Is Microsoft losing the Xbox 360 PR battle?

By Mike Bantick
Saturday, 11 August 2007 07:34

Opinion and Analysis

Forget how well the hardware and software stack up.  Is it the PR gaffs and disappointing marketing decisions that cost companies sales in the multi-billion dollar gaming market?

Gaming is a high profile and dollar value market, huge amounts of words are written daily about the big companies involved.  Many of these words come direct from the companies themselves, via Press Releases or quotes from spokespersons.

Let’s look at some recent highs and lows of the propaganda battles within electronic gaming.  For the purposes of this article I have decided to do limit rummaging for detail.  Rather, I felt I would go with those recent PR events that have stuck in the brain, making a distinct impression of the company involved, and with any luck, represent a general public impression of their product.

Of late Sony have learnt some PR lessons, mostly in humility and to a certain extent  the benefits of putting gaffer tape to the mouths of many Sony executives.

Having just cleared sales of 1 million PS3’s in they heartland of Japan, Sony set their sights on the U.S.  Dropping the price of the PS3 by US$100 had immediate results, sales of the PS3 hitting an unprecedented spike.

Then the realisation hit, the price reduction was simply a run-out sale to see off the 60GB PS3, making way for a return to the US$599 priced 80GB PS3, an extra 20GB’s of hard drive,  but minus the Emotion Engine hardware for full backwards compatibility with PS2 and PSOne games.

Meanwhile the PAL regions of the world didn’t get a sniff of a cost reduction.  Instead a starter pack, costing the same, but including goodies such as a couple of games and extra SIX AXIS controllers.

If only they would throw a HDMI cable into the box.

Software for the PS3 is ramping up with LittleBigPlanet and (possibly) Killzone 2 being highlights of the near future.  And a slightly redesigned PlayStation Portable should be well received.

If Sony can do less “shafting” of the PAL territories, their PR assessment should improve, but for now let’s give them an iTWire PR rating of B

Onto Microsoft