Ever since it revealed the PS3 Slim, Sony has been rolling out a new marketing focus, repositioning the system as a "total entertainment device." Sony’s Pete Dille has been speaking to the LA Times, and he believes that the PlayStation 3 will "own" entertainment while still keeping a focus on games. I’m getting some real deja vu here.
"We have been a game company for years and we would never walk away from that, but research confirmed there is a larger proposition under our nose," says the senior marketing VP. "We wanted to reposition as a total entertainment solution. We felt like we can really own entertainment.
"A year or two ago, the idea of an all-in-one media hub was kind of a foreign idea among the mass market. Today thanks to new technologies like the iPhone, we’ve warmed up to the idea of products that meet all our multimedia needs."
Oh! That feeling of deja vu has just kicked in again, and I’ve magically remembered why this seems so familiar. This is the exact same marketing strategy Sony tried to pull when the PS3 first launched. You remember, the marketing strategy that failed? The marketing strategy Sony itself said had confused developers and consumers so much that Sony had to come out and explicitly state it was a game platform? Yeah, that one! The one that made people wonder what, exactly, the PS3 was supposed to be. This really isn’t repositioning the PS3 at all, it’s falling back on a failed marketing method and hoping it works better a second time around.
Well … best of luck to them!