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slowmo on 12 January 2012
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theprof00 said:
Play4Fun said:
theprof00 said:
 

I think what you're missing here is that this thread isn't about Sony caring in the aspect of "want to do what's best for the customer", but it's about caring that they do right by the customer. This could be phrased as "they care about having us as customers". They want our money, so they do as much as they can to making sure they get it.

The same really can't be said about MS or Ninty. MS used to charge 10$ to change a gamertag. 10 freakin' dollars! The excuse was to prevent people from abusing a free name change system. OK so then make it 99 cents! They charge for Live! They charged 100$ for proprietary hard drives. They charged 100$ for proprietary wifi dongle! Hey, hey, now, I know...it's good business, and maybe Sony would have done the same...should have done the same. Create expensive proprietary drives, proprietary wifi, with just built in ethernet. But they didn't. Why? Who knows. People would have bought the system regardless and bought the upgrades if they wanted them. Wifi and hard drives were not a selling point.

So, in terms of getting the customer a great well made product, Sony did right. Nintendo did as well for the first 3-4 years, then stopped caring. MS didn't really this entire time. For example, the red ring. Sure, they extended warranties and replaced consoles with refurbs, but it would take 1-2 weeks to get your thing fixed. PSN was offline for two weeks. You could still play single player. What did Sony do? Give everyone free games and several months of PSN+, which also has more free games. I'd say sony cares. Maybe not in a caring for my wellbeing way, but in a "we are very careful about keeping our customers happy".

MS seems to take more of the stance of, "our customers will be happy", and Sony, "let's make sure our customers are happy".

 

None of this is meant to troll or insult. This is just a, perhaps exaggerated, recount of the actual events that happened.


It seems to me that you are just looking for good things about Sony and bad things about MS because Sony is your preferred company.

If I played that game too, I could just say MS is better because they give alot to charities and they charge us a fee for Live because they want us to have the best possible online service. Or I could say Nintendo is better because when they dropped the 3DS' price they gave early adopters free games and they have the most reliable hardware.

Then I could say Sony is not as good because they are charging us for proprietary memory cards with Vita and they over-priced their product.

All 3 companies do things  to keep their customers happy so that they continue to buy their products.

People in here are just looking for good things about their company to convince themselves they are the best.

Fact is, all 3 do what they can to keep their fanbase and customers happy. None is better than the other. Alot of bias going on in here.

The fuck are you talking about?

I know MS is a great company, nay, Bill Gates is an extraordinary man, and all of Apple's success can be directly attributed to Bill Gates. And they charge because they want us to have a superior online system? Do you know how much money they make on their subscriptions? Many many millions more than they put into making it "an average" serverbase. What about proprietary drives and proprietary wifi adaptor? What were those for? To provide the best possible storage? The best possible wifi? No. These are all money making endeavors. I know you're thinking "that's business". And yes, you're right. But the difference is keeping customers happy. Does a charge keep customers happy for online? No. Does proprietary everything keep customers happy? No. They are obstacles that customers are willing to endure for the system they want. Big difference.

Nintendo, is probably the closest. They make great games, have fair pricing on their games, and have very reliable hardware. However, they discourage third party competition. Of course, Nintendo knew YEARS before the wii came out what they were going to do. Their strategy was all pre-planned. Third parties had to make it up on the spot.Third parties had no idea what would sell, and Nintendo didn't do anything to help them. Good for business? Yes. Does it keep the customer happy? No. And the fact that they have almost completely abandoned development is especially infuriating. They stopped making games because one game is capable of selling 20million, and they don't want new titles to compete. New super mario wii came out over 2 years ago, with no sequel in sight. Why? Because people keep buying NSMB Wii. Good for business? Yes. Does it keep the customer happy? No, because someone who bought it over 2 years ago, hasn't been kept happy. Only the people who haven't bought the game become satiated. After all, why spend money developing games when one game will keep selling as long as you don'tmake a sequel. Ie; why buy nsmb 1, when nsmb 2 is out?

And yes, I agree with you that Vita's strategy is stifling. I don't like their proprietary card prices, and I don't like them pushing the 3g even though wifi to 3g price for hardware is negligible. In terms of the Vita, Sony is fucking up. But you know what? MS proved that you could sell unnecessarily overpriced addons to the gamer and get away with it. I don't like what Sony is doing, but I want the system, because it has the games that I want. Are they keeping the handheld gamers happy? No. Are they doing right by business? Yes.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but I call it like I see it.

Nintendo is shitty to gamers on the wii. They are better with gamers on the 3DS.
MS is shitty to gamers on the 360, but they do right by providing the games their core gamers want, but that will change as kinect keeps getting bigger.
Sony is Great with PS3 owners, but they are shitty to PSV owners.

When it comes to the consoles, Sony probably does the best as they fund indie games, picking up new developers all the time, and trynig to bring as many games to the console as possible without any charge to us.

When it comes to handhelds, Nintendo does the best as they have learned a valuable lesson and are working hard to bring in third parties, and new developers.

In the same way that Nintendo learned to be good to its handheld owners, so did Sony with its ps3. That is why both are at the height of each respective outlet.


Not getting involved in the other stuff but since when did Sony's stance on helping a few Indie developers become better than Microsoft's policy of actually providing free SDK's to Indie developers along with an entire section on Live to publish the content created.  If you're gonna bring up that point then Microsoft have Sony well and truly beaten on the contribution to the Indie scene now.