PlayStation Brand Faces Uncertain Future

[jerome27]

[All brands face distressing episodes at one time or another. Some work their way through the crisis with smart PR and social outreach. Others aggravate the situation with secrecy and tired deflective tricks. Which one is Sony? Gamasutra business editor Colin Campbell investigates.]

There was a time -- let's say, for argument's sake, from 1996 to 2004 -- when the PlayStation brand was awe-inspiring. PlayStation represented all the shining possibilities of the future. Brilliantly, PlayStation ran with the goodwill Sony built up in the 1980s with the Walkman, and super-boosted this reputation for design and technical excellence as well as a natural empathy for what people wanted.

But things do tend towards entropy. Today, the PlayStation brand is in gentle decline. And the events of the past week could accelerate that decline into something more serious. Especially if Sony continues to handle the crisis with the incompetence it has thus far demonstrated.

Brands are weird. They are both robust and delicate. On the one hand, the mythos of Sony's excellence doesn't just go away, any more than Toyota's formidable reputation did after its troubles last year.

On the other, the brand has already slipped from pre-eminence to also-ran, and this debacle can't do it any good. The PlayStation brand has been in decline for the entire life-cycle of PlayStation 3, while the Xbox and Nintendo brands have been steadily rising even through their own turmoils, like RROD and Wii's general faddishness. Unarguably, PlayStation is no longer a byword for next generation entertainment.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/34348/

Mature opinion piece on the decline of Sony and the Playstation brand.

 

[Sausage Head]

What is new about this article? Isn't this like a... summary?

 

[DominoBright]

I say, (Sony should) be sold to Konami. There, a new console will be created that will totally kick ass.

 

[Deleted member 473940]

What is new about this article? Isn't this like a... summary?

Summary and making "guesses" pretty much.

What has been happening does not mean the end of Play Station brand. You cant call them off just yet.
A lot of possibilities are still open to Sony. Although, I dont see much happening with PS3+PSN.
You could say the PS3+PSN era reached its end..

 

[Ikki]

Sony just has to stop dun goofin. People are pissed but Sony heads will always be Sony heads and will keep buying their shit.

 

[WiiUBricker]

Unarguably, PlayStation is no longer a byword for next generation entertainment.

Bullshit from a shitty site.

 

[Foxi4]

...uncertain future? For SONY?

Are you *retarded* ? Their PlayStation income has doubled in *the last quarter alone*, their income estimates were vastly surpassed by the actual profit, you think that this multimillion giant will fall because of one flop?

Sony sells top-quality electronics - laptops, TV's, DVD/BluRay players, consoles... Smartphones alone gave 11 Euro m. NET income (usually it brings losses rather than income) in the first quarter of 2011, gaming devision with 564 million dolars of profit between october and december.

They're not *dying*. They're flourishing, if anything.

As soon as PSN re-boots with better security, people will start praising it again. Give it a year and you'll all FORGET that this even happened.

 

[Slyakin]

Really? ...REALLY? Wow. Sony isn't hurt AT ALL. If Sony's hurt, Nintendo has been rotting in the sewers for the past few years, while Microsoft is just a begging man on the streets.

Come on, now.

 

[Snailface]

The media (and society in general) has a short attention span. Once this crisis blows over, it'll be business as usual for Sony.

 

[sonknuck23]

As someone who owns all 3 systems (now, at least, haha) I can safely say that people often spend a lot of time bashing consoles for silly reasons. So what; shit happened with Sony and now everyone's flipping shit. I DOUBT this will lead to some disastrous future for Sony. I got my PS3 the DAY of the outage and I've been raping the hell out of it ever since, playing games offline and still enjoying the fuck out of it.

All my friend are like "lol hows ur online GET IT CUZ U HAVE NON" And I'm like "who gives a shit, I sitll enjoy playing it."

So many people have went off to buy 360's as a "fuck you" to Sony, I don't see that being much of a "fuck you". I think it's rather silly. I mean, buy it if you want one, cool. But buying it and then posting on the PSN blog "omg fuck this gettin a 360 sry sony u aint gettin no mo of my money" lol, i just laugh and go "good job, kids. Way to piss off nobody."

It's all just dumb shit. I personally like all 3; Wii, PS3, and 360 (although I dislike the 360 a bit more for reasons which are hard to explain.) IN THE END, I do NOT see this as being a decline for Sony's future. Like the guy above said (Foxi4) give it time, people will be saying "what outage? April 20th? huh? wtf?"

 

[Nujui]

I think someone should close this thread, it's gonna get A LOT of hate. Trust me.

 

[Foxi4]

I think someone should close this thread, it's gonna get A LOT of hate. Trust me.

What's there to start a hate war over? SONY has enough money to go around till the whole storm's over. Hell, they have enough money to build a 5 meters high wall around their HQ made of gold. Assuming that they'll suddenly close down because of a PSN fuck-up that probably didn't cause any damage anyways is silly.

 

[Nujui]

I think someone should close this thread, it's gonna get A LOT of hate. Trust me.

What's there to start a hate war over? SONY has enough money to go around till the whole storm's over. Hell, they have enough money to build a 5 meters high wall around their HQ made of gold. Assuming that they'll suddenly close down because of a PSN fuck-up that probably didn't cause any damage anyways is silly.

I'm not saying there's gonna be a hate war, I'm just saying that people are gonna hate over this because what the news said is not gonna happen.

I mean really, did any of us here thought sony was gonna get hurt over this?

 

[Bladexdsl]

sony ain't coming back next gen they fucked up big time and won't be able to recover from their idiotic mistakes this gen their finished in the console market -end-

 

[FireEmblemGuy]

This isn't about Sony itself, it's about the Playstation brand/sub-brand. Sony won't notice a huge loss of income over the PSN fiasco, but if they aren't careful it could still hurt their computing/networking divisions pretty hard. If that particular area starts hurting, Sony will take note, and if those divisions start posting losses or negligible profits, I doubt Sony would worry too much about cutting back funding for them.

 

[Foxi4]

This isn't about Sony itself, it's about the Playstation brand/sub-brand. Sony won't notice a huge loss of income over the PSN fiasco, but if they aren't careful it could still hurt their computing/networking divisions pretty hard. If that particular area starts hurting, Sony will take note, and if those divisions start posting losses or negligible profits, I doubt Sony would worry too much about cutting back funding for them.

Sony's main assets are the Bravia and the PlayStation brands. They'll do anything to CPR PlayStation back to life, even if it means freebies for the users. Their current success in all fields of electronics has its roots in either their always impressive TV sets or the consoles they hooked up to them. PlayStations always had the longest lifespan among consoles (excluding NES), they were always as advanced as it was humanly possible and one flop in the network that also happens to be free, as opposed to other money-monging company we know, won't change that.

They WILL be back with a next-gen, just don't expect it anytime soon. Why?

Just look at the PS3. Look at it's capabilities and its resources. Have we depleded them yet? Is the console stale? Is there anything that tops it significantly?

No.

Then don't expect a PS4. Not because there'll be cuts, but because there is no demand for it yet.

 

[phantastic91]

sony ain't coming back next gen they fucked up big time and won't be able to recover from their idiotic mistakes this gen their finished in the console market -end-

O_O..........

i think you forgot to add.."/sarcasm"

 

[Nujui]

sony ain't coming back next gen they fucked up big time and won't be able to recover from their idiotic mistakes this gen their finished in the console market -end-

One mess up doesn't mean the end of sony.

They'll be back next gen.

 

[Foxi4]

sony ain't coming back next gen they fucked up big time and won't be able to recover from their idiotic mistakes this gen their finished in the console market -end-

O_O..........

i think you forgot to add.."/sarcasm"

...I'm truly TEMPted (see what I did there?) to say "You meant his medication...?", but that'd only add to my colourful collection of WARN's. Thus I will say "cookies" instead and bid you farewell, for I forecast a Thread Locking to occour here soon.

This topic is more infertile than the Sahara Desert anyways, nothing will sprout from it.

 

[Bladexdsl]

sony ain't coming back next gen they fucked up big time and won't be able to recover from their idiotic mistakes this gen their finished in the console market -end-

One mess up doesn't mean the end of sony.

They'll be back next gen.

lets see now....

1. they pissed off a lot of people by removing other/os
2. they made themselves look like jackasses with their idiotic useless court cases
3. they pissed off anon BIG FUCKING MISTAKE!
4. they didn't encrypt cc endangering 2.2m peoples accounts

yeah i'd like to see them bounce back from all that no one is going to trust them ever again except the small bunch of moronic die hard psx whores they have left and it's very small indeed!!

the only thing they have managed to do well is show everyone just how greedy and pathetic they really are!!!!!!

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