To The Media: Stop The Playstation 3 Bashing

[cliffbo]

this is a very good article and worth the very long read.

To The Media: Stop The Playstation 3 Bashing
Written by darkpower
Tuesday, 30 December 2008 22:25

Someone once said, and one may believe it applies to the gaming world right now:

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosives and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own; for the children, and the children yet unborn.

It's funny because the person who said this was not even involved with video games, and he didn't say that when computer games existed (at least not to the common knowledge). It was Rod Serling, writer and narrator for the 1960's TV show "The Twilight Zone" in an episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street". This quote was the closing narrative of that episode, and it is probably one of the best quotes to be used at many times during the history of the world. This quote now also fits the video game industry, as we have seen several stories submitted on N4G.com and posted throughout the web concerning the so called "imminent gloom and doom" of a console, just after one month in which the system sold less units in November of 2008 to the November the year before. Apparently, the people that so wanted to become the martyrs for the Playstation 3 in 2008 have been let out of their cages. Little do they know that they either have some short-term memory loss, or failure to care of showing bias, or something. Because the straw men arguments are getting old and tired, yet come with no new ideas, information, or anything to show that they actually have common sense with their stories at a rate of one or two a day, and they get even more pathetic with every passing day and article.
It actually all started when CNN Money.com, a place that shouldn't even be talking about this subject like they know anything about gaming, reported about the Playstation 3 having one bad month. Someone should've told them about the eight consecutive months that the Playstation 3 outsold the Microsoft XBox 360 in this same year beforehand, or that Microsoft wasn't able to sell more 360s in January or February of 2008 than they did during those same months the year before. At that time, the sluggish sales of the 360 was claimed to have been "shortage of the system". Of course, the portable pubic chorus never did question it, much like they never have questioned much about anything about the 360 or Microsoft this current generation (and when, by some stroke of God, they actually did, it was pitiful at best). There was nothing like the phenomenon we now have.

It is a shock to what CNN actually started. Every person under the sun with a gaming blog and a hatred for everything Sony suddenly decided that since CNN got the hits to their website that they wanted by a flame-bait article, they would have as much luck, and suddenly, they come out with a post about how doomed the system is, then others see two, three, four, TEN articles, within half a week, repeating everything that CNN and everyone else said beforehand, so much so that you could probably win a case against them plagiarizing the articles that came before hand, and delivering suggestions such as "take out the Blu-Ray player", suggestions that may make the person who suggested it needing a defense for a sanity hearing. No matter how many times someone calls out the person that wrote it, or say that it's nothing new, no one is there to listen, or they hear it and don't care.

This is all after one bad month, and it's as if no one else in the business ever has had an issue in which they sold less units in a particular month that year then they did at that point one year ago. Many companies have recovered from far worse, and many companies and analysts have never really seen it as that much of a big deal.

So what is the issue this time? It's the brand name of the company that has done so: Sony. And for some reason or other, it seems like the portable public chorus has had it in for Sony, and will stop at nothing to spin anything into bad news for Sony. All while ignoring anything and everything that could never be spun into negatives. There is always some excuse, such as the so-called "360 shortage" that Microsoft kept claiming and every chorus member, media whore house, and fanboy just amplified to any decibel that they could get in order for the unsuspecting consumer to hear and take seriously. They over-hype the negatives while never appreciating the positives. This is at the same time the yet same people never call out any negatives for the other companies and praising the tiniest positive, or worse, making something that should be negative for the other side into a positive (the reverse of what they do for Sony).

However, this wouldn't be as bad if it was just the no name blogs that were doing this. Hell, anyone with a computer can type anything up and send it out there for the masses, not to say that no blog is creditable or brings up good points. Blogs can be dismissed as fanboy bias (though sometimes that's almost too easy, especially when you have a blog that actually brings up unbiased points). However, it's not just them. It's the mainstream media, the people that should know better than this, that write these stories, put them out there, and thus add fuel to the fire. They are the ones that visit the executives, are at the gaming expos, are at the press conferences, are the ones talking to the people that make the systems and the games that we enjoy. They are the ones that we are supposed to trust to give us fair, accurate, and unbiased reviews, news, and views. Us consumers, the ones that are buying the games and the systems with our hard earned dollars, depend on the reviews and views to tell us if something is worth purchasing.

However, instead of these journalists actually doing their damn job, what do we get? We get sites who call the 360 "the greatest game system of all time" as if they have any right naming any current generation console that. We get skewing of facts in graphs that tell us little yet pretend that they tell us everything. We have the gaming media whore houses visit the executives of one console manufacturer telling one of the whores that "we want more" in the other system's would be former exclusives and the whore never even flinching while he goes and calls the other side of everything under the sun. We have that same whore house do whatever they can to expose Playstation Home when Sony wasn't ready to reveal it, as if they think it's the same as Sony hiding Saddam Hussein's invisible WMDs. We have stories submitted to the gaming news portal N4G to the rate of one per day, now maybe even more. We have people posting holiday shopping guides that are nothing more than cheer leading one console when the video doesn't match what the narrators tell us. We have a reviewer that makes clear factual errors and omissions on a PS3 exclusive game, and when called on it, instead gets on a soapbox, calling those that called his review of that game BS as "fanboys" and saying that other reviewers have always given that game's creator a "free pass". We get the article that stated us on this month of gaming media HELL that says that the economic crisis has nothing to do with Sony's November NPD sales, then the very next paragraph contradict themselves by saying that the video game industry is not immune to the side effect of the bad economic time. We get those people that distort the truth and over exemplify the facts, conveniently forgetting about anything else that could prove their argument(s) futile, and only tell us of their twisted, spinned logic, their version of reality, as an absolute.

It is pitiful that one dismal month, a instance that many companies have had and have recovered from many times over and hasn't even fazed many in the press corps (and even during a rough economic time in which several companies are not doing well), has garnered this much hatred and this many wolves who were so starved for their dinner to feast so much. At least when this same thing happened in 2007, it was in easier doses to swallow. This time, it's more of a piling on of things that one or two people say, then everyone else rushes to put their own spin on the spin. It's even more pathetic that it's people we should trust that fuel this. Hatred for the Playstation 3, for whatever reason...no, scratch that, hatred for SONY, for whatever reason, run rampant though the veins of these wolves, and there seems to be no changing their minds about what they want to believe.

Where DOES this hatred come from? Is it because Sony is a Japanese company and they don't like that Sony products are popular in the United States? Is it because they think that Sony drove Sega out of the console business, even though Sega had their own problems that clearly contributed to the demise of that side of their company (such as the numerous Genesis add-ons and failure to support a console for long enough)? Is it because Sony beat Microsoft, an American company, during last gen, and they want revenge? We need to know and we need to know soon, because this hatred for one system and one company is baffling and disgusting. There should be no reason for someone to just WANT something to fail, and to fail this badly. We should be hoping that the gaming industry, ALL of it, thrives. Neither gaming developers nor gaming journalists should be playing favorites. If it's not alright for Sony to "buy exclusives", then it shouldn't be alright for Microsoft to do it, either. If a Playstation 3 game becomes multiplatform, there should always, ALWAYS be a 360 game that gets a similar treatment. We can no longer accept this notion that as long as the game is a 360 exclusive, it can stay that way while the PS3 loses everything, and we can no longer accept the gaming media continue to be hypocrites.

Yes, we get it. The Playstation 3 did have a rough start and Sony did fumble the ball on more than one occasion this generation. We do agree, as well, that a price cut for the system would do the system much good. However, with that being said, every single company known to man, woman, and child has had some sort of crisis, or bad times, and they have all recovered from them. There is nothing lately to suggest that Sony has fumbled to ball as badly as the press is making things out to be, with only small issues like marketing or fighting fire with fire against Microsoft being the only key issues right now.

There is something worse, still, within this. It is the enablers. The people that look at the stories, look at the tactics, look at the things that many people would frown upon, and never even so much as question it. Hell, they even encourage these stories, these tactics, these hounds, to continue on this petty little game. This is the most dangerous of all, because it's those people that the press is seemly willing to listen to, the most extreme of the loons that say "yeah, they proved it", might as well be written in damn crayon. Hell, maybe the media whore houses that write these stories are writing in the margins in crayon, maybe writing the entire stories as such. Yet, nothing will change, because the people who read them will do exactly what the idiots that write those stories will do: Flame. Not provoke thought as some stories will do (and those stories we should and do encourage more of). No, they don't provoke that. They provoke the dividing of the gaming public. They are not the ones that feed the fanboys, at least not anymore. No, they are now the ones that MAKE the fanboys, and the fanboys say to the whore houses that it's alright and rush to anyone's defense as long as the story says something that they want to hear, true or not. Then, seeing such, the whore houses continue to spin, continue to flame-bait, continue to mislead the gaming public, some of which would know so little about the media nowadays. In order for these idiotic stories to stop, we have to stop it ourselves, and that's by the fanboys to wake the hell up! It's not amusing, it's damn sure not funny, and it's pathetic and disgusting.

We gamers should and do take this seriously. This is not only our hard earned money that is being put into these companies (hell, how does anyone know that any of us gamers DON'T earn stock in Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo or whoever else decides to join those three?), but our passion for the industry and the hobby. Those who say that we're just taking this industry or this situation way too seriously isn't taking this industry seriously enough. What if it was your system that got this treatment? What if this were your company that constantly got dogged with no reason as to why, and no way to get them to shut their mouths? This is our hobby, this is our passion, this is our lives. Hell, sometimes, this is our CAREERS and our JOBS! We are therefore saddened when we see this type of thing happen to any one entity in the gaming industry, and we're just as disgusted when we see the gaming media be this biased, this ready to draw blood, this ready to pile it on. "There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be found only in the minds of men." Indeed!

And to the media, you have to start doing your damn job. Give us some sign that you are not biased. Hell, none of us are even saying that you have to switch the parties around. We would call you out on that just as bad. No, we're only looking for you to be fair. To call out shady business practices for what they are. To not hate on a company because they originated from a different part of the world, to not hate a system just because you feel like being the martyr that day. To review a game fairly, and to tell us all the facts, and make the score reflect that, and when someone DOES tell you that you factually erroneous on a review, be a true journalist and fess up. Tell us all the facts, call out everyone, stop having your opinions influenced by small groups whose websites will make you need to take a shower after you're done visiting them, and be the people who you say you are. Because, just as you have the choice to skew the facts, we have the choice, to go elsewhere.

Finally, to those in doubt: No, we shouldn't and don't think that any gaming platform should or will die out. Neither we nor the gaming media should ever wish it, no one should ever try to pursue it. While some of us may be fanboys at heart, and there are some fanboys that have thankfully not walked down this long and cold road of self-absorption and bias and can look at things just as objectively as us that call ourselves true gamers (we're all fanboys for something in the gaming industry, labels be damned), we are gamers first, and fanboys fiftieth. We deserve much better than someone skewing the facts and playing politics with this industry. It just so happens that it's with Sony. Maybe ten years down the road, when we look back on this generation, one thing will be for sure: Unless the media starts acting like adults, grow up, and stop making these articles of "Fear, uncertainty, and doubt" (or "FUD", as many on the internets have cleverly coined), and actually do something called their damn job, the press will be the ultimate laughing stock of the generation. Get it together, media, because it's the blogs that have to come in and clean up the mess you have made, and we cannot fully depend on them to exactly clean it up instead of mess it up more. One bad month doesn't constitute for a failed platform. PERIOD! Nor does it produce any monsters, on any street.

Rod Serling was also right on one more thing. None of these things could've ever been confined to the Twilight Zone.

Good night, and good luck.

http://www.gamegazette.net/index.php...ment&Itemid=63

[PS3LikeNoOther]

This is a very good read Cliff. I have come to the point were I give up when it comes to trying to fight against this BS. The momentum is behind the propaganda.

Right now Playstation is to the gaming world, what Michael Jackson is to the music industry. They were both the biggest thing ever in the respective media, and both were accused of something that got taken way out of hand. The media absolutly loves killing anything that gets to popular. Once they start pulling it down things only get worse, and that is just the sad reality that we live in.

Just like Michael, Playstation is going to have one hell of a fight to get any ground back. Of course Playstation has its fanbase that is actually willing to do some reaserch on the subject just as those that still support Michael looked beyond the rediculous mess the media has made, and thanks to them Playstation will be able to live to try and make a comeback. The biggest hurdle it faces is trying to stay away from any bad news.

Now that the Playstation, and Sony are marked, any little thing that goes wrong will be blown out of proportion. If you have been interested in Sony for a few years you have probably already seen all this crap for a while. Whether its a poster that markets a product in Greece that offends a person in America, or a financial report that shows last year had profit of 2 billion, and this year may only be 750M everything is going to be put in as bad of light as possible.

All I can suggest is keep on trying to get the truth out to those who will listen, and for those that wont just let it be. Have a good time with the products that you enjoy, and know that nothing ever stays the same. If Sony, and the Playstation brand die off that is the medias doing, and the publics inability to use their brains for anything usefull. Just keep with the faith, and find a new hobby if all else fails.

[Viper]

That might have been one of the worst articles I've read all year. Some articles are just stupid but this article pretends to be smart but misses it by a mile and that to me is far worse.

1. The recent reporting of PS3's sales failure is not some unleashed fanboy rant. It's from the same people that have raved about Sony and Playstation since 1994.

2. The first several months of 2008 showed PS3 doing better than X360 and not a damn one of those articles takes that fact away.

3. The problem comes that the PS3 in the most critical time of the year has failed to sell as good as the previous year. This is never a good thing especially when the console is cheaper than the preceding time period.

4. That is ALL they are reporting on. Not doom and gloom, not game over for Sony but simply that it has not lived up to the sales precedence it established for itself the preceding year.

[Diresu]

4. That is ALL they are reporting on. Not doom and gloom, not game over for Sony but simply that it has not loved up to the sales precedence it established for itself the preceding year.

I completely disagree. It's one thing to have a headline that says "PS3 sales lower then 360" or similar. The headlines I have been seeing are OMG PS3 IS DONE, SONY DOOMED. SONY SHOULD DROP THE PS3 and shit like that. Gaming journalism is thrash, and they are proving it over and over and over again.

[Viper]

Show me. Show me a respectable media outlet with such a blatantly bullshit headline.

If you're getting them from fanboy web sites, then what do you expect?

N64, DC and GC had doom and gloom headlines from respected sites and I can provide examples. I've yet to see an actual doom and gloom headline for PS3 from those same sites. All I've seen are those reporting that Sony has slid the last quarter from the start of the year and from the preceding FY quarter.

[Diresu]

^Go to N4G and look for anything with PS3 in it and you will find plenty. I dunno if CNN and Wallstreet Journal is respectable when it comes to gaming but it's out there.

Here is one just doing a quick browse.

"Blu-ray sinks the PS3" by ZDNET

Even if that article has a point, the headline is shit.

only an ignorant idiot will deny that Sony dropped the Playstation ball with 3.

Few people are denying that, but calling it dead is beyond fucking stupid.

[Z]

my rule with industries and products; nothing needs defending if it isn't strong enough to defend itself.

only an ignorant idiot will deny that Sony dropped the Playstation ball with 3.

Just like Michael, Playstation is going to have one hell of a fight to get any ground back.

MJ is artistically DEAD. he will NOT have a comeback, he will NOT make anything and he is as broke as hell. sad, but true. just like the greats before him, his career is over. all you have are 'greatest hits' and re-productions by today's nobodys of music. a real shame...

[Viper]

Allow me to quote myself from another thread today.

Cliff, stay away from N4G and you'll live longer.

N4G is a fanboy aggregate. Stick to looking for news via the respected outlets themselves. And yes, CNN and the WSJ are largely respectable and neither of them have doom and gloom headlines.

[solidsnakejej]

I think this has to do with CNN running a Silicon alley insider article saying which had a headline of "Sony's PS3 A Sinking Ship" and said has a "mediocre" game library. Strangely CNN doesn't have it on their site anymore.

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/...es-plummet-sne

Here's the cache of the CNN site
http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache:...ient=firefox-a

[Diresu]

Allow me to quote myself from another thread today.



N4G is a fanboy aggregate. Stick to looking for news via the respected outlets themselves. And yes, CNN and the WSJ are largely respectable and neither of them have doom and gloom headlines.

I suppose we disagree on what is considered a doom and gloom headline then.

[Viper]

Solid, that is from an RSS feed. Not a CNN headline.

[solidsnakejej]

Didn't see the RSS feed thing but it's not, at least from the look of it, a fanboy site and I was saying that it has created articles like the OP. Anyway I think articles like the OP are over blowing things. Most Doom and gloom articles come from the fanboy sites. I don't really care about sales unless they effect the games I get. PS3 has several great games in 09 and that is all I care about. I just hope that Sony doesn't panic and release a new console earlier then people want. I want longer console cycles.

[Viper]

Didn't see the RSS feed thing but it's not, at least from the look of it, a fanboy site and I was saying that it has created articles like the OP. Anyway I think articles like the OP are over blowing things. Most Doom and gloom articles come from the fanboy sites. I don't really care about sales unless they effect the games I get. PS3 has several great games in 09 and that is all I care about. I just hope that Sony doesn't panic and release a new console earlier then people want. I want longer console cycles.

This is the exact same argument given by Gamecube owners. It worked because, like any decent console, great games will grace it.

The GC's problem, and one that might afflict PS3 like you feared, is that 3rd parties found greener pastures on other consoles that sold better.

See, these guys (even to some degree the piss ant fanboy sites) aren't just reporting what is happening currently but are rewriting trends from past consoles in similar circumstances. I'm not saying the PS3 is about to become a 3rd party graveyard but that its sales will hamper the volume it receives (notice I said volume, not quality) to some degree. That's simply just business.

[solidsnakejej]

Yes, and it's Sony responsibility to show that it's a viable system. Though it doesn't help when your main fall game(LBP) does as poorly as it did at first.

We already seeing 3rd parties go to greener pastures with many Playstation long time exclusives go multiplatform. As long as we are still getting the games it doesn't bother me if the publisher/dev are trying to get more sales. Right now it's better for a publisher to have games on multiple system so that it can sell the most amount of units.

[Smokey]

cliffy these type of threads are.... dont know what to say nicely

[Dakota Grabowski]

hey, cliff, bold some of the important stuff because there's too much to read there and I don't have time to read through it all.

[cliffbo]

not particularly well written but with good points that reflect the reality of straying outside of E-mpire and getting a feel for the media at large.

i wonder why he wrote that article... reads thread... i think i know now.

[Dakota Grabowski]

not particularly well written but with good points that reflect the reality of straying outside of E-mpire and getting a feel for the media at large.

i wonder why he wrote that article... reads thread... i think i know now.

would you stop complaining about people not agreeing with your opinion. Get over it since that's how the world works. Now bold some of it because I still haven't read it and I refrain from reading articles from unknown sources since it's not worth my time if it turns out to be atrocious.

[cliffbo]

that reply interests me greatly Dakota. am i to take it that you are often wrong in your opinions and that i should take a leaf out of your book? and the use of the word 'complaining' is also interesting. it's called an 'enforcer'. what it does is suggest to others that my post was a complaint when in actually fact it's a whimsical observation. and 'get over it'? get over what? get over that the media are ante Sony at the moment? it's difficult to miss if you do a little surfing, so i can only assume you mean 'get over the fact that the media are biased'. so am i to assume that anything that doesn't interest you or effect you directly, is not worth debate and that you should dictate what others find interesting? there are many threads if you care to discuss something else you know.

[Dakota Grabowski]

that reply interests me greatly Dakota. am i to take it that you are often wrong in your opinions and that i should take a leaf out of your book? and the use of the word 'complaining' is also interesting. it's called an 'enforcer'. what it does is suggest to others that my post was a complaint when in actually fact it's a whimsical observation. and 'get over it'? get over what? get over that the media are ante Sony at the moment? it's difficult to miss if you do a little surfing, so i can only assume you mean 'get over the fact that the media are biased'. so am i to assume that anything that doesn't interest you or effect you directly, is not worth debate and that you should dictate what others find interesting? there are many threads if you care to discuss something else you know.

yawn, please don't write in block format as if you were in the 5th grade.

Am I to read that whole paragraph under the belief you are submitting to the demand of the forum members to finally admit you are wrong? Am I to assume this or that? Can I believe that you are finally backing down? Are you stating that I am right? Is this the turning point in your E-mpire membership where you finally acknowledge that everyone's opinion is correct on you?

See how fun that is? It's fun to try and read further into the book by guessing the next page. But when it comes down to it, putting words in someone's mouth is an erroneous decision. Erroneous is a word that basically describes that you made a mistake. I hope you understand that much.

You can assume all you want out of my one sentence that is summed up by it's start: "please bold." All I ask is for you to tell me what's interesting in the article so I don't have to read all of it since there's only so much time in a day to spend on the internet and I don't want to spend it reading articles from an unknown source that has no credentials or respect within the media or video game community.