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Zekkyou on 02 July 2015
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Tamron said:
Zekkyou said:

Damn, great post. I'm going to have to tag this for every time this topic is inevitably brought up over the next few months :p

There is always the chance that something like this could be abused (not necessarily by Sony, but any companies that follow suit), so to that degree i can understand people's worries, but on the face of it this seems like a great idea. We live in a world where profits are the first, second, and third priority of these companies, their manufacturers, and retailers. If something like this ends up allowing Sony to push out cool ideas that would otherwise have been nipped in the bud by some chap in a suit, then i'm all for it. 


If people saw first hand the original design/features/functionality of the products they buy, compared to what it turned out like when it hit retail, people would understand instantly that the way business is conducted currently, favors profits over innovation and risk, the only way this is going to change is if the risk is reduced or removed, and the descision making either taken away from the men in suits or at the very least, influenced in a weighted manner by the consumer and not the fat cats milking every last dime out of a product PO without willingness to take any risk in the process.

People are ready and willing to say "theyre big companies they dont need our money!", but when a product releases and it doesnt meet their expectations or falls short of what it could have been, those same people are the first to criticize it and say "why didnt you do it differently? why doesnt it have x feature or y option?"

Theyre ignorant to the idea that if theyre not willing to demonstrate first hand what they WANT (crowdsourcing the projects they like, ignoring what they dont) then they should expect products being released that forego some of their needs in exchange for reduced retail risk on the part of the manufacturer and retailer.

By being against crowdsourcing product development, you are in effect, going against the ability for companies to skip the usual retail handholding and get approval directly from the customers and not the middle men.

I can't say I've ever seen the process first hand, but i know you're right, and if this service has any chance to make innovation more viable of these companies then i'm all for it.

As i said in a post above too, it's not like Sony are going to be running off into the sunset with sacks of free money. This essentially just allows people to pre-order a product that, without an initial show of approval from consumers, won't have happened. The average consumer already seems fine to take up the risk of pre-ordering something with little in the way of benefits, so i'm not going to complain about something that not only adds such benefits, but carries them over to everyone.