Advertising Woes

A rule of thumb I keep in mind when I read or see advertisements or official statements from companies: if you focus on attacking another company, it probably means you have nothing good to say about your own products. That's why Apple's pathetically inaccurate Mac commercials only make me dislike Macs even more; by telling lies to make the competition look bad, you only make yourself look bad.

But this blog isn't about computers, though I could do an entire post about why I don't like Apple if it was. This is a blog about video games, and on that note I will focus on Sony. As you may know, on the eve of the US release of the Nintendo DSi, Sony sent out a statement to developers (or possibly retailers; either way, it was an official statement) basically explaining that the DS has a terribly limited audience and just generally isn't a worthwhile system, so people should focus on the PSP instead. Like the sudden reveal of motion sensing controllers at E3 2006, shortly after Nintendo announced the exact same thing, this backfired for Sony. Gaming news sites and blogs blasted the obviously desperate, underhanded technique, and nobody fell for it.

But somehow I doubt that will stop them from doing the same thing again, given that all their statements have been about the same. Sony constantly puts out statements about how amazing their products are doing, and how bad their competitors are. Clearly, nobody is being fooled; the DS has sold over 100 million units, more than twice the PSP. As for the PS3, it has sold about 8 million units fewer than the 360, and less than half as much as the Wii. This is not an attempt to suggest that better sales = better consoles, as "better console" is a matter of opinion, but when you say that everyone prefers or should prefer your console, you better have some data to back it up.

If your products are good, people will buy them. If people aren't buying them, maybe you need to fix the product instead of trying to convince everyone that they want something they clearly don't want. You would think Sony would have learned from this by now. When the PS3 was first announced, people were angry as hell about the $600 price tag. Sony dropped the price, and people started buying it. Perhaps another price drop is in the works. Either way, stop telling people they want it and actually make them want it.

Not to say Sony and Apple are the only companies who trash talk, but they are BY FAR the worst offenders.