Artificial Cheese

About three weeks ago, K-Mart released a coupon that granted the user 20% off anything in the store, aside from a few logical exceptions listed in the fine print. A new Playstation 3 was not listed as one of the exceptions. This was a perfect opportunity to buy a PS3.

At the same time, I was knee deep in working on a project that sucked up almost all of my free time. Prior to this coupon, my plan was to buy a PS3 when my schedule thinned out a little bit and I had some time to enjoy the device. Now I was faced with a decision: buy now to save money, or risk buying it later and lose out on the $80 savings.

If you know me, you know that my impulsions always get the best of me when it comes to electronics. So my cousin and I ran out to a K-Mart and luckily picked up the last two 40GB PS3s in the store. When I arrived home with the device, I kept it in the packaging since I did not have any games to play and returned to my work.

The next morning I decided that I should make sure that the PS3 works, just in case I need to return the product. I took the PS3 out of the box, hooked it up, and I was greeted by a loud, rich sound during startup. “That was cool,” I thought to myself.

When the menu was displayed on my television I instinctively starting browsing. As I browsed through the menu I slowly realized that the PS3 is hardly a console, it is a complete media solution. What I was displeased with is that I didn’t know all of the PS3’s capabilities until it was sitting in my house and attached to my television.

I understand that I could have done more research on the PS3 and known all of its capabilities, but the fact of the matter is that I shouldn’t need to do that. If Sony’s product group saw fit to include these features into the PS3, then Sony’s marketting department should take it upon themselves to make those features known to the potential customers. I can’t imagine how many sales are being lost just because every PS3 commercial on television portrays the PS3 as a simple gaming console.

I’ve had the PS3 for 3 weeks now, and I still have not purchased a game. I download from the Sony store, I stream media from my PC using the media server option, and I watch Blu-ray movies. All of this without playing one single game. If the PS3 can functionally exist in this house without a single game, that means it can exist in anyone’s house without a single game. The sooner Sony understands that their marketting strategy needs to expand to a non-gamer demographic, the sooner they’ll see their sales figures rise.