Sony Still Sucks

I've had a long-time love/hate relationship with Sony. While they make some great products (I loved the Sony Ericsson phone I had, other than the fact it was like 1000 years old), their sky-high prices, arrogant attitude, and ridiculous proprietary technology make them so easy to hate. (The Memory Stick Micro, which is compatible with nothing but Sony Ericsson cell phones, is possibly the dumbest piece of technology ever.) A lot of times, the dumb outweighs the good. So, it comes as no surprise that something new that Sony does might turn out to be much ado about nothing.

Today, Sony announced that they would be dropping the price of their 60GB PS3 by $100, bringing the pricetag down to (a still-staggering) $499. That should make that PS3 fly off the shelf.

...If it weren't for the fact that, about three months ago, Microsoft released a new XBox 360 with a 120GB hard drive that supports 1080p and is HDMI-compatible and still costs $20 less than the PS3 with half the storage space. A rash of unexpected repairs led to a retroactive three-year warranty for the 360. (PS3 still has just the one year.) Add to that the fact that XBox Live is turning into quite the multimedia portal, and, with the release of Windows Vista, it's now possible to play games cross-platform (like Shadowrun, which can be played on-line between a 360 and a PC). Oh, and Microsoft recently released the software that allows you to make XBox games. But what gamer is going to be interested in that? Meanwhile, the PS3...well, it's still a state-of-the-art system that plays crappy games.

It's just not gone well for Sony. First, they got beat to the market by Microsoft. Then, they announced the astronomical price. Then, they pushed back the release date. Once the need to buy "The New Thing" subsided, PS3s became quite plentiful. I remember a visit to Best Buy where I nearly tripped over a literal pile of PS3s sitting in the middle of the aisle; not a good sign for a console that had only been out four months. (And it's still being murdered in terms of sales by the Wii, which, according to people I know who've played it, is apparently the funnest console ever. And, nearly eight months after its release, I've never seen a Wii on a store shelf.)

Maybe this will pay off for Sony. Maybe that $100 is the straw that breaks the camel's back, and these things will just start flying off the shelves. But, the fact that Sony is still producing and releasing new games for the PS2 tells me that not even they have a lot of confidence in it.

We shall see.