Proof Of Delusion
October 2006, Published Publicly by Sony:
The Delusion?
1) That the 360 REQUIRED an HD DVD drive.
2) Wii Online Access is and ALWAYS WAS 100% free.
PS3 Kiosks Locking up. ON PURPOSE
An excerpt:
Guy @ EB talking to Sony rep who’s setting up a PS3 kiosk:
“Happy Holidays,” I said.
“Oh, hi! I’ll be done here in one second and then I’ll turn on the unit so you can get a glimpse of the future.”
“Oh, I know all about it,” I said, trying not to laugh. “I have the future at home. In my closet. Still in the box. Trying to sell it. No takers.”
After a short, awkward silence, I decided to go in for the kill.
“So dude over there,” I said pointing to the busy clerk, “says he keeps the kiosk off because it keeps freezing up.”
“Nope. No it doesn’t.”
“Well, actually, yeah. It does. I’ve seen it happen myself.”
“No. It doesn’t. We did that on purpose,” he said.
“You make the entire console lock up on purpose because … why?”
“We do that so that people won’t play it all day long,” he explained. “Specifically during Motorstorm, we made it freeze up a lot.”
I’m totally confused at this point, completely stunned at what I’m being told because it’s the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. I let him rattle on for a while, trying to convince me (and probably himself) that yes, Sony went out of their way to have their consoles lock up so that the masses will not spend hours upon hours basking in all its glory.
When the Sony rep was done and finally turned on the future, I decided to stick around and play some Motorstorm (which is pretty damned awesome). Didn’t freeze up on me once.
Later, I was told by a Best Buy employee that they were told the same thing — the locking up and freezing was intentional.
What kind of company covers up it’s blatant lack of motherboard cooling skills by lying to every single one of their men-in-the-field? Sony’s type.
Harrison: PS3 “Demand is Unprecedented”
These words spoken at a time (Feb. 26th, 2007) when literally stacks and stacks of PS3s were on shelves.
Kotaku: So in other words, the moment after you see a stack of PS3 systems somewhere they are gone, only to be replaced with a completely different stack next time! Of course!
Digg: hilarious, if all else fails go with the jedi mind trick. “there is nothing to see here, systems are moving” ..
Digg:I work at gamestop… and its almost always in stock, and not because its selling. Personally i’ve sold 3, returned 4, and defected 1, and one was actually traded in….store credit value is $500 for the 60gb, but he took cash (20% less) and walked away with $400.
Digg: Unprecedentedly, this word you keep using it, but I do not think it means what you think it means.
Digg: “And what would Phil Harrison have to gain by lying to us?”He gets to keep his six figure job with Sony. Honestly, if you were making the same money this guy makes, wouldn’t you want to keep your job too?
Digg: Alternative headline: Sony keeps known liar on payroll; rest of world laughs.
**Early-Mid January 2007, Jack Tretton offered to buy ANY PS3’s on shelves for >5mins for $1200 each.
Kotaku: we found about twenty plus PS3s sitting on shelves. That means Tretton owes us something like US $24,000. PAY UP.
From EGM:
And such was the case around the globe - PS3s on shelves.
Here are shelves in the UK in late March 2007:
And from ABC.com on Jan.4th 2007 Dave Karraker speaks concerning demand of PS3s:
“Everything that we put on store shelves sold out,” said Sony spokesman David Karraker. Karraker admitted that doesn’t necessarily mean that every system Sony sold to retailers like Best Buy made it to the shelves and said that the units that Crecente posted on Kotaku.com were put out after the holidays and beyond the company’s field of vision.
After the holidays and beyond the company’s field of vision? Sounds a lot like “b-b-b-b-but I, um… I err…. didn’t.. PHIL! PHIL WTF are these doing on shelves? Seriously! Umm, oh.. I uhmerrrr… Those? That picture must be from the PS3 LAUNCH yeah… that photographer is a LIAR! Yeaaah…. so this is complete BUNK! Yeah.”
**On January 15th, 2007
IDC analyst Billy Pidgeon reported on the NPD sales numbers saying “If NPD’s numbers are correct, there are over 300K PS3s on retail shelves.” -gi.biz
**Also on January 15th, 2007
From gamasutra: Regarding official sales numbers, as part of its initial press conference at this year’s CES Sony confirmed that the company shipped 1 million units of the PlayStation 3 through the end of 2006. However, last week’s NPD sales report showed sales of 490,700 units for the period, with 687,300 units sold since its launch in November, a shortfall analysts have recently referred to as ‘troubling.’
Unprecedented? My ass.