Make Accomplishments Matter
Trophy rooms are nothing new in sports games. Nearly every serious sports sim these days has a place where you can show off the different championships you've won and the unlockable goodies you've achieved during your time with the game. With the PlayStation 3's Home service, Sony is bringing the idea of a trophy room to every game in your PS3 collection. The video clips during Phil Harrison's introduction of the concept showed a futuristic-looking trophy room where a user could access every in-game triumph he or she has earned and show them off to friends.
Obviously, this is Sony's response to Microsoft's incredibly popular achievements system. Here's the thing though: Apart from being good bragging fodder, points, achievements, and the PS3's trophies serve no purpose. To make matters worse--and at the risk of sounding like an egotist here--I'm probably not going to care much about your trophy case, just as I suspect you won't give a sweet Christmas about mine. Instead, we're all simply concerned about our own collections.
So the key here is to make Sony's achievements matter; to have them mean something more than a mild virtual ego stroke. The question is: How? Unlockable content is a good start. For example, if you win the world championship in Formula One Championship Edition on the hardest difficulty, you could earn a new wing for your apartment. Or how about access to a special "champions only" locale in the public Home space showing you "insider" coverage on the development of the next Formula One game or special access to the development team?
The bottom line is that trophies need to be more than little graphics you can walk by and admire. If the PS3 can find a way to trump the mere numerical status of Xbox Live achievements and reward Home users with something to do and show off--essentially improving the status of the player--then I suspect we'll all become big game trophy hunters.
Change the Way We Play Games
The Game Developers Conference was Sony's chance to sell me on something brand new and prove that I can't live without my PlayStation 3. Offering a new experience is how Nintendo sold me on the Wii controller and what Microsoft has done with points on the Xbox 360. Give me that one thing--a service, a feature, a gadget, anything--that convinces me the PlayStation 3 gives me a new way of playing games and changes what I expect from consoles in the future. The thing is, Home isn't it. It all sounds cool and interesting, but when I really consider how useful and user-friendly Sony's upcoming online service will be, apathy sets in. The socializing aspect reminds me too much of Second Life and The Sims Online, neither of which makes interacting with others any more fun than sending an instant message or chatting on the phone. And it all strikes me as too cluttered to matter all that much. Aside from adding a few minigames, how much will Home really add to the core gaming experience? I'm interested in playing games, not in inhabiting a 3D interactive MySpace.
On the other hand, the announcement of player trophies appeals to me, but it looks like Sony is capitulating to the need to counter Xbox Live gamerpoints. It's good that Sony is listening to what people want to some extent, months after release, mind you, but I'm still waiting for the announcement of something both significant and inventive. Home is original, but until I see how it increases the ease with which I can play games with others (and I don't mean billiards), it's not something I really need or want in a game console.
Because I run tournaments at GameSpot, I am always looking at new ways to spectate games in progress. How about an option that doesn't just let me see what a buddy's playing but also lets me view the game in progress, even if it's single player? What about built-in game guides, so that if I am stuck, I can bring up a walk-through without resorting to Internet guides? I don't know if these ideas could fundamentally change the way we look at games, but they're based on a single notion: How could playing games be even better? All the bright ideas in the world won't make playing games on the PS3 better than on any other gaming machine until the people at Sony ask themselves the same question--and deliver a real answer.
Experiment With Content Delivery
Microsoft has shown us that the first generation of microtransaction offerings will be horse armor and episodic content for games and full-length movie features and television shows for videos. It's great for a first try, but the console manufacturers are capable of doing a whole lot more. The digital distribution and microtransaction support in today's consoles give Sony, Microsoft, and, to some extent, Nintendo a huge opportunity to invent new ways to deliver games and other media.
How about subsidizing television shows or movies in the PlayStation Home Theater with paid sponsorships? I'd be willing to sit though a few commercials if it means I can watch Spiderman 3 for free or at a discounted price. For Sony, the best thing about controlling the delivery medium is that, unlike TiVo, viewers won't be able to fast forward while sitting in the theater.
Game companies could also try experimenting with pricing. Maybe launch a massively multiplayer online game at a ridiculously low price and start charging a more reasonable rate after reaching a critical mass of online players. At the moment, it seems like the game companies are primarily concentrating on ways to use microtransactions to extract the most money possible out of each customer with inconsequential add-ons, or worse: game features that should have been included in the original.
The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 both have the potential to become revolutionary content delivery platforms. Let's see which one gets there first.
Provide Solid Hardware and Product Support
Even with the intriguing news announced at the Game Developers Conference, it's still hard to look at the PlayStation3 as much more than an extremely expensive novelty, especially considering Sony's spotty history with hardware problems for both the original PlayStation and the PlayStation 2. What Sony needs to do to catch my eye, and the eyes of shrewd consumers, is to make the console a solid long-term investment overall in three primary ways. First, the company should ensure that hardware failures cause its users a minimum of inconvenience. There needs to be a fast, reliable way to get any hardware issue resolved (whether that be through mail-order, service centers, or both) along with a retroactive lifetime guarantee on every unit sold. Given the infamous track record of unreliability that PlayStation hardware has, putting down $600 (and much more in Euros) is a hard commitment to make, but a worry-free guarantee of fast and perpetual support for repairs would help.
Second, stronger game support with a much-wider array of titles to choose from would also help. Because right now, there just aren't that many PS3 games out there, good or bad. Finally, Sony needs to provide stronger support of the hardware with value additions that make the PS3 more than just a game console. PS3 Home is an interesting start, but as a Blu-ray player, for instance, the hardware has stalled. Unlike the original PS2, which was arguably a Trojan Horse for the DVD format back in 2000 and sold extremely well as the first DVD player for many households, the PS3 hasn't been anywhere near as successful with the Blu-ray format.
Obviously, these are not easy, short-term things to pull off, but at the moment, there isn't much of an answer to the question: "When we pay the price for a PS3, what are we getting in exchange for all that money?" There needs to be a bigger, and much more exciting, answer to that question than there is now.
Start Releasing Good News
I already own a PlayStation 3, so obviously Sony didn't need to do much to convince me to drop $600 on one, but it's going to take some work to convince the rest of the game-buying public to climb on board. In spite of all the negative publicity, lots of people are planning on getting a PlayStation 3 at some point; they just need a reason to take the plunge. The recent announcement of the PlayStation Home online service is a great first step in getting people excited about the system again, but Sony needs to keep this momentum going with a series of positive announcements.
This solution may sound absurdly simple, but try to remember the last time before the "Home" announcement that you read anything good about what Sony was doing with the PlayStation 3. It was a long time ago, wasn't it? It doesn't necessarily need to be big news all of the time, but let people know that things are going well. Tell us you've got a big game locked up as an exclusive, brag about a new original downloadable game, continue to release classic PlayStation games on the PS3 for play on the PSP, and while you're at it, make them playable on the PlayStation 3 as well.
When I tell people that I own a PS3, they usually give me a weird look and ask "Why?" If you give me some good news, I may no longer have to shrug and answer, "I don't know."
What do you think Sony should do to make the PlayStation 3 worth buying? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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