Indeed it is, but I can't help but let out a chuckle every once in a while when I see statements like this and some of the posts that follow in agreement.

I remember a time when people would consistently attack a certain company because they were arrogant, now all of a sudden it seems as though arrogance is just fine and dandy.

Well, personally, aside from the "knowledgeables" that are the fans (like us I presume), I don't think that this PR from Sony for example, is hurting them that badly with the general audience, especially over here, since sony is known as a extremely high quality product name (a tad expensive though), so they would need to do a whole lot to destroy that image.

And for the fans and such, who follow this news regularly, they talk about it like we do, so they are "desensitized" to it already, no?

It may not hurt them a lot, but apparently it doesn't help either... Do you see any evidence that people believe PS3 is cheaper than the 360? Marketing and PR are supposed to be boosters, and as such I think that SCE's marketing/PR is lousy these days (but getting better).

I would also think that these memes (negative or positive) can spread from the hardcore fans to the less knowledgeable people, but that's just my guess.

Not exactly. Usually they're desensitized to the PR that comes from the companies they're not a fan of, but they very often lap up the PR from the company they like.

The audience for much of the spin are other business.

In particular:

Store chains/owners/buyers.
Publishers/developers/middleware makers

Advertisements are used to sell games to the players.

Basically, this is aimed at Europe, telling the continental crowd that Microsoft is what Sony was (in Microsoft's view). But at the least, it may get people to back both consoles or stock a few more games, or not do something exclusive.

Mike from Morgantown

 indeed, the PS3 and 360 were neck and neck from 1st july to the day before the price cut in september (13th). In fact the difference was just 100k. Which for over 3 months is not too bad going really (PS3 sold 1.6m and 360 sold 1.5m) considering the 360 beats the PS3 by over that each week now.

Cold hard numbers... not percieved value... The whole point of these kind of articals is to gain mind share.  If you can convice people that you're product is better than the competitors even if it isn't true.  That was the point of Sony's recent PR stunt and that is the point of this PR post... not so much a stunt since it's more grounded in numbers then some mystical reason everone needs to have all the extras.

Uhh....yeah it does. If those franchises had been on, say, the 3DO, they wouldn't have been even remotely close to the popularity they had with the PS brand, because nobody had a 3DO and thus the masses wouldn't really know of them (meaning at this point in the game, M$ wouldn't be tossing so much money around just to have the game on their console). So no, the fact that those franchises were "built on the Playstation platform" is not secondary.

some of the points make senses

yeah the wii60 is definitely running away with this generation