Sony: a love story

Settle down, Sony.

I’ve had an interesting relationship with the Japanese Techno-giant sometimes referred to as “Sony” over the past couple gaming generations. It borders on one of love-hate, but on the whole, it’s more confusing if anything. Growing up a Sega/Nintendo fan-boy, I never got into Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Lara Croft or Twisted Metal like my friends. Rather, I stuck with my guns and rode the Dreamcast out until its final days, days I would spend screaming at Leonard Nimoy’s fish/man/insect abomination of nature and riding around yelling “Yeah-Yeah-Yeah-Yeah- Yeah!” back when I used to think that The Offspring, Tower Records and green, spiky hair was still cool. Rest in peace, you orange-spiraled god of a machine.

Maybe I was just a bit sour over the Dreamcast debacle, which probably explains my move toward Microsoft, but the Sega-killing Playstation 2 never interested me that much. Sure, it featured a number of awesome exclusives that kept me up at night. “Shadow of the Colossus to the Xbox, right? … Right?!” I was content with playing on the half-pound hamburger-sized controller of the Xbox for my fix.

Then something unexpected happened last year. I bought a Playstation 3 after years of being a satisfied Xbox 360 customer. It all happened so fast too. The memory still remains a blur. How could you blame me? I had just starved myself of console gaming for a whole collegiate year and my summer backlog was drying out. Times were desperate and Amazon just introduced a Trade-In system. Without thinking, I destroyed my entire catalogue of computer-generated memories. The little grey cartridges that I was to hand down to my sons and daughters vanished for just pennies on the dollar. But at least I got the newest, sexiest, slimmest, Blu-ray-est Playstation out there and half of it wasn’t even my money. Ka-ching! Sony had finally sucked me in and by Jove I loved it.

Blu-ray, true high definition, an estimated ten year lifespan, a free online service, fancy start-up splash screens, a fan that doesn’t sound like a jet engine and a new set of virtual accolades known as Trophies were all I needed to make my digital pants get a little tighter. However, right as the honeymoon was subsiding, strange things began happening. Announcement after announcement surfaced. Press conferences and tech demos emerged and honestly scared the living daylights out of me, or more importantly, my wallet.

Now I look at this company and, although I’m excited as ever for this coming year in gaming, I just don’t understand what kind of direction Sony is going in. 3D television, movies and games? More like 3 Don’ts. Playstation Move? Move out of my face. Playstation Phone? Call blocked. And now the Playstation Portable Tw- I mean, Next Generation Portable (NGP for short, you sexy devil you)? I don’t even have an atrocious joke for that one!

Point is, Sony is spreading itself too thin. The reason I loved Sega and the Dreamcast was not just because it had a little something called a VMU that displayed those blue creatures from Sonic dancing all the time, but they focused on what really mattered – gaming. They didn’t need all that fancy-pants DVD-playing mumbo-jumbo Sony had in their PS2. They stuck true to what gamers wanted even though it ultimately meant their downfall. Competition may be tough on all sides, but that doesn’t mean Sony should jump in and try to take on all the major players at once.

I look at Sony now and while I think hardware improvements are great and all, there are only so many SKUs a company can support and considering they are only just starting to see profit from the Playstation 3, I think Sony needs to refocus itself much like Sega needed to defocus. So for now, just slow your roll.