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By Nelson Schneider - 09/11/16 at 02:56 PM CT
Look! What’s that up in the sky!? Is it a supernova? Is it a meteorite? No! It’s Sony entering a self-inflicted death spiral thanks to a couple of horrible decisions over the course of the last few weeks.
This past week, we finally got a look at the PlayStation Neo… except the thing Sony revealed wasn’t even close to the PlayStation Neo gamers have been teased and tempted by for months now. No, the thing that Sony revealed – the PlayStation 4 Pro – isn’t a next-gen competitor for the upcoming Nintendo NX and Xbox Scorpio. It doesn’t support PC-style modding of Bethesda games. It doesn’t include a UHD Blu-Ray drive, either. At first it also wasn’t clear whether or not the triple-stacked Pro hardware, which looks frighteningly like the ‘hamburger’ menu buttons that have exploded in popularity amongst interface designers lately, was an entirely new console or a Sega CD-style add-on for the old PS4 (it’s NOT an add-on). No, the single selling point of the PS4 Pro is that it makes PS4 games look marginally better on 4K resolution screens (which has been compared to the jump from Standard Definition to High Definition by Sony’s Cronies, but actually isn’t). All this, for the low, low (not low) price of $400… the same as an original PS4 at launch!
Sony’s reasoning for launching the PS4 Pro was based on a fear of losing PS users to PC gaming mid-generation, as PC hardware surpasses the graphics that stagnant consoles are capable of producing. Yet this is an incredibly tone-deaf excuse and an even more tone-deaf execution. People have been fleeing the console ecosystems for PC gaming since mid-way through the 7th Gen, not because of graphics, but because consoles have demonstrably proven themselves to be no longer a clean, simple alternative to PC gaming, but actually a worse, more locked-down, and more expensive method of accessing 90% of the same games. If Sony wants to keep people locked into their console ecosystem, a small resolution bump isn’t what they need to pursue, but stronger relationships with third-parties that will bring in permanent PS platform exclusives.
As if the stupidity of the PS4 Pro wasn’t enough, Sony also recently announced that PlayStation Plus, the mandatory blood money required to play PS4 games online, is going to increase in cost by $10 per year. So in the course of a single hardware generation, not only did Sony move from offering free online functionality to paid online functionality, but they’ve actually made their subscription service the most expensive one in the market! And it doesn’t even include access to Sony’s anti-consumer ‘backward compatibility’ streaming platform, PlayStation Now!
Judging by the reaction of the gaming sector of the Internet, Sony has stabbed themselves repeatedly in the chest with these recent PS-related blunders. I can’t imagine a scenario in which these decisions do anything close to what Sony wants regarding user lock-in and retention for PS platforms. Rather, the opposite seems much more likely, with fed-up gamers fleeing Sony’s hubristic tyranny into the lovingly benign arms of Lord GabeN and the PC platform. Maybe the true PlayStation Neo is still lurking somewhere in the wings… or maybe by announcing ahead of Microsoft this time, we have caught a glimpse of the True Sony – the company that would have announced, then followed-through with the same DRM scheme that ultimately killed the XBONE, had MS not taken the hit and allowed Sony an opportunity to re-assess.
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