Sony is obvoiusly trying to sell it's system as a home device that does something for everyone (the same swiss army knife approach they've been going for with the PSP).

Blue ray, hi def big budget games, free online, eye toy games like eye of judgement for the hard core card crowd, singstar for the karaoke crowd, home for the sims and second lifers, Africka for the animal/photo buff, little big planet, buzz, etc, etc, etc

It might be a little early for games/services like this to succeed sales wise due to the high price of the system but it's an interesting strategy none the less.

If anything, a diverse line up like this makes it easier for dad to justify buying a PS3 to his wife and kids.

By Eight Days. Hi Dress!

...

:'(

I agree with your premise, but that's a bad example.  When playing a Wii game, I can NEVER tell whether to press + or -, and I'm sure the buttons cause even more confusion for casuals.

Making the Wiimote like a remote was what broke the psychological barrier.  It's something everybody knows and uses.

The motion sensing helped as well. It's far easier to swing the controller to hit a ball rather than memorize which button to press.

Even when I know when to press + or -, I always get confused on which side it's on.

Good thing you have to HOLD the button down to trigger Hypermode in MP3.

I kind've meant that as well.  Whenever a + or a - pops up on screen, I just start hitting the buttons in the middle at random. 

When games use + for pause (SMG does this, I think), I never remember and just press the Home button when I need to stop for a second.

You guys seriously have trouble with those buttons? The + button is basically the pause/start button. When you go to press the pause button, do you actually look at your controller and look for the word "start" written on it? If so...uhh...

Anyways, it's not hard to memorize where those two buttons are, it's just like memorizing any other two buttons on a controller. I don't see where the difficulty comes in.

Also it follows a basic math idea of - being on the left and + being on the right, the farther left you go on the number line the more negative you get, and the farther right you go, the more positive.

 Why would I buy a game console that comes with a game that has tennis on it when I can do that in real life? And golf. And bowling, and baseball, and boxing if I really wanted. And the not being able to control the runners in baseball is annoying as hell but that's a different story.

I really get the feeling that Sony lost their minds, not because it's a crap idea (though I'd rather make real clothes than virtual), but because they don't seem to be sure who their targeting anymore and just seem to release really random stuff.

They're going crazy...

It's because Phil Harrison left.  He was the former head of SCEWWS, and he was really good at getting Sony's internal studios to consistly put out great games for various markets (Socom, Singstar, etc.).

It's really quite ironic.  Phil was the Sony exec that started pushing the casual stuff in the first place with games like Singstar and Buzz! in Europe, and he also had a great eye for up and coming developers (like Media Molecule and LittleBigPlanet), yet he ultimately left the company because the guys at SCEI were so unreceptive to his ideas.  They were convinced that hardcore games are the only way to go.

Now, just months after Phil left, SCEI is starting with this.

the absurd thing is putting such a non hard core title on a $400 console.