This is it—I want a Playstation that can play PS One, PS2, and PS3 games. I do not need it to be a home entertainment system with all of the whistles and bells. I have no intention of playing Resident Evil 5 or Metal Gear 4 or Grand Theft Auto in my living room with mom and dad watching. I believe, that if Sony just made a PlayStation 3 with backward compatibility and nothing else, it would not have as many problems and it would be more affordable, more user friendly, and it will be built to last. I ask you to please consider an old idea—the idea, that “less is more” Just consider for a moment, making a game machine–that just plays PlayStation compatible games. Thank you.

That being said, (here comes the HUGE pink elephant) isn’t this just more of the same? Floating PS3, spewing items in a clean white environment? Ok, maybe the work is top notch, but it’s reminiscent of the creepy baby commercial, and that even made my little brother, an 80’s metal head squeamish. Are there going to be any other ’story lines’ so to speak? A different campaign perhaps?

Some other random ideas:
- Use of branded entertainment to add the earning potential of PS3, maybe through HOME
Similar to what Xbox is offering. Creating entertaining content for advertisers with the oh-so subtle advertisements, like Burger King’s games. Sony doesn’t always have to sell to end users to earn money.
- Value instead of price
Instead of price wars, are there any ideas to improve the perception of value for the PS3? Its always easy to talk about reducing price, but that impacts your future sales. Since raising prices is taboo, the rule-of-thumb for new products is usually to start high, and cut down (although in Sony’s case they started too high).
Promote the educational aspect (if any) of the PS3. There’s always the hype about “serious” games for training/educational purposes although nothing much has been done. Use the HOME network capabilities and go on a public school PR campaign to promote the use of PS3 there. Have kids link up across schools or something. Work with more of those gaming schools (you see more of their ads these days) and have the students work on creating PS3 games, and give them the tools to do it.
- New channels
I can imagine learning from Betamex, and find out new key channels that influence the outcome of the format war. I don’t know enough about global markets to say for sure, but maybe looking overseas (europe, asia, etc) and convincing the smaller but more numerous independent movie producers to work with blu-ray might help. That might not come under Kim’s jurisdiction, but its a thought.
- Coping with an ineffective first launch
Let’s face it…a poor first launch diminishes your future sales over the ENTIRE projected life of the console. Playing catch-up sounds nice, but total expected earnings from the PS3 already took a nose-dive. So Sony can’t just hope to increase its PS3 sales. It has to increase it at a rate that is much GREATER than the Wii or Xbox 360. And that requires a lot of AGGRESSIVE action. Sony can’t afford to trail anymore. Hard to describe without visuals…there’s a really neat graph I saw once that shows this effect.

KK

Oh yeah, Paramount? Paramount only has Transformers right now… get Disney to release and advertise Cars and other movies on Blu-ray, and the people wil come…

Very nice ad banner- I’m jealous of your skills now :P

On the games front, the few exclusive releases so far do not have near the fanbase as other already-established titles (eg. Halo). While PS3 does have some exclusive games with larger followings planned (Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Gran Turismo, etc.), they are still too far into the future to make the PS3 attractive in the present.

As a Blu-ray player, the ongoing format war with HD-DVD reduces the appeal of sinking money on something that could very well go the way of Betamax. At $500-600 for a PS3 console and then $20-30 per disc, the threat of being the proud owner of $1k of abandoned technology is very unappealing. Paramount/Dreamworks’ recent announcement of dropping Blu-ray certainly doesn’t help.

The PS3 has several other capabilities as a multimedia center, but the gaming and movies are probably the two key points the majority of consumers really consider.

That said, I think the only remaining tool at Sony’s disposal is price. Everyone already knows the name “Sony” and has heard of the PS3. They also know that the PS3’s retail price is more than 2x the Wii and $100 more than the Xbox360 and doesn’t offer any particularly good arguments to justify that difference.

By offering a PS3 with full capabilities (not stripped out hardware, reduced ports, reduced hard disk space, etc.) at prices comparable to the competitors, Sony could make the PS3 competitive again. Otherwise, I think the PS3 will continue to trail for another year, when it really starts to strengthen its games.

Just my thoughts…