Now that Sony’s PlayStation 3 console has been launched in Japan and America in the past two weeks, with hundreds of thousands units having been shipped out of the Japanese manufacturer warehouses and into the homes of fellow gamers. Word of mouth is beginning to spread regarding first impression and according to a leading newspaper – The New York Times – the final product does not quite match the hype.
Reporter Seth Schiesel expresses his experience with the PlayStation 3 with this statement to Sony Corporation’s CEO: “Howard Stringer, you have a problem. Your company’s new video game system just isn’t that great.”
Schiesel claims to have spent more than 30 hours with a retail version of the console and played around 13 different types of games. After his marathon of gaming, he says that although the PS3 is “the world’s most powerful game console,” it is “surprisingly clunky to use and simply does not provide many basic functions that users have come to expect, especially online.”
From the article: “Measured in megaflops, gigabytes and other technical benchmarks, the PlayStation 3 is certainly the world’s most powerful game console. It falls far short, however, of providing the world’s most engaging overall entertainment experience. There is a big difference, and Sony seems to have confused one for the other.”
The high-profile newspaper goes on to point out several other problems with the console, including controllers that need to be synched up to each PS3 it is used with through a USB cable (versus Microsoft’s truly universal Xbox 360 controller), lack of custom soundtracks, lack of a unified friends list, and no background downloading. In Sony’s defence, the fact that the PS3 is a connected console means that system updates can be added later, like they have been with the Xbox 360.
There are a few positive notes, but the review is overwhelmingly negative. Schiesel, who lauded the Xbox 360’s ease of use when that console launched, feels as though the PS3 is largely “unfinished” with some features that feel “tacked-on.”
Only time will tell whether this and any other poor reviews of the PS3 will do anything to deter gamers from buying the much-hyped console, or possibly convince them to buy a machine from one of Sony’s rivals like the Nintendo Wii.
Source: The New York Times
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