't think they needed because that's always been what makes PlayStation a little bit different -- that we try to be a little bit visionary.
That's where something like Home comes in. Community has existed in gaming platforms, but it's been largely text-based and two-dimensional. Home is a three-dimensional community and environment that isn't possible on the other platforms and wasn't imagined by anyone other than the folks at Sony. It's grown up in the last couple years, but quite frankly it's still in beta. And we'll take that beta moniker off of it when we think all the functionality that we imagined when we launched the service is there and to the point where we want it to be. But it's still very much something that's evolving as we go.
Maybe a longer answer to a shorter question, but I think there is just tremendous improvements to the PlayStation Network, which leads me to your last question: will we charge for it or why don't we charge for it? It's been our philosophy not to charge for it from launch up until now, but Kaz recently went on the record as saying that's something we're looking at. I can confirm that as well. That's something that we're actively thinking about. What's the best way to approach that if we were to do that? You know, no announcements at this point in time, but it's something we're thinking about.
IGN: What can we look forward to this year with regard to PSN improvements?
Peter Dille: Well, I don't want to make any announcements that we're not ready to make, but I would say the continued enhancement of all the services, making it more user friendly, addressing UI -- there's some cool stuff that I've seen in the works that hopefully we'll be able to talk about a little bit more and show you guys and the community. I think original programming is another goal. We've put our toe in that for a while now with programs like Qore and Pulse, and you probably know we're going to be launching an exclusive program on the PlayStation Network called The Tester. It's reality TV meets gaming, where we're actually going to put a bunch of folks through the paces and decide who gets to have a job here as a tester, which is for these guys a dream job. It's a lot of fun and something that you might see on TV. It's that type of original programming that helps differentiate the platform and helps tip the balance to people making a decision to get on board with PlayStation versus the competition because they can get things here they can't get anywhere else. So we want to build a best-in-class service with PlayStation Network and make improvements across the board.
We haven't even touched on all the great games that you can find on the PlayStation Network. If you're a gamer and you have a PS3, it's probably the biggest driver. Oftentimes in interviews like these, we talk about Uncharted, LittleBigPlanet and God of War and we forget about all the really great gaming content that's coming out on PlayStation Network, about half of which is exclusive to our platform. Games like Flower, PixelJunk or Fat Princess -- these are award-winning games in their own right. People go to trade shows and vote them as best of show. They're incredibly creative, innovative and very popular, and unfortunately they sometimes fly under the radar because PS3 can do so much that we sometimes run out of time in interviews talking about it. But for gamers it's a big driver and it's why they're excited about the PlayStation Network, so you're going to see a lot more of that as well.
IGN: I was really looking forward to Home and I tried it out as soon as I could. I have to be honest, though, all the pre-launch hype for the service seems to have fizzled. Maybe you have data that suggests otherwise, but I'm not hearing people talk about it as much.
Peter: Well, when was the last time you went on it, Matt?
IGN: I actually went on again last night just to take a look before this interview.
Peter: Okay, well I'm glad to hear you've been on recently. There's a lot of data that I can share that refutes that perception. We had the highest traffic in December since we launched with 10 million users worldwide. The average time people spend in Home is about 60 minutes. If you think about that, it's a lot of time. I know you can sit down and game for hours and time gets lost. But think about watching a TV for a half hour or how much time you might spend on a website -- there's are kind of bite-sized chunks of time. But to spend 60 minutes on Home is a pretty sticky experience.
I think a bunch of things are driving that. One, we've been addressing some of the beta concerns. We've known that Home is always going to be something that needs to be nurtured. Content is what's going to make it go. If you go there and it looks the same when you come back next week, you're probably going to feel like, "Well, there's nothing new for me to check out here." So we've been working hard to make sure we've got the best content. We've got 30 partners working on different spaces and I think that's all been really great. But also one of the bigger more recent innovations was the Sodium launch. It's basically a gaming environment within Home. It's been incredibly popular -- one of the highest trafficked spaces within Home since we launched.
[People] are also spending money on Home. We've got virtual items for sale. They're profitable for us because they don't cost a lot to produce, but they also become drivers for gaming content. So people walk around in Home and if they see someone wearing an artifact from Uncharted or God of War, they might ask, "Where'd you get that?" and they might go back to that specific game space, learn more about it, become a fan of that game and then go buy the Blu-ray disc.
IGN: Exactly how profitable is the virtual economy in Home for you?
Peter Dille: Well, we don't release the numbers in aggregate, but each of the items become profitable the day they launch because it doesn't cost a lot to create a virtual t-shirt. If you sell it across a user base that's got 10 million people -- now, not all 10 million are buying that t-shirt -- but you get how that math works.
IGN: What do you have in store for Home users throughout the year?
Peter Dille: Nothing that I could announce today, but look for more and better content within Home. I think bigger partnerships. I think building Home out as a media platform as well, with not just games spaces, but if you look at the movie theater, there's some really cool stuff going on today but also some opportunities for social viewing of entertainment content.
IGN: Do you ever see a time when Home might actually replace the XMB or will they just continue to coexist?
Peter Dille: No, I think they'll coexist. The XrossMediaBar is a way to access a lot of content quickly -- it's the UI. Home doesn't really do all that as well as the XrossMediaBar does.
IGN: One of the questions our readers really wanted to ask was, why can't we download more PS1 and especially PS2 games on PSN?
Peter Dille: It's a great question. We're working really hard on it. We're pushing the third-party community and evangelizing this as a terrific opportunity both commercially as well as from a brand perspective to keep people interested in some of these older IPs [intellectual properties]. Final Fantasy VIII was the top downloaded game in December -- a real testament to your readers' questions, you know, that this stuff has an audience. From our side, we're going through our own studio organization and trying to make sure all these old games are out there so that we can lead by example, but we're also communicating with all the third-parties about the success of the Final Fantasy games, and other PS1 and PS2 classics. By all means, I think people can look for more of that because once the third-parties see how this works, it's just found money. There's not a whole lot of work that has to go into it and once we can get it up on the network, it finds an audience pretty quickly.
IGN: On a semi-related note, you've got a few full PS3 games for download, but not many. Any plans to offer the entire catalog for download going forward?
Peter Dille: No, I don't think so -- at least, not any time soon. Part of the reason for that is broadband. We have an advantage with PlayStation 3 from an optical media perspective because a Blu-ray disc contains 50 gigs. Maybe this point will come at some time, but today to download 50 gigs of data before you play a game, you could probably go buy a car, bring it home, put your family into it, drive to the store by and bring the game home by the time you [could download it]. I think we're on the forefront of digital distribution.
We're working very hard to evangelize it. I think we've got a hardware platform that continues to grow with people's appetite in digital distribution. And we've got multiple units with hard-drive sizes up to 50 gigs. We're also working very hard to make sure we do this thoughtfully so that retail has a part to participate in the ecosystem with us. But, the notion of getting all your games digitally, I just don't see it happening. There's games you're going to get at the store, there's games you're going to get on PlayStation Network and there's some you'll get in both places, and then there's also opportunity to enhance the micro-transactions and add-on content, of course, but getting God of War III digitally? That's just not something you'll be seeing anytime soon.
IGN: Any plans for Mii or Avatar-like friend list functionality within the XMB? I guess Home would be it, right?
Peter Dille: I think Home is it. Home is something that we have that other folks don't have and it's a big point of difference.
IGN: But nothing inside the XMB?
Peter Dille: Not at this point.
IGN: Coming out of last generation, Sony was clearly the dominant force with the PlayStation 2 brand. Now, though, you're playing catch-up with PlayStation 3. My question to you is, how'd this happen? How did you go from first to third place?
Peter Dille: I think you can go back to a comment I made earlier about Sony being a visionary company. Something that Jack Tretton [SCEA president] talks about frequently is that it would've been easy for Sony to do a PlayStation 2.5. To come up with a moderate improvement on the PlayStation 2. Keep the costs of goods in a range that would've been perhaps more economical for Sony but also maybe more attractive to consumers, and that probably would've had some success but it also probably would've had a shorter lifespan. I think the Sony's always done -- again, it sounds like spin, but it goes to the highest levels of this company -- is that the company approaches it from a visionary perspective. When we came out with the PS3 and it had Blu-ray -- you can do a search on all the press that came out then and people said that was a mistake; that Sony put this technology into the system that people didn't want or need and that it was going to spell the failure of the platform. Well, now let's fast forward to where we are today and I think the exact opposite is true.
The fact that we've got a Blu-ray drive in the PS3 is the key to success. It's key from a gaming perspective because it means we can do games like Uncharted and God of War and deliver 50 gigs of gaming goodness to consumers, but it also means that Sony helped win the high-definition video-playback war, so that means consumers get the Blu-ray experience from a movies perspective.
If you asked people in focus groups in 2002 or whatever year it was -- if you asked them to think about the future -- consumers don't really know how to answer that question because they don't know what's possible. They just know what they're used to. And Sony, whether it was with PS1 and introducing the optical disc for the first time to a world that was used to cartridge gaming, or PS2 that introduced that DVD, or PS3 that was forward-looking in its own right as I've talked about -- these are things that Sony is passionate about and believes that within the 10-year lifecycle, the chips will settle in a way that's in Sony's favor.
I think it takes a bold company and a visionary company to do that, but that's what we are. And we stand behind it and we're really excited about where we are today because of it.
IGN: So you do think that PS3 will overtake Xbox 360 in sales at some point, then?
Peter Dille: Yeah, we do. I'm confident we'll be around in 10 years and I can say that because we've done it twice. PS3 will be around in 10 years and probably much longer than that. I have my own opinion, but I'll ask you the question. Do you think the 360 will be around in 10 years?
IGN: My personal opinion is no.
Peter Dille: Yeah, and that's my personal opinion. I think that would be the personal opinion of most responsible opinion makers. We can be passionate fans, but I don't think they'll be around in 10 years so I'm very confident we'll pass them within that time frame. I mean, we've got 31 million [units sold] worldwide right now -- they've got 39 million [units sold]. I don't even need to go out 10 years. I'm not going to make any predictions for your interview today other than we'll pass them, but you look at where we are today and where they are today, and they had an opportunity to sprint as far ahead of us as possible when they had the head start. Well, we're breathing down their necks and they can see us in the rearview mirror and it's not going to take too long to pass them.
IGN: You supported the PS3 launch with some out-there ads. One which featured a scary demon-doll-baby crying comes to mind. What was the message behind those commercials?
Peter Dille: I'm thinking back to that point in time. I think there was a lot of focus from our previous ad agency on communicating the power of the PS3. There was also a lot of discussion about being provocative for provocativeness's sake. And really just getting people to want to learn more about the system. It was an ad that was not intended to convey everything you need to know about the PS3, but just get people talking. I think it did that. It was also part of a broader effort -- that whole white room campaign. It was really just an introductory effort that people really seemed to feel passionately about -- and still to this day.
IGN: Now that you've launched the new PS3, you've done a 180 and gone in a completely different direction with these very well-made, very funny ads. What prompted the change?
Peter Dille, SVP of marketing and the PlayStation Network, SCEA.
Peter Dille: Deutsch LA is the agency responsible for the new ads. They weren't our ad agency for the initial campaign that we just spoke of. We'd been with our old agency for many, many years and I think oftentimes, clients and agencies -- after great partnerships of more than a decade -- decide to see other people and make a change. Deutsch came in and, frankly, what I was looking for was a campaign that really encapsulated everything the PS3 can do. It became very clear both from our own observation and a lot of market research that because of how powerful the PS3 was and is, it's really kind of impossible to encapsulate everything it can do in one 30-second ad. So what we were looking for was an ongoing campaign. We wanted to have a conversation with consumers. We wanted to reestablish the PlayStation's brand mojo, if you will. The brand has always been one that people have a special place in their heart for and it wasn't foreboding; it was welcoming, open and funny. We've got a long history of ads like that and that was a big part of what we were looking for. Really harkening back to that PS2 brand that was quite frankly ubiquitous.
We came up with this whole 'It only does everything' campaign and the whole Kevin Butler effort not accidentally. Because this was a campaign that was incredibly well researched. We had this idea right under our nose because we had used Kevin Butler with the MLB launch. The agency came back and said, "We think we've got something here. We can work with a spokesperson like Kevin to communicate everything the PS3 can do and have a conversation with consumers." There were a lot of misunderstandings about what the PS3 could do. I'll go back to the format war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. People didn't know what Blu-ray was. People didn't know what this powerful machine was all about. And we needed a campaign that could kind of walk people through it step by step. So very literally we have a campaign where consumers are contacting and asking us very specific questions about what the PS3 can do and Kevin Butler is our ultimate answer-man who not only addresses the question but has a lot of fun doing it.
We think that combined with the tagline of 'It only does everything,' it really is something that crystalizes the message. It's been tremendously successful. Consumers love it. It's great to hear people like you guys love it. And the results are really in the sales because it's really been flying since this coincided in September with the launch of the new PS3.
IGN: And you guys have more ads like these planned throughout the year?
Peter Dille: Yeah. You may have seen -- we just launched one for MAG. So that's out there now. From my perspective, this is a campaign that has a lot of life left it in and a lot of legs. We love the campaign and we love what it's doing for the PS3. Frankly, 'It only does everything' is kind of a future proof message in and of itself. We talked about future proof technology and 10-year life cycles. And if you think about what's on the rise for PS3 with motion-controlled gaming, that fits right into this positioning that 'It only does everything.' 'It only does everything' means everything it does up until today, but when motion control comes onto the scene, the message ties directly into that type of functionality as well. You can expect to see Kevin Butler inject a lot of life into the PlayStation brand between now and the rest of the year.
IGN: What's the reasoning behind the PS3 brand redesign, right down to a new logo?
Peter Dille: Kaz [Kazuo Hirai, Chairman and CEO, SCEA] came onto the scene and he wanted to align the platforms around familiar nomenclature. You've got PS2, PSP and PS3. This kind of brought that into the family of logos and icons. It wasn't much more than that, to be honest.
IGN: What would you say is Sony's biggest win so far?
Peter Dille: I think the biggest win is just the trajectory that the product is on. We talk about the 10-year life cycle. I think sometimes the press maybe thinks it's a talking point that Julie [Han, corporate communications, SCEA -- also present for this interview] makes me say. That's not the case. It's something that we believe in. We've done it twice already with PS1 and PS2. We've talked about it. Even going back to the launch of the PS3, we kind of reminded people: it's a marathon, not a sprint. And at this point we're at 31 million units worldwide, 11 million here in the U.S. and I think that we've got the product to a point where the manufacturing efficiencies are in place and the volumes so that we can get the price down to where it is today at a point where consumers are responding to. It's resonating like never before. We're well on the way to where we want to be on the platform. We've got the software support from a first-party perspective. The third-parties are making some great games. We're off to the races.
I think the PlayStation Network has also grown into its own. We're up to 40 million registered users worldwide on the PlayStation Network.
There is nothing but momentum behind the PS3 at this point. I could go on and on, but you'll probably want me to shut up at some point. You know, we've got two consecutive years where the Game of the Year for the category is on the PS3 platform. Of course, Uncharted 2 and last year it was LittleBigPlanet. Our first-party studios are hitting it out of the park. We just shipped MAG. We're about to ship God of War [3], which is going to just completely blow people away and be a big driver for the platform. We've got GT5 coming later this year. Everyone is just extremely excited about what's going on with PS3.
IGN: And what would you say is your biggest failure?
Peter Dille: Well, it's not a failure in that it was fatal, but it's well-documented that we didn't have as smooth a launch as we would have liked to. I think we primed the pump with a lot of interest in the platform. People can point to the ads and whatnot. We talked about that. I think the shortcoming was getting a lot of people whipped up and having them wait in line and then only having a very, very limited amount of hardware supply globally, which meant that we had a kind of start and stop effect with our launch, which is hard to recover from. It was a speed bump that we had to overcome and we overcame it.
IGN: So let's talk about PSN. From my point of view, you have a lot of catching up to do compared to Xbox Live, especially with regard to community features. Will you address some of these shortcomings, and might there ever be a point where you'll charge for the service, as Microsoft does?
Peter Dille: If I may, I'm going to answer a question with a question. We have made tremendous improvements and enhancements to the service, from my perspective. We feel like we have closed the gap. So what are some of the social aspects that you like that you're not getting on PSN?
IGN: Well, everything's more hidden, for starters. If I tune into Xbox Live, I've got my friends list right there and the community is popping up all around me as I'm doing things. It seems that I actually have to go out and seek that functionality on the XMB. It's just not as well integrated.
Peter Dille: Okay, but it's not that we don't have it -- you just like the UI of the other service better?
IGN: Well, it's just there -- I don't have to look for it.
Peter Dille: Sure, sure. So I think different people are used to different things. The fact of the matter is, their service was out first and people grew accustomed to the way they were doing it. So when I hear people say that we don't have what we have, I sometimes just want to check expectations because I think a lot of what you're talking about is on our service but we're doing it a different way. We're talking to our consumer all the time about what they want from our service and how we can do things better.
I think we've been incredibly responsive to that and, again, let's go back in the way-back machine to what the PlayStation Network looked like when we launched and what it looks like today -- you wouldn't recognize it. We've made amazing enhancements and improvements to the PlayStation Network both from a functionality perspective, from a UI perspective, revamping the PlayStation Store, adding features like Facebook and Netflix. Home has made incredible changes over that time frame. Up and down the list there's been, from my perspective, tremendous improvements. We're not done yet and frankly we'll never be done. We're going to continue to iterate on the service. Try to address consumers' wants and needs. And try to also surprise and delight consumers with things they didn't think they needed because that's always been what makes PlayStation a little bit different -- that we try to be a little bit visionary.
That's where something like Home comes in. Community has existed in gaming platforms, but it's been largely text-based and two-dimensional. Home is a three-dimensional community and environment that isn't possible on the other platforms and wasn't imagined by anyone other than the folks at Sony. It's grown up in the last couple years, but quite frankly it's still in beta. And we'll take that beta moniker off of it when we think all the functionality that we imagined when we launched the service is there and to the point where we want it to be. But it's still very much something that's evolving as we go.
Maybe a longer answer to a shorter question, but I think there is just tremendous improvements to the PlayStation Network, which leads me to your last question: will we charge for it or why don't we charge for it? It's been our philosophy not to charge for it from launch up until now, but Kaz recently went on the record as saying that's something we're looking at. I can confirm that as well. That's something that we're actively thinking about. What's the best way to approach that if we were to do that? You know, no announcements at this point in time, but it's something we're thinking about.
IGN: What can we look forward to this year with regard to PSN improvements?
Peter Dille: Well, I don't want to make any announcements that we're not ready to make, but I would say the continued enhancement of all the services, making it more user friendly, addressing UI -- there's some cool stuff that I've seen in the works that hopefully we'll be able to talk about a little bit more and show you guys and the community. I think original programming is another goal. We've put our toe in that for a while now with programs like Qore and Pulse, and you probably know we're going to be launching an exclusive program on the PlayStation Network called The Tester. It's reality TV meets gaming, where we're actually going to put a bunch of folks through the paces and decide who gets to have a job here as a tester, which is for these guys a dream job. It's a lot of fun and something that you might see on TV. It's that type of original programming that helps differentiate the platform and helps tip the balance to people making a decision to get on board with PlayStation versus the competition because they can get things here they can't get anywhere else. So we want to build a best-in-class service with PlayStation Network and make improvements across the board.
We haven't even touched on all the great games that you can find on the PlayStation Network. If you're a gamer and you have a PS3, it's probably the biggest driver. Oftentimes in interviews like these, we talk about Uncharted, LittleBigPlanet and God of War and we forget about all the really great gaming content that's coming out on PlayStation Network, about half of which is exclusive to our platform. Games like Flower, PixelJunk or Fat Princess -- these are award-winning games in their own right. People go to trade shows and vote them as best of show. They're incredibly creative, innovative and very popular, and unfortunately they sometimes fly under the radar because PS3 can do so much that we sometimes run out of time in interviews talking about it. But for gamers it's a big driver and it's why they're excited about the PlayStation Network, so you're going to see a lot more of that as well.
IGN: I was really looking forward to Home and I tried it out as soon as I could. I have to be honest, though, all the pre-launch hype for the service seems to have fizzled. Maybe you have data that suggests otherwise, but I'm not hearing people talk about it as much.
Peter: Well, when was the last time you went on it, Matt?
IGN: I actually went on again last night just to take a look before this interview.
Peter: Okay, well I'm glad to hear you've been on recently. There's a lot of data that I can share that refutes that perception. We had the highest traffic in December since we launched with 10 million users worldwide. The average time people spend in Home is about 60 minutes. If you think about that, it's a lot of time. I know you can sit down and game for hours and time gets lost. But think about watching a TV for a half hour or how much time you might spend on a website -- there's are kind of bite-sized chunks of time. But to spend 60 minutes on Home is a pretty sticky experience.
I think a bunch of things are driving that. One, we've been addressing some of the beta concerns. We've known that Home is always going to be something that needs to be nurtured. Content is what's going to make it go. If you go there and it looks the same when you come back next week, you're probably going to feel like, "Well, there's nothing new for me to check out here." So we've been working hard to make sure we've got the best content. We've got 30 partners working on different spaces and I think that's all been really great. But also one of the bigger more recent innovations was the Sodium launch. It's basically a gaming environment within Home. It's been incredibly popular -- one of the highest trafficked spaces within Home since we launched.
[People] are also spending money on Home. We've got virtual items for sale. They're profitable for us because they don't cost a lot to produce, but they also become drivers for gaming content. So people walk around in Home and if they see someone wearing an artifact from Uncharted or God of War, they might ask, "Where'd you get that?" and they might go back to that specific game space, learn more about it, become a fan of that game and then go buy the Blu-ray disc.
IGN: Exactly how profitable is the virtual economy in Home for you?
Peter Dille: Well, we don't release the numbers in aggregate, but each of the items become profitable the day they launch because it doesn't cost a lot to create a virtual t-shirt. If you sell it across a user base that's got 10 million people -- now, not all 10 million are buying that t-shirt -- but you get how that math works.
IGN: What do you have in store for Home users throughout the year?
Peter Dille: Nothing that I could announce today, but look for more and better content within Home. I think bigger partnerships. I think building Home out as a media platform as well, with not just games spaces, but if you look at the movie theater, there's some really cool stuff going on today but also some opportunities for social viewing of entertainment content.
IGN: Do you ever see a time when Home might actually replace the XMB or will they just continue to coexist?
Peter Dille: No, I think they'll coexist. The XrossMediaBar is a way to access a lot of content quickly -- it's the UI. Home doesn't really do all that as well as the XrossMediaBar does.
IGN: One of the questions our readers really wanted to ask was, why can't we download more PS1 and especially PS2 games on PSN?
Peter Dille: It's a great question. We're working really hard on it. We're pushing the third-party community and evangelizing this as a terrific opportunity both commercially as well as from a brand perspective to keep people interested in some of these older IPs [intellectual properties]. Final Fantasy VIII was the top downloaded game in December -- a real testament to your readers' questions, you know, that this stuff has an audience. From our side, we're going through our own studio organization and trying to make sure all these old games are out there so that we can lead by example, but we're also communicating with all the third-parties about the success of the Final Fantasy games, and other PS1 and PS2 classics. By all means, I think people can look for more of that because once the third-parties see how this works, it's just found money. There's not a whole lot of work that has to go into it and once we can get it up on the network, it finds an audience pretty quickly.
IGN: On a semi-related note, you've got a few full PS3 games for download, but not many. Any plans to offer the entire catalog for download going forward?
Peter Dille: No, I don't think so -- at least, not any time soon. Part of the reason for that is broadband. We have an advantage with PlayStation 3 from an optical media perspective because a Blu-ray disc contains 50 gigs. Maybe this point will come at some time, but today to download 50 gigs of data before you play a game, you could probably go buy a car, bring it home, put your family into it, drive to the store by and bring the game home by the time you [could download it]. I think we're on the forefront of digital distribution.
We're working very hard to evangelize it. I think we've got a hardware platform that continues to grow with people's appetite in digital distribution. And we've got multiple units with hard-drive sizes up to 50 gigs. We're also working very hard to make sure we do this thoughtfully so that retail has a part to participate in the ecosystem with us. But, the notion of getting all your games digitally, I just don't see it happening. There's games you're going to get at the store, there's games you're going to get on PlayStation Network and there's some you'll get in both places, and then there's also opportunity to enhance the micro-transactions and add-on content, of course, but getting God of War III digitally? That's just not something you'll be seeing anytime soon.
IGN: Any plans for Mii or Avatar-like friend list functionality within the XMB? I guess Home would be it, right?
Peter Dille: I think Home is it. Home is something that we have that other folks don't have and it's a big point of difference.
IGN: But nothing inside the XMB?
Peter Dille: Not at this point.
IGN: Coming out of last generation, Sony was clearly the dominant force with the PlayStation 2 brand. Now, though, you're playing catch-up with PlayStation 3. My question to you is, how'd this happen? How did you go from first to third place?
Peter Dille: I think you can go back to a comment I made earlier about Sony being a visionary company. Something that Jack Tretton [SCEA president] talks about frequently is that it would've been easy for Sony to do a PlayStation 2.5. To come up with a moderate improvement on the PlayStation 2. Keep the costs of goods in a range that would've been perhaps more economical for Sony but also maybe more attractive to consumers, and that probably would've had some success but it also probably would've had a shorter lifespan. I think the Sony's always done -- again, it sounds like spin, but it goes to the highest levels of this company -- is that the company approaches it from a visionary perspective. When we came out with the PS3 and it had Blu-ray -- you can do a search on all the press that came out then and people said that was a mistake; that Sony put this technology into the system that people didn't want or need and that it was going to spell the failure of the platform. Well, now let's fast forward to where we are today and I think the exact opposite is true.
The fact that we've got a Blu-ray drive in the PS3 is the key to success. It's key from a gaming perspective because it means we can do games like Uncharted and God of War and deliver 50 gigs of gaming goodness to consumers, but it also means that Sony helped win the high-definition video-playback war, so that means consumers get the Blu-ray experience from a movies perspective.
If you asked people in focus groups in 2002 or whatever year it was -- if you asked them to think about the future -- consumers don't really know how to answer that question because they don't know what's possible. They just know what they're used to. And Sony, whether it was with PS1 and introducing the optical disc for the first time to a world that was used to cartridge gaming, or PS2 that introduced that DVD, or PS3 that was forward-looking in its own right as I've talked about -- these are things that Sony is passionate about and believes that within the 10-year lifecycle, the chips will settle in a way that's in Sony's favor.
I think it takes a bold company and a visionary company to do that, but that's what we are. And we stand behind it and we're really excited about where we are today because of it.
IGN: So you do think that PS3 will overtake Xbox 360 in sales at some point, then?
Peter Dille: Yeah, we do. I'm confident we'll be around in 10 years and I can say that because we've done it twice. PS3 will be around in 10 years and probably much longer than that. I have my own opinion, but I'll ask you the question. Do you think the 360 will be around in 10 years?
IGN: My personal opinion is no.
Peter Dille: Yeah, and that's my personal opinion. I think that would be the personal opinion of most responsible opinion makers. We can be passionate fans, but I don't think they'll be around in 10 years so I'm very confident we'll pass them within that time frame. I mean, we've got 31 million [units sold] worldwide right now -- they've got 39 million [units sold]. I don't even need to go out 10 years. I'm not going to make any predictions for your interview today other than we'll pass them, but you look at where we are today and where they are today, and they had an opportunity to sprint as far ahead of us as possible when they had the head start. Well, we're breathing down their necks and they can see us in the rearview mirror and it's not going to take too long to pass them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)