pari
07-25-2007, 05:07 PM
Interview (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1534/whats_the_dille_sonys_marketing_.php)
Excerpt from the interview
I heard the Sony keynote was very humble this time, in terms of how it was presenting itself. Why is that?
Peter Dille: First and foremost, it's a reflection of Jack (Tretton). We've got a new president and CEO, and Jack's got a different personality than some of the folks in the past. I think it fits him well. He talked about the need to earn our consumers' business every day, and I think it's something that we've always taken very seriously, but maybe we haven't said it enough. I think people really responded to it, and were happy to hear us express those points of view.
What has been learned from the reaction to "All I Want for Christmas is a PSP" and so on?
PD: What was learned was that was never intended to be passed off as viral. Our promotions people and this agency we were working with came up with this notion of having a program where you could ask for a PSP. Unfortunately, the way we executed it gave the impression that we weren't behind it. The lesson there is that there was a violent reaction to Sony being a poseur and not standing behind its message. It wasn't our intent, we recognized it immediately as something that needed to be fixed, and we took it down. Lesson learned, and hopefully we'll avoid that type of thing going forward.
It seems like it wouldn't have been as much of an issue in the past. I wonder if you think that blogs are changing the face of marketing and PR in this way?
PD: Absolutely. There's no doubt about it. News travels so fast, and the community is so passionate about products like PlayStation that they're going to let you know about it, and now they have a voice where they can really make themselves heard. Getting back to what we're doing differently and what we've learned, we've launched our own blog. We've recognized that we need to be more relevant in the digital age in how we communicate with our consumer.
It's relatively recent, but we've had a really strong reaction to the blog, and our consumer loves the fact that we're talking directly to them. I think that quite frankly, many of them were very skeptical. "Is Sony really going to be serious about this? Will we really hear from them?" So far they've been very pleased that executives are on the blog, we're responding to posts, and we're paying attention to it. We take it very seriously.
That's different from Three Speech, right? What is the drive behind Three Speech?
PD: I'm the wrong person to ask, because it's the product of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. Obviously the Internet shows up all over the world, but it's not an SCEA initiative, so I'd steer you to our colleagues at SCEE to give you more background on Three Speech.
Do you feel the way the PS3 has been painted in a negative light in some circles is going to have any real bearing in the future, in terms of mindshare?
PD: We've very confident in the PlayStation 3's long-term prospects of being the dominant console on the market. We talk a lot about ten-year lifecycles. I think Sony proved that we meant business with the PS1, with a ten-year lifecycle. With the PS2, we're approaching year eight, and we just released titles like God of War. We're serious about this ten-year lifecycle now being a reality.
With PS3, there was incredible anticipation, but the product was delayed, and there were some well-documented problems Sony had in rolling it out in its market. I think that resulted in some PR that wasn't optimal. The good news was that the product was worth the wait. It's a wonderful product, and we've gotten fantastic feedback from the consumers who got it. The product reliability is through the roof. PlayStation products have always been extremely reliable, but this is the most of any. Again, we take a ten-year approach. We're seven months into this, and if people want to add up the games seven months in, I think they're missing the point. From our perspective, we're just getting started, and when all is said and done, we're very confident that the PlayStation 3 will emerge as the victor.
I might have to call you on PlayStation products always being reliable - when the PS2 came out, the first iteration did have some bad drive problems.
PD: It did, right. But they've always had a high level of quality, and we stand behind them. And this one is the highest of any. The PlayStation 3 is a terrifically engineered product.
To what degree do you think the price cut is going to increase sales?
PD: We're already seeing a 2x lift. Sales have doubled at our top five accounts since Monday.
That's fast results!
PD: We get sales results every day, and we're in direct contact with our retailers. And we're talking about the middle of July, and before even the advertising has kicked in on the Sunday circulars. We're seeing an immediate, favorable impact. I think that can only go up from there, as retailers get behind it and as all the content that we talked about at the press conference starts rolling out between now and the rest of the year.
How is Sony going to go about retaking [the lead]? There's a lot of skepticism -- how is that going to be alleviated? Is that going to take a little time?
PD: The confidence that we have in the PlayStation 3 is really very high. There are a couple of things that people were hoping to see coming in to E3. One of them was a price cut, and we've addressed that. Another thing that we hear a lot is, "Do they have good games to drive this thing?" The reality is that we had a pretty good launch lineup; in fact, we're very proud of the launch lineup. After that, I think we went a little bit dark. It took awhile, and then things like MotorStorm showed up, and that's great, but then we didn't have anything for a little bit after that. It's fair to say that gamers wanted to see more games.
So then you fast-forward to E3, and you've got the price cut, and there are more than 200 games coming out this year. We're delivering Killzone, and [despite skepticism], the Killzone event didn't disappoint. You've got Metal Gear Solid as an exclusive. We've got a development organization that is larger than Nintendo's and Microsoft's combined that is able to crank out 15 exclusives up and down various genres, from RPGs to shooters to Little Big Planet, which you can't even put in a category. We're very confident that gamers are going to respond to the product offering going forward, and the passion that they have for that PlayStation brand will be there in spades.
Are you confident that Metal Gear Solid 4 is going to stay exclusive?
PD: Yeah.
Konami recently cast a little doubt on that.
PD: There was something that came out prior to (the Sony E3 keynote) announcement. Our folks have talked to the Konami folks, and until the announcement was out from our side, I think they were being a little bit cagey. But the agreement calls for exclusivity, the announcement's been made, and now people know the real story.
How aggressively is Sony going to be tackling online in consoles, going forward? What do you think of the other offerings that are up now?
PD: We're attacking online very, very aggressively. We do have a different approach. The other offerings are just fine, and they do things really well, but that's not to say that we feel like we have to do everything they're doing. First and foremost, we offer online for free, and our competition charges people to get online. We've got a different philosophy and a different business model. As Phil talked about in our press conference, we're building things specifically for our devices, and delivering them online. The devices themselves help show off that content. For example, whereas our competition takes a bunch of old content and catalogs content from previous generations and offers that in a download fashion, our development organization are making games specifically for PS3. When you download them, they're in 1080p, and they're showing off what's going on with Cell and the PlayStation 3 technology.
We also have a hard disk drive in every box, which means that we don't have to be constrained by an arbitrary file format size. We can make things as small or big as we want. People don't associate a game like Warhawk as a downloadable game, but it will be available for download. It's a different approach. And then you get into Home, which again I think is a major point of difference. Online communities have existed, and they're traditionally 2D and text-based. To date, they've done that well, but what Home does is that it leapfrogs the current offering and delivers something that people haven't even imagined yet.
Microsoft's offering is a little more streamlined, because it's been around longer. They've got friends, and leaderboards and stuff. Nintendo, on the other hand, is still using friend codes, and it's difficult to access. You seem to be in between in terms of the friends issue. How do you see that going?
PD: You're right. Microsoft has been doing it for awhile, and we've been doing it for seven months. We've been making improvements as we go, but there's still a lot more improvements that we need to make. The notion of friend lists and our version of Achievements -- you've probably seen plans for the Hall of Fame and trophies.
I think these things will greatly enhance the community and the ability to communicate with your friends. You can fire up the game directly from Home. All of these things I think will be great for the community. They're not all in yet, but I think it would be fair to give us a little bit of time not just to catch up, but to deliver our version and our vision. On Microsoft's side, I think they too are enhancing their service, and it wasn't so long ago that they got to downloading in the background. We can't get there in one day.
After the E3, I see a change in perception about Sony in media...
Excerpt from the interview
I heard the Sony keynote was very humble this time, in terms of how it was presenting itself. Why is that?
Peter Dille: First and foremost, it's a reflection of Jack (Tretton). We've got a new president and CEO, and Jack's got a different personality than some of the folks in the past. I think it fits him well. He talked about the need to earn our consumers' business every day, and I think it's something that we've always taken very seriously, but maybe we haven't said it enough. I think people really responded to it, and were happy to hear us express those points of view.
What has been learned from the reaction to "All I Want for Christmas is a PSP" and so on?
PD: What was learned was that was never intended to be passed off as viral. Our promotions people and this agency we were working with came up with this notion of having a program where you could ask for a PSP. Unfortunately, the way we executed it gave the impression that we weren't behind it. The lesson there is that there was a violent reaction to Sony being a poseur and not standing behind its message. It wasn't our intent, we recognized it immediately as something that needed to be fixed, and we took it down. Lesson learned, and hopefully we'll avoid that type of thing going forward.
It seems like it wouldn't have been as much of an issue in the past. I wonder if you think that blogs are changing the face of marketing and PR in this way?
PD: Absolutely. There's no doubt about it. News travels so fast, and the community is so passionate about products like PlayStation that they're going to let you know about it, and now they have a voice where they can really make themselves heard. Getting back to what we're doing differently and what we've learned, we've launched our own blog. We've recognized that we need to be more relevant in the digital age in how we communicate with our consumer.
It's relatively recent, but we've had a really strong reaction to the blog, and our consumer loves the fact that we're talking directly to them. I think that quite frankly, many of them were very skeptical. "Is Sony really going to be serious about this? Will we really hear from them?" So far they've been very pleased that executives are on the blog, we're responding to posts, and we're paying attention to it. We take it very seriously.
That's different from Three Speech, right? What is the drive behind Three Speech?
PD: I'm the wrong person to ask, because it's the product of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. Obviously the Internet shows up all over the world, but it's not an SCEA initiative, so I'd steer you to our colleagues at SCEE to give you more background on Three Speech.
Do you feel the way the PS3 has been painted in a negative light in some circles is going to have any real bearing in the future, in terms of mindshare?
PD: We've very confident in the PlayStation 3's long-term prospects of being the dominant console on the market. We talk a lot about ten-year lifecycles. I think Sony proved that we meant business with the PS1, with a ten-year lifecycle. With the PS2, we're approaching year eight, and we just released titles like God of War. We're serious about this ten-year lifecycle now being a reality.
With PS3, there was incredible anticipation, but the product was delayed, and there were some well-documented problems Sony had in rolling it out in its market. I think that resulted in some PR that wasn't optimal. The good news was that the product was worth the wait. It's a wonderful product, and we've gotten fantastic feedback from the consumers who got it. The product reliability is through the roof. PlayStation products have always been extremely reliable, but this is the most of any. Again, we take a ten-year approach. We're seven months into this, and if people want to add up the games seven months in, I think they're missing the point. From our perspective, we're just getting started, and when all is said and done, we're very confident that the PlayStation 3 will emerge as the victor.
I might have to call you on PlayStation products always being reliable - when the PS2 came out, the first iteration did have some bad drive problems.
PD: It did, right. But they've always had a high level of quality, and we stand behind them. And this one is the highest of any. The PlayStation 3 is a terrifically engineered product.
To what degree do you think the price cut is going to increase sales?
PD: We're already seeing a 2x lift. Sales have doubled at our top five accounts since Monday.
That's fast results!
PD: We get sales results every day, and we're in direct contact with our retailers. And we're talking about the middle of July, and before even the advertising has kicked in on the Sunday circulars. We're seeing an immediate, favorable impact. I think that can only go up from there, as retailers get behind it and as all the content that we talked about at the press conference starts rolling out between now and the rest of the year.
How is Sony going to go about retaking [the lead]? There's a lot of skepticism -- how is that going to be alleviated? Is that going to take a little time?
PD: The confidence that we have in the PlayStation 3 is really very high. There are a couple of things that people were hoping to see coming in to E3. One of them was a price cut, and we've addressed that. Another thing that we hear a lot is, "Do they have good games to drive this thing?" The reality is that we had a pretty good launch lineup; in fact, we're very proud of the launch lineup. After that, I think we went a little bit dark. It took awhile, and then things like MotorStorm showed up, and that's great, but then we didn't have anything for a little bit after that. It's fair to say that gamers wanted to see more games.
So then you fast-forward to E3, and you've got the price cut, and there are more than 200 games coming out this year. We're delivering Killzone, and [despite skepticism], the Killzone event didn't disappoint. You've got Metal Gear Solid as an exclusive. We've got a development organization that is larger than Nintendo's and Microsoft's combined that is able to crank out 15 exclusives up and down various genres, from RPGs to shooters to Little Big Planet, which you can't even put in a category. We're very confident that gamers are going to respond to the product offering going forward, and the passion that they have for that PlayStation brand will be there in spades.
Are you confident that Metal Gear Solid 4 is going to stay exclusive?
PD: Yeah.
Konami recently cast a little doubt on that.
PD: There was something that came out prior to (the Sony E3 keynote) announcement. Our folks have talked to the Konami folks, and until the announcement was out from our side, I think they were being a little bit cagey. But the agreement calls for exclusivity, the announcement's been made, and now people know the real story.
How aggressively is Sony going to be tackling online in consoles, going forward? What do you think of the other offerings that are up now?
PD: We're attacking online very, very aggressively. We do have a different approach. The other offerings are just fine, and they do things really well, but that's not to say that we feel like we have to do everything they're doing. First and foremost, we offer online for free, and our competition charges people to get online. We've got a different philosophy and a different business model. As Phil talked about in our press conference, we're building things specifically for our devices, and delivering them online. The devices themselves help show off that content. For example, whereas our competition takes a bunch of old content and catalogs content from previous generations and offers that in a download fashion, our development organization are making games specifically for PS3. When you download them, they're in 1080p, and they're showing off what's going on with Cell and the PlayStation 3 technology.
We also have a hard disk drive in every box, which means that we don't have to be constrained by an arbitrary file format size. We can make things as small or big as we want. People don't associate a game like Warhawk as a downloadable game, but it will be available for download. It's a different approach. And then you get into Home, which again I think is a major point of difference. Online communities have existed, and they're traditionally 2D and text-based. To date, they've done that well, but what Home does is that it leapfrogs the current offering and delivers something that people haven't even imagined yet.
Microsoft's offering is a little more streamlined, because it's been around longer. They've got friends, and leaderboards and stuff. Nintendo, on the other hand, is still using friend codes, and it's difficult to access. You seem to be in between in terms of the friends issue. How do you see that going?
PD: You're right. Microsoft has been doing it for awhile, and we've been doing it for seven months. We've been making improvements as we go, but there's still a lot more improvements that we need to make. The notion of friend lists and our version of Achievements -- you've probably seen plans for the Hall of Fame and trophies.
I think these things will greatly enhance the community and the ability to communicate with your friends. You can fire up the game directly from Home. All of these things I think will be great for the community. They're not all in yet, but I think it would be fair to give us a little bit of time not just to catch up, but to deliver our version and our vision. On Microsoft's side, I think they too are enhancing their service, and it wasn't so long ago that they got to downloading in the background. We can't get there in one day.
After the E3, I see a change in perception about Sony in media...