A few decades ago the masses believed video games were a waste of time for lackadaisical youths to pacify themselves while ignoring their responsibilities as both kids and young adults. As more and more people started understanding the benefits of gaming so too did the perception of what a video game is and, most importantly, the benefits gaming can bestow on a person’s life changed. Hi, my name is James Bullock and I am a gamer who has spent the better part of his existence testing the laws of physics, exploring the vastness of a world ruined, and been a champion inside various arenas courtesy of digitized worlds both driven by reality and created through pure unbelievable ingenuity unlike anything seen by human eyes. And as a gamer I’ve discovered something else video games provide: life lessons. Today I examine how overconfidence can almost kill at E3 even when it involves the likes of Sony following the success of its Playstation 2.
Overconfidence Can Kill (Sony at E3 [2006])
“Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” The aforementioned quote easily sums up Sony’s 2006 E3 press conference. With Microsoft’s second console, the Xbox 360, given a release window of November 2005, gamers and Sony ponies alike sat in jittery anticipation when the inevitable occurred during E3 2005: the announcement of Sony’s Playstation ”. The Playstation 2 dominated the sixth generation of gaming consoles, producing a vast library of critically acclaimed games and revolutionary concepts that would be adopted and expanded upon – so of course everyone was excited to see what Sony had to offer with the PS3. But people had to wait another year before any concrete information was produced. It didn’t take long before the PS3 took center stage during Sony’s problem-laden E3 2006 presentation that concluded with an announcement regarding the system’s release date. what really drove gamers crazy was the information below the bold statement that in North America the “PS3” would be released on November 17th, 2006 (almost a year after the Xbox 360). Like the “360”, the Blu-ray Disc-playing revolutionary console would feature two different versions: a “PS3” sporting a 20GB HDD and another featuring a 60GB HDD. The prices? $499 and $599 each – $100 dollars more than the low-end and high-end “Xbox 360” models respectively. To make matters worse, Sony knew the prices were exorbitantly high; boldly stating, “We must take risks to reap the rewards,” when referring to people paying Panasonic “3DO”-circa 1993 prices for a system that proved unstable on the showroom stage and featured a media format that people thought couldn’t overcome the momentum of DVDs (at least the Blu-Ray gamble paid off for Sony – unlike that controller prototype).
This wasn’t just a blunder in the eyes of gamers everywhere. Many believed Sony’s ego had grown so big thanks to the Playstation 2’s success that people in the company thought they could do no wrong. Thanks to the price points and a few system-selling exclusives becoming multi-platform such as “Grand Theft Auto IV” (the game that convinced me to upgrade and purchase an Xbox 360 over the wallet-busting Sony offering), the Playstation ” struggled out of the gate when many initially assumed it would dominate the competition. Sony, having established a brand fans believed in with the Playstation following two impressive generational offerings, tried to push the limits of trust and ended up losing all the momentum gained from their past accomplishments while eventually making the PS3 the least important console of the seventh generation.
Have you learned any major life lessons from E3 or any video game for that matter? Leave them in the comments below and, as always, thanks for reading.
