Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart

Playstation 2 Collection, PseudoGil, 2007

When the PlayStation 2 was launched I had to wait a year before my parents could afford one for my birthday, and even then I had to go without a Christmas present that year because it was that expensive (around £250). Flash forward seven years and the old console had succumbed to drive failure. My parents bought me a replacement slim PS2 which cost only £80. With the release of the PS3 in 2006 I was hoping to follow a few series into the next generation: Grand Theft Auto IV, Metal Gear Solid 4, Gran Turismo 5, et al. As always, the launch price was ridiculously expensive and none of the launch titles interested me, so I waited and saved - every year I put my Christmas tips into my 'PS3 fund' and every year there's a new reason not to buy one.

By last Christmas I made enough to afford one, not due to lack of tips over three seasons, but because the price has barely moved. At the time of writing it appears the cheapest model has finally dropped under £200. I imagine that won't last as Sony will employ the same trick they've been using for five years - halt production, swap out the hard drives for larger ones, restart production and slap the old price tag on them. Given how bloody long it has taken for the price point to decrease, adjusted for half a decade's inflation it probably hasn't at all.

Every time I got closer to reaching the artificial price, Sony would cock up their public relations once again. At the start of the year when I came closest to finally buying a PS3, I decided I couldn't let Sony have my money without first receiving a letter from me protesting their incompetency and contempt. It's hard to believe this is the same company that triumphed in the 90s with the PlayStation and then somehow managed to top that in the 2000s with its successor. Actually, it isn't the same company at least in terms of personalities - the ousting of Ken Kutaragi goes some way to explaining the decline of Sony since 2006. There was a time when my classmates and I were captivated by speculation on the development of a PlayStation 2. I remember there was a letter from the head of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe in the Official UK PlayStation Magazine denying the rumours which only compounded our suspicions.

It's testament to the success of the PS that consoles now keep their brand name and are sequentially numbered. And it's brand loyalty Sony have had to survive on since then - only my greater dislike of Microsoft kept me on their side for this long rather than buy one of their X-Boxes (where X = PC components). Since the announcement of the PS3 it's been nothing but mistakes at every turn. When DualShock (rumble) was removed because of a patent dispute, Sony didn't settle but rather opted to spin some bullshit about Sixaxis so hard that I could hear MiniDisc whirring in its grave. When Europe got shafted with the removal of PS2 back-compatibility we were expected to turn around and thank Sony the PS2 slim was so cheap. A few years ago I flirted with the PSP but again and again home-brew was cracked down until even the PS3's custom OS feature was retroactively removed. But you can look forward to the reintroduction of back-compatibility, if by that you mean paying for PS2 titles you already own over the PlayStation Network. Every innovation is just a reaction to the competition - motion controllers and networking to name two. The credibility built up in the 90s and early 2000s seems to have been traded in almost solely to push blu-ray® onto the market.

So why write all this now? Sony and the PS3 have been floundering for years at this point and countless words have been written about the disaster. Well, when I read Sony were now incorporating a lawsuit waiver into their PlayStation Network terms & conditions it was the last nail in the coffin. The sheer contempt Sony appears to have for its customers is staggering and extremely disingenuous. It's so off-putting I decided I will never buy a PS3 and immediately ordered the PC version of GTA IV and set about noting all the other games I'd been hoping to play for the past five years. The only downside, apart from getting acquainted with DRM hoop-jumping on the PC, is that I know Metal Gear Solid 4 is a PlayStation exclusive and I'll most likely have to resort to watching a Let's Play if I want to know how it ends.

Fuck you Merry Christmas, Sony.

Post script: Between writing this and the date of publication, I unexpectedly received a PS3 for my birthday. Everything I've said still stands. I'm absolutely not a hypocrite.

Written September and October 2011
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