Welcome, You’ve Been Waiting

Hey Guys,
I’m thrilled to see this blog up, and I hope this kind of transparency works out well for both you and the fans.

To take advantage of you wanting to hear from us, I’ll say the following: A few weeks back I actually did a PS3 review that addressed most of my issues/concerns regarding the PS3 for blogcritics.org. It’s terribly bad netiquette, but I’ll post the link here:

https://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/05/01/110901.php

The amazing thing, is that in the time between that post and now, a lot of the issues have been addressed to some extent.

Some of the big issues, for me, at least, are the following:

Media usage:
You guys have done a lot these past few weeks, enough that I ran out and bought a PSP, too. It’s really very impressive. The bad part is that much of this should have been there since the beginning – just to match how you were advertising the device. Still, I’m thrilled to see some progress with the PS3 as a media hub. The price tag only works with that context, and as I said in the review – there is really no reason that the PS3 shouldn’t be able to do what the AppleTV can do (except playing DRM’d content, obviously.) And you guys still need to tighten all that up a bit, I know it’s a new feature – but it shouldn’t be, and a glimpse on your forums will give you some idea at how painful getting the media center functionality to work is.

Web Browser:
The web browser isn’t too big a deal for me, but what it can use IS. Being able to bring media rich websites into the living room – Pandora, Last.Fm, YouTube, Google Video.. successfully and easily would add a lot of value to your product, and I would hope you would vigorously investigate options to make these work (at all in some cases, easier in others.)

XMB:
The interface is nice, but when it comes to working with media it is a bit weak. Perhaps a more robust way of dealing with music and video files, playlist support, etc.

Playstation Store:
The playstation store however… this is really a place where you guys dropped the ball. I wasn’t overly fond of my 360 for a variety of reasons, but I had a plethora of games I could buy and demo, and movies and tv shows I could watch. The Wii also has quite a selection of content you can gain. The PS3 has been positioned as something that is beyond a gaming system – you guys need to make that a reality, and fast. Right now it’s little more than a nice gaming system, with few first party games, and a fancy dvd player with very few titles to be excited about.

And that’s fine, and would be fine, if the product was 200 dollars cheaper. Blu-Ray technology may be expensive, but it’s not an issue of how much that costs – it’s a question of how much is it worth, and blu ray isn’t worth THAT much to your average consumer. Heck, I’ve got a HDTV, HDMI cables, etc… and I can see very little difference in my regular DVD and my HD version, and most people I show it to can’t tell at all. So, yes, I see that the console costs “x” dollars, but it must be WORTH “x” dollars.

You have some great looking games coming out, but right now the selection is kind of weak. In fact, I’ve just been playing PS2 games the vast majority of the time. New systems always have that trouble, but you guys have an uphill battle n a lot of ways – which is ironic given your historical mastery of the market.

I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m trying to harp on you guys, I’ve been thrilled with my experience so far – it’s just that you guys need to do better so that I don’t feel like a chump for trading in my Wii and 360 to back the company that has always impressed me in this realm. Unlike many, I really see the vision you are trying to sell with the PS3 and I think the world is just about ready for it – but there needs to be some concreteness to start the revolution – the PS3 needs to fulfill its potential better so people can realize just how impressive a device it is.