The PlayStation brand is built on quicksand and Sony knows this.
Sony had a great start back when the PlayStation 4 came out. They managed to ride Microsoft’s less than stellar launch into huge success, cementing their dominance early in the console generation. They were offering a console that was $100 less, seemingly more powerful than the competition and with a large enough marketing budget to ensure people heard about it.
FEAR OF LOSS
Fast-forward to 2018 and Sony’s marketing can only take it so far. After years of enjoying market dominance, Sony have shown their true colours. Seeing as how Sony’s PlayStation division is one of their most profitable departments after major changes occurred in the company’s focus, it’s no surprise that they are willing to do anything to keep it that way, whether consumers like it or not. I’m referring, of course, to Sony’s recent string of questionable comments regarding cross-play between the PS4 and the console competition (Xbox One family and Nintendo Switch) as well as some other tactics which I can safely say are sneakier than Sam Fisher, Ezio, Snake and the Xenomorph combined.
FAUX-K
There’s a reason people think all games on PS4 Pro output in 4K and go on to say it’s the best console graphics they have ever seen; that reason is marketing. Once Sony realised they were outgunned by Microsoft’s Xbox One X in terms of power, the marketing budget was focused on bombarding consumers with terms like ‘dynamic 4K’ and ‘4K capable’. The fact of the matter is, the only thing the PS4 Pro can do in 4K is movies and an extremely limited range of games. The rest use the term 4K very flexibly and never hit the advertised 4K resolution. I can’t help to be reminded of SEGA’s “blast processing”, a made up term they peppered in all of their ads back in 1993 once they realised the competing SNES was more powerful in terms of general graphical capability.
NO CROSS-PLAY, YES PROBLEM?
While cross-play has been a problem with the PS4 for quite some time in games like Rocket League and Minecraft, it didn’t garner as much attention as when Nintendo Switch users tried to use their Epic account (which they created and played with on PS4) to play Fortnite on Switch, only to find that they couldn’t. All their progression, purchases, Vbucks and outfits gone, unless they made a new account and re-purchased everything. Sony’s extremely corporate BS response to the fact that they are actively blocking cross-play with other platforms brought on a powerful reaction by the public, calling them out on their terrible and blatantly anti-consumer tactic. Todd Howard himself stated that Bethesda wants to incorporate cross-play in the upcoming Fallout 76 but Sony was “not as helpful as everyone would like“.
“SONY HAS THE BEST EXCLUSIVES”
The best-selling exclusive on PS4, a platform with 80 million users, is Uncharted 4 with 8.7 million sold. The best-selling exclusive on the Nintendo Switch, a platform with an estimated 20 million users at the time of writing, is Super Mario Odyssey with 10.41 million sold. The PS4 has been out for a lot more time than the Switch and Sony’s marketing and fans always turn to the platform’s exclusives as the sign of its superiority. From where I’m sitting, only a little over 10% of the install base buys those big exclusives Sony’s got all of us talking about. Extremely low considering the huge install base. I rest my case.
WILL THEY DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?
Market leader or not, Sony are starting to feel the heat. The Nintendo Switch is grabbing more market share day by day and Microsoft are financially able to take the hit and re-deploy with great exclusives which will no doubt look as good if not better than anything the PS4 has to offer, albeit in lesser numbers. It doesn’t help that Microsoft and Nintendo have fallen in love.The PlayStation brand relies heavily on marketing in order to stay on top but the modern consumer is getting more tech savvy and sees through Sony’s corporate stance towards them as well as their stretching of the truth regarding the technical capability of their consoles. With their next generation of consoles, Sony has to put their ‘pro-consumer’ masks back on or else they will have another PS3 on their hands.
If you would like to see more articles like this one, please consider supporting me on Patreon Become a Patron!