Oh Sony, you are so near to my heart.  It’s not that I like your products; in fact I find most of them to be terrible (seriously, three generations and you can’t find a way to improve on the worst controller ever designed?).  No, my affection for you comes primarily from your incredible incompetence at predicting what will happen in your industry, followed by your inevitable assertions that your products are doing poorly because they aren’t designed for some crybaby “general” consumer base like the shitty Nintendo Wii, and the final step of catching up with your competitors a few years later by copying their technology and pretending it was your idea all along.

What’s truly amazing is how bad you are at bullshitting, and how you refuse to quit making bold, authoritative statements that can be proven wrong by anyone with a computer.  We’ve seen you get your ass handed to you by Penny-Arcade for fabricating a PS3 stock shortage, we’ve watched as you claimed rumble was a “last generation feature” then rushed to get it into your controllers, and now we get to watch as you helplessly scramble around trying to catch up with the product you once (hilariously) deemed an “expensive niche device.”

While you and Microsoft are equally guilty in failing to see what Nintendo was up to (not sure how “make games accessible, get more gamers” confused you), you are the only company that has come out with a device that is almost indistinguishable from that of the Wii, while at the same time trying to make the argument that yours is better because it’s “hardcore.”

From Techblog:

“Hard-core gamers have looked down their nose at motion gaming: it’s not particularly satisfying for them because it’s not terribly precise or challenging, it’s more social. So we’ll have games that the whole family can play that are very social, but we’ll also be able to do hard-core gamer games via a motion device that has never been done before.”

You know what?  Hardcore gamers may have indeed looked down their noses at motion control gaming, just like you and Microsoft did when the Wii was unveiled.  I’m sure Nintendo was really bummed about losing all of those hardcore gamers and gaining everyone else on the planet.

You still don’t get it.  The Wii was successful because of its accessibility, not because motion control is some magic button that makes people buy your games.  Hardcore gamers don’t want to jump around their houses for hours on end waving wands around, just like grandma and grandpa don’t want an ultra-precise motion controlled Splinter Cell.

You are making a product for a customer that doesn’t exist.  And even if there is such a thing as the “hardcore-motion-control-loving-gamer,” I’m betting they already have a Wii.

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