大象传媒

Thanks for the interview Darren.

I think from my perspective as a 25 year old male gamer and a lifelong Playstation fan, one of the things im most frustrated with is SCEEs lack of understanding in terms of its customers. There is some serious frustration out there in the community and the PS3 is fast becoming known as the "Delaystation" - further evidence of this is the added delay to Killzone 2.

On the plus side its nice to read that in game XMB is coming soon and it is something that gamers really want in their experience. I think once this is released and we get the AAA titles like MGS4 and Killzone 2, we will see the PS3 becoming a stronger force in the console market. Currently in Europe it is doing extremely well even though some find it is overpriced and a lack of content being released on the PSN when compared to our American and Japanese friends. This has led to increasing amounts of "Sony hates Europe" comments throughout the PS community. Its not good to annoy one of Sonys strongest markets, i understand the localisation issues are there but when you see the same content being released on Xbox Live you start to question Sonys efforts in getting the content to its customers quickly.

I purchased my PS3 on launch and i am really happy with it, its stable, reliable and is packed full of multimedia solutions that are more and more pulling me away from my PC. As a gaming machine, games like Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, Warhawk and Heavenly Sword show that the machine is showing great potential in its first years.

I feel Sony just need to step up to the plate and deliver and release the great content we are being promised. Also id like to see more advertising, GTAIV was advertised by Microsoft an awful lot im actually surprised the PS3 sales were that strong. I suppose the PS brand is still a force to be reckoned with.

Also to point out there is no 80GB model in the UK i dont know where he came up with that comment currently its only the 40GB model.

Was there any mention of a release date for the dualshock 3? or bringing the price of an eu PS3 closer to that of a us or Japanese PS3?

Hopefully his 80GB PS3 comment is a sign of things to come. I wont be holding my breath though.

Did you ask him about backwards compatibility??

It doesn't make sense that previous models can use a software emulator but the 40GB UK version can't. Surely it's just a matter of installing that same software on the PS3??

@3, the main PS2 processor, the 'emotion engine' was emulated on the 60gb EU models, but it had to have the graphics chip from the PS2 in it. The new 40gb models do not have this chip, and so far there is no way of emulating what it did. I don't know if it's possible to get the PS3's GPU to emulate the PS2's version.

To be fair to him, I believe it's SCEE who decide the models that will be sold in the EU, and not SCE in Japan, so this info may not be to hand.

I've had mine since launch, and have had a great deal of fun with it. It's been well worth the 425 paid. Sony have made some silly errors in the last year and a half, and opened themselves up for the flak they got. Hopefully they're turning the corner now.

The person you should e-mail daily about the frustratingly useless progress made by SCEE is a Mr David Reeves and I consider him to be the PlayStation gamers public enemy number one. That may be a bit unkind but as the head of SCEE he could try a little harder to bring the European region into line with the Japanese region and the America region.

I have some simple questions that I want Mr Reeves to answer, or questions I want his boss to force him to answer. I want to know:

1. Why Europe is not getting DS3 controllers in time for Metal Gear Solid like most other regions?

2. Why does Europe have to pay more for a console which offers so much less than other regions?

3. Why do other territories get better content on PSN and have better lines of communication with their territorial controllers?

4. When does SCEE intend to get its act together and stop messing us around?

It really grinds my gears when companies feel they can rip off customers and treat them like ignorant idiots and I get the feeling that the people at SCEE enjoy nothing more than tormenting the poor PlayStation fan base in Europe. I want to be seen as more or less equally valued as any other PlayStation gamer in the world.

I'm afraid I do not believe Sony's commitments to us. They just want your money, and the more they can extract of less the better they will feel. I'm going to give it till the summer, then I'm going to e-bay my PS3 and get an XBox360 and a Wii if things don't start improving soon.

thanks for the interview mate.
thanks for ignoring the most important question posed by the majority of ps3 owners in europe.
thanks a bunch.

as a license fee payer i am disgusted you neglected to represent the people who pay your wages.

Thanks for the interview. I personally am amazed by the stick which Sony gets. It seems there are many people who feel it's their right to have a PS3 with a huge hard drive, backwards compatability, an ingame xmb, dualshock 3's, delivered to the four corners of the world at the same time all at a much cheaper price. They cant do everything, its a business after all.

Thanks Darren,

I think with the 80 or so comments in the questions topic you started you were going to struggle to satisfy everyone here.

That said the news about XMB in game is good but actually once again NOT concrete ! Sony have been promising us this for some time now and still we have no confirmed date for release.

Mr Hirai also does not answer (if you asked him) why the PS3 costs so much here and has done since launch compared to the US or Japan.

There is no explanation as to why the DS3 controllers are still not dated for release here (I ordered my two from HongKong and received them in a week for less than a sixaxis costs here in the UK).

"Local difficulties" for PSN releases just grates as an excuse, again how does Xbox live manage this so quickly in comparison ?

And finally, why can SCEE not give us an official BLOG ??? Is it really that much trouble for SCEE to do this for it's customers and give us the chance to receive official updates from Sony and developers ?

Regards

Cheers - we really appreciate your feedback Darren.

My comments aren't intended as a moan at you, more that a lot of PS3 owners (some previously called "fanboys") are feeling a bit abandoned at the moment by SCEE and also Sony. If die hard fans feel disillusioned how would the prospective customer feel ?

As a loyal customer I shouldn't have to order Dual Shock 3 controllers from Hong Kong so that I can enjoy the latest games with rumble and a controller that feels like it's up to the job. The first game I owned with rumble support was either Drakes Uncharted or Warhawk, both have been out for months now yet UK owners can't buy a DS3 in the shops.

When you add up the complaints regarding DS3's, PSN content, price of our console, models available and the lack of an official blog (where delays could be explained) you can probably understand our concern at the lack of response from SCEE.

There is nothing new in this interview. I could rummage through old Sony press releases and find the same quotes.

Once again, they claim Europe is their biggest market, toss out the 'localisation' excuse and continue to ignore the core problems.

- They make us pay extortionate amounts for half the functionality that America or Japan gets.

- They dump old stock on us.

- They delay games due to 'localisation' for months and in some cases don't ever release them.

- They (are forced into) launch(ing) a new store (by SCEA, who actually listen to their customers) and feel that ripping out all functionality (no preview button, terrible categories, slower loading times) is what customers want.

- They give us tiny (40GB) hard drives and say 'Europe doesn't need large HDDs because of low broadband penetration', then launch a video download service and expect us to pay extra for an upgrade.

What next?

I wonder if your colleagues at Watchdog would do a better job of getting to the bottom of this.

Are you satisfied with the answers? Er no, not in the slightest.

He described the hard drive variations as 鈥渟ubtle differences鈥�

It鈥檚 not just the 鈥淗ard drive鈥� that鈥檚 the problem. Lack of backward compatability remains a festering wound and it鈥檚 unfortunate that you didn鈥檛 see fit to ask why. One would point out that there鈥檚 a significant difference between 40gb available and the mythical 80gb console that isn鈥檛 on sale in the Europe. As for listen to consumers the best time to do that if before they have bought the consoles. Bringing out a competitively priced 80gb machine next week will just make me more angry. Sony cannot sell an inferior product and then apologise by selling me a more expensive one 6 months later!! There is undoubtedly a need for a machine with a bigger hard drive as others have pointed out the 40gb will fill up pretty quickly when games require significant HDD installations. The fact that he doesn鈥檛 know you can鈥檛 get an 80gb version in Europe is indicative of exactly how out of touch the execs at Sony are. What indicates they understand the failings of the launch period? They still persist. Overpriced under delivering hardware with European consumers being considered less important than others.

I think Sony have become too far up their own behinds to care about their gaming consumers. I believe that Sega made similar mistakes a while back and never recovered. Until Sony puts the customer at the heart of their decisions the PS3 will continue to struggle. I firmly believe if not for the BluRay player that the PS would already be pretty much dead and buried.

This report seems to be very very small considering the questions that were posted by readers on the page before the interview took place.

Not only this, but he is misinforming the public about the 80gb model being available in Europe:



...unless he believes that it is on sale here which would be worrying for someone in his position.


The biggest issue I can see with the PS3 is the fact that is has no backwards compatibility with PS2 games. This is not just a cost saving issue by Sony through them not including the emotion engine chip. The 60GB PAL version (and the 80GB NTSC version) have backwards compatibility through software emulation - which adds nothing to the build cost:




This has been taken off of the 40GB version for one simple reason - to force people into buying PS3 games. In February of this year the PS3 had only sold 1.7 games per console versus 7 games per console for the XBox 360.

This is why there are so many rumours about former Playstation exclusives coming over to the XBox - the developers are concerned that with such a poor return on games sales that it is risky to place all their eggs in the Playstation basket.

The sales rate also supports the theory that a significant number of PS3 owners are only buying the machine for Blu-ray - as it is not only one of the cheapest (it was the cheapest when it was launched) - it is also the only one that is guarranteed to be totally futureproof in terms of updates to the Blu-ray format.

The response from Sony are always so vague Darren, that is what gets people worked up on the official forums.

There is obviously excess supply in Hong Kong if I can buy two DS3's there isn't there ?

We have a rational calm (mostly) thread going in the official Playstation forums requesting a SCEE blog, you state that SCEE are looking at the success of the SCEA one but this has never been reported to us in the forum thread. We are have in excess of 60 pages of requests and no official response - it's hard to believe that SCEE really do pay attention to their customers......

Thanks again for your efforts anyway, I don't think you should get any criticism for the interview, both Sony and Mr Hirai seem adept at avoiding giving facts to the public.

Regards

msg 13.

60gb has the emotion chip, the 80gb version has the software emulation.

msg 16.

Only the 60GB NTSC and the 20GB NTSC PS3 have emotion chips.

The 60GB PAL only has the PS2 Graphics Synthesiser and uses software emulation like the 80GB NTSC.

It's the lack of USB connectivity in the smaller hard drive versions that really gets my goat - 2 USB ports!!?!?!?! Utterly limiting for gaming with multiple peripherals that require USB. My cheapo laptop has 6 for god sake!

...and no memory card reader on the 20GB version either.

Come on Sony, Europe makes up 50% of your hardware sales - we deserve much better treatment.

So SONY concentrate on satisfying the demand of American and japanese PS3 owners before European users? Shocker.

Darren, thanks for asking these questions for us. Unfortunately, I don't think people calmly talking to SCEE will solve anything. They might listen but they don't do anything about it.

The only real way to get SCEE to start making changes is for a large amount of bad press to be put their way and to shame them into making that 拢425 I paid for my delaystation worth it.

If only there was a journalist that could champion the rights of European PS3 owners and investigate the real reasons as to why we get screwed over all the time by SONY....

Big surprise. A Playstation exec taking no notice of it customers in Europe.

Nothing will change until it to late. Just look on official playstation forms to see the level customer upset with SCEE. This is nothing new.

Sorry Sony but these lame excuses do not hold up when this isn't happing with XBox and Wii.

All I have to say to Sony is:-

Expect bad press and it all down to SCEE. As they are going to get it in bucket loads soon. Just read a lot PS3 blogs they all say the something about how bad it is Europe with PS3. Even American blogs are reported about how badly we are treated.

Nothing will change, unless sites like 大象传媒 take real notice and not just on blog part.

Very sad days.

I had a PS3 in the first week it was released after about a month i sold it and bought my first every console outside of the playstation brand, an xbox360.

I think the release of the PS3 should have been delayed a few months until they had everything sorted. it feels as if they sold us half cut machines and are making us pay the prices so the work with anything.

GTA iv for example, my friend is a die hard playstation fanboy and would refuse to look at an xbox, his PS3 can barely cope with this new game(freezes on load, multiplayer never connects, among so much more)
XB360 version smooth runnings.

How can the once 'king of consoles' not produce unflausable content.

As for the huge sale number, clearly people buying out of dedication, but how many will be returned/traded-in in comparison to the xb an wii.

Reading these pages, it is clear that the reason Sony are not hasty in supporting the European consumer is because they see that they are able to snub them in any way they choose and still achieve decent sales volumes. If you are all buying products that you are dissatisfied with on purchase then what do you expect to happen? If you were about to buy a Big Mac and a sign said 'No beef today' you simply wouldn鈥檛 buy it and you鈥檇 choose the chicken sandwich!

This is the price you pay for unquestioning loyalty towards a brand and not doing a bit of research before spending hundreds of pounds.

I do own a 360 and it is not always as flawless as people on here would have you believe. I have had 3 red lights which was fixed for free. However the operating system, Xbox live, the exclusive titles, video downloads, game demos, Xbox live arcade and especially the controllers are really all quite excellent.

If I do buy a PS3 in the future, it will be for the inexpensive Blu-ray player primarily (even more so when the price comes down further) and secondly to catch up on the handful of great exclusive titles that I may have missed on 360. Until then it can wait on the shelf.

seriously what was up with the comment about the 80gb European model?

"but I will mention that, for example, the European market with the 80gb hard drive is the highest hard drive we are offering on the PS3"


ok? 80gb model where?