History Repeats Itself?

"It’s probably too cheap…"

-Former Sony executive Ken Kutaragi in regards to the announcement of the PS3 launching at $599

"…for consumers to think to themselves ‘I will work more hours to buy one’. We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else."

– Ken Kutaragi, again, attempting to justify the $599 price tag


"We do not care."

– Kaz Hirai, then President of Sony's gaming division, on the Wii and 360

In 2005 and 2006, Sony, who was riding high on the dominance they had with the Playstation 2, displayed an incredible amount of arrogance in regards to the upcoming Playstation 3. Now that seven years have passed and we've seen Playstation go from the top of the world to circling the drain and then rise up again in an epic comeback, it's interesting to note the parallels between the statements coming from 2006 era Sony executives and those coming from Microsoft execs in 2013.

But don't take my word for it, take theirs at face value:  

"I think it's fair to say there's a segment of consumers at this show in particular who really pay attention, who are very passionate about all aspects of gaming, and that we listen to closely. In a broader set of community, people don't pay attention to a lot of the details. We've seen it in the research, we've seen it in a lot of the data points."

- Xbox Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Yusuf Mehd, downplaying the outrage over the Xbone as irrelevant since most consumers don't pay attention anyways 

“I don’t think,… I mean we’re really not going to change anything we’ve done with Xbox One. We’re very happy,… did you see the games on stage during our briefing? Did you see the exclusives? I mean we’re really really proud of the system and the games that are coming out. When you look at games like TitanFall,… have you gone through Titanfall yet? Enough said. Conversation over"

-Xbox Live Director Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson, regarding the disparity in recption at E3 between the Xbone and the PS4 

"Fortunately we have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity, it's called Xbox 360"

-Don Mattrick, head of Microsoft's Xbox division, responding to concerns of gamers in the military who don't have access to first-world internet much of the time

Notice in both batches of quotes the assumption from the execs that we're all fucking stupid and will buy anything just because they hype it. Notice the levels of condescension in their words and the dismissal of all contrarian concerns.

Sony had to crash pretty hard before they straightened themselves out. The spring after the PS3 launch, when it was selling at or below 80K units a month in the US marketplace and getting trounced by the soon-to-be-retired Gameboy Advance monthly, it almost looked like the PS3 would go the way of the Virtual Boy, the Dreamcast and the Dodo bird.

Now, seven years later, it appears Microsoft is following the 2006 Sony strategy of thinking they can ignore criticism because they will steer us lowly customers to buy into their grand visions and dreams, no matter how often the marketplace trends show that we simply want a box that plays the latest game software, and plays it well, and that alternate functionality is a take it or leave it proposition which is nice to have, but not if it costs us an arm and a leg or our freedom to use the things we buy in the manner of our own choosing.

Take heed Microsoft, you're walking a path that may threaten the entire Xbox division. Many of your investors don't like the entertainment section of Microsoft as is, due to years of losses in the billions of dollars, the history of failed products like Zune and Windows Phone and the low revenue and profit of the division when compared to products like Office.