A Few Words About EGM Cover Story

[hyperdine]

As some of you may have already heard, EGM's cover story this month is "Battlestation! The Playstation 3 under attack! What went wrong (and what Sony has to say about it)".

I'm sure it will only be a matter of time before the Sony/Blu-Ray haters start citing this as proof that the PS3 isn't doing well... blah, blah, blah.

So for those of you who haven't read it or have no interest in reading it, I'll spare you the boring details and tell you what you need to know. The bottom line is that EGM interviewed Jack Tretton (head of SCEA) and they asked some tough questions, which he of course handled quite well.

What was disappointing to see, is how the EGM interviewer and accompanying article were so heavily anti-PS3. Replete with quotes from anonymous game developers and game store managers, etc. (what a joke). It really bordered on being unprofessional and just plain tacky.

Anyway, what's important for people to know (because you have to really look for it) is that EGM did this as an expirement to see if they could sell more magazines. Don't take my word for it though. Here's a direct quote from the magazine's Editor-in-Chief...

"Well be watching this issue closely- we're really curious to see how well it sells on newsstands (which is how we gauge our success). We know "Battlestation!" is no 'OMG, Halo 3 first screenshots!' cover story, but if enough people buy this month's EGM, then we know we can and should do more stories like these in the future."

So there you have it. Honestly, I think the best thing to come out of the whole article was Jack's response to the whole Time magazine comment about the PS3. Here's the excerpt...

EGM: But why is the general vibe surrounding your launch so negative this time around? Regular gamers seem disappointed. Time magazine even called it one of the big busts of 2006.

JT: Time magazine...I did an interview with Time magazine- the guy did his first interview ever on the games industry, touched his first machine two days before that, so I would argue that Time magazine may not be as plugged-in to the consumer or the gamer as your magazine is."

Classic FUD-destroying quote. I love it. Of course, he goes on to address the rest of the question, but I wanted to share the Time magazine part of the repsonse because I know a few people have thrown that around as proof that the PS3 was doomed, etc., etc...

What's funny about the whole cover story thing, is that they bash the PS3 because of lackluster games, etc. but then in the very same issue, they gave a PS3 game (Virtua Fighter 5) the "Game of the Month" award...doh!