| binary solo said: I don't really think it's relevant. Mass media is rarely important for gaming hardware buzz. It is more significant for bad news. When the mass media picks up on bad news in gaming then you know there's a problem. But good news travels extensively and sufficiently within gaming media. |
I've seen lots of mass media news stories about new gaming consoles, all the way back to the Nintendo hey-days of the mis-80s, and continuing on to almost every console launched since. Heck, I remember news stories about Atari before that.
It's mass market success that has propelled Sony's success. It was success with the mass market consumer (thanks to Spyro, Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot, etc.) that propelled the PS1 past the Saturn and the N64. It was mass market success that propelled the PS2 past the Xbox, Gamecube, and Dreamcast. It was the Wii's mass market success (and to a lesser degree the Xbox 360's) that held the PS3 back (the PS3 would outsell the Xbox 360 for the first three quarters of the year most years, only to get soundly beaten by the Xbox 360 in the fourth quarter).
To suggest that free mass media news is unimportant to Sony is a mistake, IMO. Sure that's true of the core gamers, but the most successful consoles reach well past the core gamers.
