This week's (excellent) Extra Credits threw a plug to one of my personal favorite old(er) Game OverThinker episodes. Here's the EC (though you should already be watching this every Thursday anyway...)
Wow your video has no relevance today as the PS3 and 360 are about tied in sales (I think there's a 3 month difference? not much with a year between release dates).
Interesting comparision with the handheld market though. As Nintendo came in cheap with the gameboy and then gave backwards compatibility over multiple generations, just as the PS1 was cheaper than the competition and then offered full backwards compatibility with the PS2. While the PSP came in as a newer more expensive competitor to Nintendo but lacked the user base.
Sony so should of eat the cost of keeping full backwards compatibility with the PS3 as even though it's been proved that no one really uses it, it's a good placebo for the idea that you don't need new games with a new console straight away.
The NGP may do okay with the use of backwards compatibility with PSP GO games but i'm sure those with UMD games will be disappointed as full backwards compatibility is an established fact thanks to Nintendo.
Steven is wrong about the relevance of the video. My interpretation of Bob's video is that he is reminding us that the null hypothesis is random. It might very well be that a person's success is through no action of their own. Sometimes you flip a lot of coins and wind up with a lot of heads; that doesn't mean you did something to effect the outcome.
It seems that the whole "PSN hacked" fiasco is turning people off of cloud-based gaming. I think this is exactly the wrong reaction. I think, if anything, it should make the transition to the cloud more desirable, for the same reason that having your money stolen from a small, local bank should make you want to switch to a bigger, national bank. More interest in a technology where security is an issue will make everyone's data more secure. Sony should be looked upon as the small, local bank that did it wrong, not the reason to not use banks. Thus the somewhat roundabout relevancy of this video today. Also, I'm a little freaked out about how Bob has had two predictions come true in the last month: 1) Sony is bad at its job 2)Wii2 has haptic feedback controller. If the Wii2 is announced to sell all its games on USB thumbdrives, I'm going to Massachusetts with my witch-burning gear looking for Bob. PS: thanks for telling my where your hometown is, it made my search much quicker.
The metaphor used does not make sense. This is mainly due to the fact that sony was never an emperor. That was nintendo. Nintendo failed initially because outside of its major franchises it could not provide good third party initiative. The gold seal had to be earned and Nintendo made sure the hoops were impossible to jump through. Anyone who didnt want to jump through those hoops went to sega. It was nintendos own doing that brought out their next competitor whilst sega tried so hard to remain relevent with its next release console.
In short, sony presented itself as a console that relied on the third party instead of limiting their creative process. And besides outside of the major nintendo franchises how many good nintendo wii games are out there.
This EC episode dissappointed me. They mentioned how insignificant the PSN Plus free Trial was, but failed to mention at all the massive amounts of Money Sony has poured into better security.
I mean they got all US users 1 year of free personal data protection service and protection against fraud service from a 3rd party company.
They're doing a very similar thing over here in Europe. In fact, the free year of a pretty significant amount of security, is perhaps the best thing they could have done. The free games and free PSN Plus stuff is a bonus on top of all that extra beefed up Security.
And we all know how OCD Sony are about shit like this. Last generation the PS2 was the most technologically underwhelming, this generation its the most technologically advanced...by far.
I'm pretty sure this means that Sony will just pour money into new improved security.
Maybe you didn't notice the title of the episode: NOT a Security Episode.
They explicitly stated how they're not that experience in network security and how there's dozens of other better sources to read up on the subject, and so they decided to talk about Sony's relationship with their customers instead.
Commenting on EC/Emperor Has No Clothes episode...
I think there is a point good point in questioning "conventional wisdom" because at least in the video game genre we are shown time and time again the same mistake being made by multiple vendors in multiple eras: The Big Dog leans on their precious brand too much expecting customers to blindly follow and it turns into "The Emperor Has No Clothes" scenario.
I'm going to skip Sony because GO and multitudes of other have already explored this a bunch. No sense in wasting text on this when others have done it a better format.
Nintendo expected everyone to adore the N64, which a good argument could be made fans did, but in the face of the financial success of PlayStation that was not only making Sony rich but the ISVs who made software for one may have to ask did Nintendo know what it was doing? Then by the time GameCube came around, the thread really got lost...
It could be said, Microsoft's entire start was due to luck where stories, although apocrypha but are still reasonable, suggest has gotten lucky multiple times in its corporate history. Microsoft expected customers who were impressed with their desktop technology to be automatically impressed with their other offerings but these came up short. It wasn't that the XBox or even more modern products like Zune or WinMo7 are bad or broken but they seem to reflect a bit of this topic.
Then there is ancient history where Atari, Panasonic and others which would take entire blog posts to fully explore those gambles and failures exposing exactly how much they fail at being "leaders of industry".
I guess in the end, a lot of business is still driven by "luck" where supporters attribute more to insight but it is more driven by whims of external forces beyond anyone's control. Going with the metaphor: They are all Emperors and they are naked but love telling everyone how cool next year's scarf he is wearing is going to be over the one they are wearing now.
I felt that a lot of this has to do with not just how the PSN was ran, but how Sony ran their business for a long time.
Bob Rice actually talked about this extensively in his book "Three Moves Ahead". He likened the products as the pieces, and the markets you take as the actual squares on the board. To be good at the game, you don't obsess over the pieces, you obsess over which squares you control.
The problem with Sony was that for a long time, they've been pushing the pieces without really considering the market. That's why they kept on backing new data storage formats, despite the fact that switching cost is a very real and deadly obstacle.
That's why they produced a robotic dog that is really cool to look at, but does absolutely nothing and serves no markets.
Er... no. They didn't. They weren't even talking about the same thing. This is completely different from the whole Metroid episode.
You might say that EC is a better show, but that is a generic statement. In my opinion, MovieBob was only once directly "schooled" by EC (as in, had his point on a certain subject diminished or disproven), and I admit that that is still completely up for debate.
This? This is nothing: just two episodes about Sony and the PlayStation. The object of the analyses might be the same, doesn't the analyses themselves are comparable.
The episode is completely relevant. Sony came from 2 monopolies in a row, and was debanked to 3rd position in this one. I mean, they are ok, but PS1 or PS2 success? I doubt they will achieve anytime soon.
20 comments:
Wow your video has no relevance today as the PS3 and 360 are about tied in sales (I think there's a 3 month difference? not much with a year between release dates).
Interesting comparision with the handheld market though. As Nintendo came in cheap with the gameboy and then gave backwards compatibility over multiple generations, just as the PS1 was cheaper than the competition and then offered full backwards compatibility with the PS2. While the PSP came in as a newer more expensive competitor to Nintendo but lacked the user base.
Sony so should of eat the cost of keeping full backwards compatibility with the PS3 as even though it's been proved that no one really uses it, it's a good placebo for the idea that you don't need new games with a new console straight away.
The NGP may do okay with the use of backwards compatibility with PSP GO games but i'm sure those with UMD games will be disappointed as full backwards compatibility is an established fact thanks to Nintendo.
Nice way to try and cover up the fact that the EC gang totally schooled you. Again.
I stopped watching them weeks ago. I'm too busy with my own creative endeavors.
Steven is wrong about the relevance of the video. My interpretation of Bob's video is that he is reminding us that the null hypothesis is random. It might very well be that a person's success is through no action of their own. Sometimes you flip a lot of coins and wind up with a lot of heads; that doesn't mean you did something to effect the outcome.
Strangely enough, I was thinking about that episode while watching this week's Extra Credits, even before they mentioned it.
With that video, and Sony's recent actions, I really do think that they really don't know what they're doing half the time.
Game overthinker, you're my Sonic. I still hope you'll become good like this again.
It seems that the whole "PSN hacked" fiasco is turning people off of cloud-based gaming. I think this is exactly the wrong reaction. I think, if anything, it should make the transition to the cloud more desirable, for the same reason that having your money stolen from a small, local bank should make you want to switch to a bigger, national bank. More interest in a technology where security is an issue will make everyone's data more secure. Sony should be looked upon as the small, local bank that did it wrong, not the reason to not use banks. Thus the somewhat roundabout relevancy of this video today. Also, I'm a little freaked out about how Bob has had two predictions come true in the last month: 1) Sony is bad at its job 2)Wii2 has haptic feedback controller. If the Wii2 is announced to sell all its games on USB thumbdrives, I'm going to Massachusetts with my witch-burning gear looking for Bob. PS: thanks for telling my where your hometown is, it made my search much quicker.
PPS: sorry for the Wall O' Text there.
PPPS: Hee hee I got a funny CAPTCHA question. "hampa". It sounds like "hamper". *giggle*
The metaphor used does not make sense. This is mainly due to the fact that sony was never an emperor. That was nintendo. Nintendo failed initially because outside of its major franchises it could not provide good third party initiative. The gold seal had to be earned and Nintendo made sure the hoops were impossible to jump through. Anyone who didnt want to jump through those hoops went to sega. It was nintendos own doing that brought out their next competitor whilst sega tried so hard to remain relevent with its next release console.
In short, sony presented itself as a console that relied on the third party instead of limiting their creative process. And besides outside of the major nintendo franchises how many good nintendo wii games are out there.
why isn't this on the escapist?
This EC episode dissappointed me.
They mentioned how insignificant the PSN Plus free Trial was, but failed to mention at all the massive amounts of Money Sony has poured into better security.
I mean they got all US users 1 year of free personal data protection service and protection against fraud service from a 3rd party company.
They're doing a very similar thing over here in Europe. In fact, the free year of a pretty significant amount of security, is perhaps the best thing they could have done. The free games and free PSN Plus stuff is a bonus on top of all that extra beefed up Security.
And we all know how OCD Sony are about shit like this. Last generation the PS2 was the most technologically underwhelming, this generation its the most technologically advanced...by far.
I'm pretty sure this means that Sony will just pour money into new improved security.
@ flamebreak
Maybe you didn't notice the title of the episode: NOT a Security Episode.
They explicitly stated how they're not that experience in network security and how there's dozens of other better sources to read up on the subject, and so they decided to talk about Sony's relationship with their customers instead.
@Damian: LOL that you think the Nintendo Seal of Approval had to be "earned"... Maybe once upon a time.
Commenting on EC/Emperor Has No Clothes episode...
I think there is a point good point in questioning "conventional wisdom" because at least in the video game genre we are shown time and time again the same mistake being made by multiple vendors in multiple eras: The Big Dog leans on their precious brand too much expecting customers to blindly follow and it turns into "The Emperor Has No Clothes" scenario.
I'm going to skip Sony because GO and multitudes of other have already explored this a bunch. No sense in wasting text on this when others have done it a better format.
Nintendo expected everyone to adore the N64, which a good argument could be made fans did, but in the face of the financial success of PlayStation that was not only making Sony rich but the ISVs who made software for one may have to ask did Nintendo know what it was doing? Then by the time GameCube came around, the thread really got lost...
It could be said, Microsoft's entire start was due to luck where stories, although apocrypha but are still reasonable, suggest has gotten lucky multiple times in its corporate history. Microsoft expected customers who were impressed with their desktop technology to be automatically impressed with their other offerings but these came up short. It wasn't that the XBox or even more modern products like Zune or WinMo7 are bad or broken but they seem to reflect a bit of this topic.
Then there is ancient history where Atari, Panasonic and others which would take entire blog posts to fully explore those gambles and failures exposing exactly how much they fail at being "leaders of industry".
I guess in the end, a lot of business is still driven by "luck" where supporters attribute more to insight but it is more driven by whims of external forces beyond anyone's control. Going with the metaphor: They are all Emperors and they are naked but love telling everyone how cool next year's scarf he is wearing is going to be over the one they are wearing now.
I felt that a lot of this has to do with not just how the PSN was ran, but how Sony ran their business for a long time.
Bob Rice actually talked about this extensively in his book "Three Moves Ahead". He likened the products as the pieces, and the markets you take as the actual squares on the board. To be good at the game, you don't obsess over the pieces, you obsess over which squares you control.
The problem with Sony was that for a long time, they've been pushing the pieces without really considering the market. That's why they kept on backing new data storage formats, despite the fact that switching cost is a very real and deadly obstacle.
That's why they produced a robotic dog that is really cool to look at, but does absolutely nothing and serves no markets.
@Patman_Forever_51
Er... no. They didn't. They weren't even talking about the same thing. This is completely different from the whole Metroid episode.
You might say that EC is a better show, but that is a generic statement. In my opinion, MovieBob was only once directly "schooled" by EC (as in, had his point on a certain subject diminished or disproven), and I admit that that is still completely up for debate.
This? This is nothing: just two episodes about Sony and the PlayStation. The object of the analyses might be the same, doesn't the analyses themselves are comparable.
Thanks for reminding us about a time before you jumped the shark
That was a great episode, Bob. Thanks for bringing it back from the dead :D
Ha, it's not "this week's" anymore yet it's still the newest update.
Classic episode.
The episode is completely relevant. Sony came from 2 monopolies in a row, and was debanked to 3rd position in this one. I mean, they are ok, but PS1 or PS2 success? I doubt they will achieve anytime soon.
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