Now before I am stoned to death I am PRO PS3 it is my console of choice.

But I wonder if we will see this next generation?

It actually all started when CNN Money.com, a place that shouldn’t even be talking about this subject like they know anything about gaming, reported about the Playstation 3 having one bad month. Someone should’ve told them about the eight consecutive months that the Playstation 3 outsold the Microsoft XBox 360 in this same year beforehand, or that Microsoft wasn’t able to sell more 360s in January or February of 2008 than they did during those same months the year before. At that time, the sluggish sales of the 360 was claimed to have been “shortage of the system”. Of course, the portable pubic chorus never did question it, much like they never have questioned much about anything about the 360 or Microsoft this current generation (and when, by some stroke of God, they actually did, it was pitiful at best). There was nothing like the phenomenon we now have.
It is a shock to what CNN actually started. Every person under the sun with a gaming blog and a hatred for everything Sony suddenly decided that since CNN got the hits to their website that they wanted by a flame-bait article, they would have as much luck, and suddenly, they come out with a post about how doomed the system is, then others see two, three, four, TEN articles, within half a week, repeating everything that CNN and everyone else said beforehand, so much so that you could probably win a case against them plagiarizing the articles that came before hand, and delivering suggestions such as “take out the Blu-Ray player”, suggestions that may make the person who suggested it needing a defense for a sanity hearing. No matter how many times someone calls out the person that wrote it, or say that it’s nothing new, no one is there to listen, or they hear it and don’t care.

This is all after one bad month, and it’s as if no one else in the business ever has had an issue in which they sold less units in a particular month that year then they did at that point one year ago. Many companies have recovered from far worse, and many companies and analysts have never really seen it as that much of a big deal.

So what is the issue this time? It’s the brand name of the company that has done so: Sony. And for some reason or other, it seems like the portable public chorus has had it in for Sony, and will stop at nothing to spin anything into bad news for Sony. All while ignoring anything and everything that could never be spun into negatives. There is always some excuse, such as the so-called “360 shortage” that Microsoft kept claiming and every chorus member, media whore house, and fanboy just amplified to any decibel that they could get in order for the unsuspecting consumer to hear and take seriously. They over-hype the negatives while never appreciating the positives. This is at the same time the yet same people never call out any negatives for the other companies and praising the tiniest positive, or worse, making something that should be negative for the other side into a positive (the reverse of what they do for Sony).
However, this wouldn’t be as bad if it was just the no name blogs that were doing this. Hell, anyone with a computer can type anything up and send it out there for the masses, not to say that no blog is creditable or brings up good points. Blogs can be dismissed as fanboy bias (though sometimes that’s almost too easy, especially when you have a blog that actually brings up unbiased points). However, it’s not just them. It’s the mainstream media, the people that should know better than this, that write these stories, put them out there, and thus add fuel to the fire. They are the ones that visit the executives, are at the gaming expos, are at the press conferences, are the ones talking to the people that make the systems and the games that we enjoy. They are the ones that we are supposed to trust to give us fair, accurate, and unbiased reviews, news, and views. Us consumers, the ones that are buying the games and the systems with our hard earned dollars, depend on the reviews and views to tell us if something is worth purchasing.
However, instead of these journalists actually doing their damn job, what do we get? We get sites who call the 360 “the greatest game system of all time” as if they have any right naming any current generation console that. We get skewing of facts in graphs that tell us little yet pretend that they tell us everything. We have the gaming media whore houses visit the executives of one console manufacturer telling one of the whores that “we want more” in the other system’s would be former exclusives and the whore never even flinching while he goes and calls the other side of everything under the sun. We have that same whore house do whatever they can to expose Playstation Home when Sony wasn’t ready to reveal it, as if they think it’s the same as Sony hiding Saddam Hussein’s invisible WMDs. We have stories submitted to the gaming news portal N4G to the rate of one per day, now maybe even more. We have people posting holiday shopping guides that are nothing more than cheer leading one console when the video doesn’t match what the narrators tell us. We have a reviewer that makes clear factual errors and omissions on a PS3 exclusive game, and when called on it, instead gets on a soapbox, calling those that called his review of that game BS as “fanboys” and saying that other reviewers have always given that game’s creator a “free pass”. We get the article that stated us on this month of gaming media HELL that says that the economic crisis has nothing to do with Sony’s November NPD sales, then the very next paragraph contradict themselves by saying that the video game industry is not immune to the side effect of the bad economic time. We get those people that distort the truth and over exemplify the facts, conveniently forgetting about anything else that could prove their argument(s) futile, and only tell us of their twisted, spinned logic, their version of reality, as an absolute.
It is pitiful that one dismal month, a instance that many companies have had and have recovered from many times over and hasn’t even fazed many in the press corps (and even during a rough economic time in which several companies are not doing well), has garnered this much hatred and this many wolves who were so starved for their dinner to feast so much. At least when this same thing happened in 2007, it was in easier doses to swallow. This time, it’s more of a piling on of things that one or two people say, then everyone else rushes to put their own spin on the spin. It’s even more pathetic that it’s people we should trust that fuel this. Hatred for the Playstation 3, for whatever reason…no, scratch that, hatred for SONY, for whatever reason, run rampant though the veins of these wolves, and there seems to be no changing their minds about what they want to believe.
Where DOES this hatred come from? Is it because Sony is a Japanese company and they don’t like that Sony products are popular in the United States? Is it because they think that Sony drove Sega out of the console business, even though Sega had their own problems that clearly contributed to the demise of that side of their company (such as the numerous Genesis add-ons and failure to support a console for long enough)? Is it because Sony beat Microsoft, an American company, during last gen, and they want revenge? We need to know and we need to know soon, because this hatred for one system and one company is baffling and disgusting. There should be no reason for someone to just WANT something to fail, and to fail this badly. We should be hoping that the gaming industry, ALL of it, thrives. Neither gaming developers nor gaming journalists should be playing favorites. If it’s not alright for Sony to “buy exclusives”, then it shouldn’t be alright for Microsoft to do it, either. If a Playstation 3 game becomes multiplatform, there should always, ALWAYS be a 360 game that gets a similar treatment. We can no longer accept this notion that as long as the game is a 360 exclusive, it can stay that way while the PS3 loses everything, and we can no longer accept the gaming media continue to be hypocrites.
Yes, we get it. The Playstation 3 did have a rough start and Sony did fumble the ball on more than one occasion this generation. We do agree, as well, that a price cut for the system would do the system much good. However, with that being said, every single company known to man, woman, and child has had some sort of crisis, or bad times, and they have all recovered from them. There is nothing lately to suggest that Sony has fumbled to ball as badly as the press is making things out to be, with only small issues like marketing or fighting fire with fire against Microsoft being the only key issues right now.
There is something worse, still, within this. It is the enablers. The people that look at the stories, look at the tactics, look at the things that many people would frown upon, and never even so much as question it. Hell, they even encourage these stories, these tactics, these hounds, to continue on this petty little game. This is the most dangerous of all, because it’s those people that the press is seemly willing to listen to, the most extreme of the loons that say “yeah, they proved it”, might as well be written in damn crayon. Hell, maybe the media whore houses that write these stories are writing in the margins in crayon, maybe writing the entire stories as such. Yet, nothing will change, because the people who read them will do exactly what the idiots that write those stories will do: Flame. Not provoke thought as some stories will do (and those stories we should and do encourage more of). No, they don’t provoke that. They provoke the dividing of the gaming public. They are not the ones that feed the fanboys, at least not anymore. No, they are now the ones that MAKE the fanboys, and the fanboys say to the whore houses that it’s alright and rush to anyone’s defense as long as the story says something that they want to hear, true or not. Then, seeing such, the whore houses continue to spin, continue to flame-bait, continue to mislead the gaming public, some of which would know so little about the media nowadays. In order for these idiotic stories to stop, we have to stop it ourselves, and that’s by the fanboys to wake the hell up! It’s not amusing, it’s damn sure not funny, and it’s pathetic and disgusting.

We gamers should and do take this seriously. This is not only our hard earned money that is being put into these companies (hell, how does anyone know that any of us gamers DON’T earn stock in Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo or whoever else decides to join those three?), but our passion for the industry and the hobby. Those who say that we’re just taking this industry or this situation way too seriously isn’t taking this industry seriously enough. What if it was your system that got this treatment? What if this were your company that constantly got dogged with no reason as to why, and no way to get them to shut their mouths? This is our hobby, this is our passion, this is our lives. Hell, sometimes, this is our CAREERS and our JOBS! We are therefore saddened when we see this type of thing happen to any one entity in the gaming industry, and we’re just as disgusted when we see the gaming media be this biased, this ready to draw blood, this ready to pile it on. “There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be found only in the minds of men.” Indeed!
And to the media, you have to start doing your damn job. Give us some sign that you are not biased. Hell, none of us are even saying that you have to switch the parties around. We would call you out on that just as bad. No, we’re only looking for you to be fair. To call out shady business practices for what they are. To not hate on a company because they originated from a different part of the world, to not hate a system just because you feel like being the martyr that day. To review a game fairly, and to tell us all the facts, and make the score reflect that, and when someone DOES tell you that you factually erroneous on a review, be a true journalist and fess up. Tell us all the facts, call out everyone, stop having your opinions influenced by small groups whose websites will make you need to take a shower after you’re done visiting them, and be the people who you say you are. Because, just as you have the choice to skew the facts, we have the choice, to go elsewhere.
Finally, to those in doubt: No, we shouldn’t and don’t think that any gaming platform should or will die out. Neither we nor the gaming media should ever wish it, no one should ever try to pursue it. While some of us may be fanboys at heart, and there are some fanboys that have thankfully not walked down this long and cold road of self-absorption and bias and can look at things just as objectively as us that call ourselves true gamers (we’re all fanboys for something in the gaming industry, labels be damned), we are gamers first, and fanboys fiftieth. We deserve much better than someone skewing the facts and playing politics with this industry. It just so happens that it’s with Sony. Maybe ten years down the road, when we look back on this generation, one thing will be for sure: Unless the media starts acting like adults, grow up, and stop making these articles of “Fear, uncertainty, and doubt” (or “FUD”, as many on the internets have cleverly coined), and actually do something called their damn job, the press will be the ultimate laughing stock of the generation. Get it together, media, because it’s the blogs that have to come in and clean up the mess you have made, and we cannot fully depend on them to exactly clean it up instead of mess it up more. One bad month doesn’t constitute for a failed platform. PERIOD! Nor does it produce any monsters, on any street.
Rod Serling was also right on one more thing. None of these things could’ve ever been confined to the Twilight Zone.
Good night, and good luck.

@Torrence
Who’s calling who fanboys?
And what ever happened to 1vs1.Seems like it just disappeared.

Just to clear my name, I never said Sony was making money on the PS3. I thought they were still losing or breaking even. Maybe Fat said that but he works at Sony so he should know.

I don’t think any of you are fanboys, especially Jon. Jon will tell you the best things about the PS3 and 360 and then tell you things you don’t want to hear. The Warzone started off as Unformatted but Jon did a podcast with Lee Yi called 1VS1 and it’s really good. When I get the new feed up you should check it out.

I’ll be honest with you guys, I’m tired of the sales talk too. This generation has been ‘defined’. I gave you my end of generation sales numbers and I’m sticking with those until the X3 comes out.

I’m really excited about the next generation because I know all of this gen’s fuck ups will be fixed. Microsoft QA issues, Sony PSN issues, system limitation issues and many other things will be hashed out. The next gen is going to be HOT!

Anyways, just agree to disagree. I think a lot of folks are disappointed Sony isn’t dominating this generation. I’m not. I’m glad they’ve been humbled and are taking network gaming seriously for once. You can thank Microsoft for this. I’m also glad that MS is taking Japan seriously now and going after more 3rd party titles. You can thank Sony for this. Enjoy what you have…take a deep breath…and be True Gamers.

There is no point in trying to argue that this person or that person, including me, is or isn’t a fanboy. That’s entirely relative. If you like one thing and someone else likes another, it’s all too easy to pin a label on them and thus dismiss their arguments via the ad hominem fallacy than actually answer them. Opinions are like buttholes. Everyone has one, and most of them stink. :p

What I can and will say is this. If you read reviews I’ve written for this site since its inception, I’d like to see you cite some evidence for this fanboyism. You’re accusing a person who lamented that BioShock and Mass Effect were 360 exclusives (and who crowed with delight when he found out BioShock would be coming to PS3). I’d be more than happy to provide you with links that illustrate these. I’m sure Torrence would vouch for the fact that the reviews in question (I wrote both) have not been edited.

I’ll be honest about my opinions. I’m glad to see MS enjoying some success, sad to see Sony fallen so far from last generation (and have strong ideas about why it happened), and totally despise the Nintendo Wii. That said, I’d like to think I can objectively review product on any of those three platforms, leaving my own personal biases out of it. I assure you, if I could cite the positive aspects of Valkyria Chronicles (a game I absolutely deplored), I can pay attention to quality regardless of how I feel emotionally.

This article was based on factual citations from one of the most respected business news sources in Western media. For the last time, your debate is with them, not me.

There is so much negativity going around the ps3, and studies actually show that has an effect on consumers. You are part of the problem Jon, not the solution. At first I didn’t know it, I was just trying to make conversation, but I guess that didn’t turn out the way I wanted to.

Funny thing is that Ive always known you were a fanboy at heart since last year. Its not a big deal really, everyone has their opinion about what they feel is right, but the thing is that bashing the ps3 passive aggressively doesn’t change the fact that you are bashing the ps3 knowingly, subconsciously, or unknowingly.

You can make a difference Jon, and the fact that you are able to write articles for this wonderful website is a blessing. Thebitbag.com is the most unbiased and refreshing site ive ever seen, and thats probably why I even started this. I apologize for any misunderstandings though, I would actually love to talk to you on xbox live or the psn, and have grown folk talk about the gaming industry.

http://www.n4g.com/NewsCom-252103.aspx?CT=1&Page=1&Page2=1#C1885281

That should be some good news.