Gaming Executive Assclownery thread!

[Animalor]

Here's the deal. Insteasd of polluting the PS3 thread with the comments of gaming executives, let's focus those in this thread or we can discuss the merit of or laugh at the comments of our favorite overpaid corporate comedians leaders.

Here are the ground rules.

1 - If at all possible, try to use the original source of the article and not the possibly skewed Joystiq or Kotaku renditions that might pick and choose the quotes without offering context. Quote whatever you want in your post, however original interviews or sources please.

2 - The person being quoted has to actually work for said gaming company. Doesn't have to be a console maker, 1st party dev or 3rd party devs are fair game. As long as they have strong opinions, are making bold statements or making themselves and their company look really stupid.

Let's start with a very angry Peter Dille, VP or Marketing for the PS brand here in America.

PD: I don’t want to be argumentative, but I take issue with Microsoft either having a long tail, or being profitable, because they’ve never done either. They’ve never made a dime in this business, number one, and number two, they’ve never had a tail. They’ve never been successful enough to have a tail! So the notion of a back half of the curve doesn’t exist for them. They stopped the Xbox and I kind of feel for the guy that bought an Xbox the month before they said ‘we’re out of business, we’re moving on.’

The reason I get a little emotional about that is it’s in stark contrast to our approach. If we’ve got something that says PlayStation, we’re going to stand behind it for 10 years, and deliver games like God of War II in the 7th year of the cycle.

With the Xbox 360 you’ve got an inconsistent design, some have a hard drive, some don’t, and none of them have Blu-Ray, and the HD-DVD will be out of business in a matter of months. Is this a 10 year product? And by the way, it doesn’t even work. Do they want to be selling it for 10 years and refurbishing them all for 10 more years? I don’t think that’s a 10 year product. You could disagree with me, or they could disagree with me, but I’d put that up against the PS3 any day.

Peter is obviously angry about something. Not sure what.

Then there's this gem from Peter Moore:

http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=16809

I built a business plan [for Japan], but I don't think my expectations in Japan were anything close to what Sony's expectations are. They are failing. They're missing their plan by much more than I'm missing my plan.

"Well Sony might be outselling us in Japan, but they are sucking a lot more than they planned to, while we are sucking a lot less than we planned." This is ROFL funny right there...

Thirdly, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's president David Reeves, who will actively sell out the other divisions of SCE to protect his pricepoint for the PS3 in Europe. First he told the world that the 100$ price drop was meerly a firesale for the 60GB in NA, and now he's saying that the 80GB unit isn't really a worthwhile change from the 60 and not really worth the upgrade.

http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2007/07/13/506117.html

This is a vid and the comment is @ about 3:05 minutes in. It's all in english so don't be frightened off by the text. (Which I assume is Norwegian).


Lastly, I hope people everyone here can keep the tone light and have fun with this thread

[miir]

I sorta agree with the general message of the first quote.
The overlap with the PS/PS2 and the PS2/PS3 is a big positive for Sony.
They have proven that they will stand behind their consoles.

[Animalor]

I don't remember the PS1/PS2 overlap clearly as I wasn't a big console gamer back then but I agree with you on the PS2/PS3 overlap. This is Sony's saving grace right now.

[miir]

Thirdly, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's president David Reeves, who will actively sell out the other divisions of SCE to protect his pricepoint for the PS3 in Europe.

I wasn't aware that the VAT was included in the 599 euro pricepoint.
With a 25% VAT, the actual price of the PS3 comes in at under 480 euros.
The average VAT I think is around 17.5%, making the price around 510 euros.

With Ontario's 8% PST and 6% GST, you're actually paying $625.86 for a $549 PS3, or $796.86 for a $699 PS3.
$796.86 CDN works out to around 555 euros.

[Aslanna]

How would you describe each current game console if you had to describe it as a meal or food?

JT: I think the PS3 is the Surf 'n Turf. You want the lobster and steak and you're going to give yourself the treat of getting the best thing on the menu. The PS2 is your favorite burger restaurant -- you go there for comfort food and it's just always good and is a good value.

[As for the other two consoles], one [Wii] is a lollipop, and I'm too old for lollipops. The other one [Xbox 360] I get sick from once in a while because the cook isn't always reliable.

--Jack Tretton, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America

[Animalor]

This thread couldn't have come at a more interesting day.

Peter Moore resigns from Microsoft to go head up EA's new EA Sports Operation!!!
*edit* I violated my own rule and posted a link to Kotaku.

Instead, here's the Goodbye announcement podcast from Major Nelson
http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2007 ... odbye.aspx

As well, the official accouncement from gamerscoreblog.com.
http://gamerscoreblog.com/team/archive/ ... 52114.aspx

Reasons are essentially that Moore is originally from the Bay Area and that he and his family wanted to return there.

Don Mattrick, former President at EA steps in to fill Peter's considerable shoes.

Conspiracy theorists have been clamoring that EA Sports would be becoming 360 exclusives. I wonder if MS made him sign an NDA before he left on the actual 360 failure rate.

[Winnow]

Conspiracy theorists have been clamoring that EA Sports would be becoming 360 exclusives. I wonder if MS made him sign an NDA before he left on the actual 360 failure rate.

I'm not a fan at all of EA Sports, especially Madden but the masses love it. Maybe Peter Moore can squeeze an ounce of creativity out of the EA developers for Madden 09.

If Madden goes 360 exclusive, that's a pretty big blow to Sony and the PS3 in the United States.

[Deward]

Microsoft is the only compnay that could afford to get EA to go exclusive. That was the only reason I bought an XBox in the first place was for football. I don't like madden much but I love the NCAA football. I will be selling off my xbox with 32 games in the hope I can afford a 360 with ncaa 08. Or most of it at least.

[Animalor]

I absolutely love David Reeves. His brand of comedy is refreshing.

http://threespeech.com/blog/?p=506

July is not really a gamers’ month unless you get a big, big title. So we thought if we reduced the price, we’d annoy a lot of people. We did think about it, but we also felt that it wasn’t doing that badly. In the US, they’ve been going for more than six months, so they took the decision that going down in price was a better thing to do than a value pack.

A price cut would only aggravate your early adopters but then again, early adopters get burned on just about everything in console gaming anyways.

[Dregor Thule]

A price cut would only aggravate your early adopters but then again, early adopters get burned on just about everything in console gaming anyways.

Early adopters get burned in virtually EVERYTHING involving technology. They pay the high price for the ability to say they had it first. Hello, iPhone.

[miir]

For the most part, the industry has been rinse-and-repeat, There's been lots of product that looked like last year's product, that looked a lot like the year before.

Doesn't that describe EA's business model?

[masteen]

People criticize EA Sports for not innovating, but there comes a point where your game will stop resembling the sport it's based on and become something else. Madden and NCAA are both excellent games, and even though I don't play as fanatically as some people, I can still be fairly competive because I understand how to run an offense.

I'm honestly not that fond of the shit they added this year (where a player can "catch fire" or some such nonsense), because, well, that doesn't really happen. Vince Young won his title by running his offense and playing his best, not by "catching fire" or some other garbage.

[Boogahz]

I haven't noticed the "catch fire" addition having any effect on the game personally. Granted, I have only really played one full game, since I have been concentrating on the Legend system (which I am liking a lot).

As for innovations, EA seems to have taken at least one major feature to concentrate on with each yearly release. Last year was the running game (for NCAA and Madden) with more blocking options and animations, better ball/player dynamics (for FIFA 07 and UEFA Champions League), and I am guessing they have done similar things for other sports. While these might sound like small things, they have a pretty big impact on the overall gameplay.