I’m upset. No, not upset. I’m annoyed. Angry even. The sort of festering anger sated by nothing less than an indiscriminate slaughter of innocent life. Of course I’m referring to half an hour on Grand Theft Auto, you sick bastard. Who doesn’t feel better after blowing up hundreds of cars on the freeway or casually strolling into a burger joint grasping an RPG launcher?
You see, what’s got me into a lather is one of a few pieces of light reading I brought with me on a trip to Frankfurt in Germany; I was expecting light relief from the articles, which is, for the most part, what I got. Until the final article. Nintendo DS is just a babysitting tool for kids.
Naturally in the run up to the release of a new games system we all expect a little one-upmanship, but the president of Sony Computer Entertainment America, Jack Tretton, stepped beyond that and evacuated his bowels over a large section of the gaming community. Presumably that wasn’t his intention with such an inflammatory statement but tough shit.
“Our view of the ‘Game Boy Experience’”, he said, “is that it is a great babysitting tool, something young kids do on airplanes, but no self-respecting twenty-something is going to be sitting on an airplane with one of those. He’s too old for that.”
Oh really? Well Jack, I happen to be a self-respecting twenty-something who was on a plane twice last week playing my DS. But if that makes me a young kid, fair enough. As it happens on those flights the passengers were largely thirty-something and forty-something business men and women, amongst whom were several people other than myself playing DSs. One of them was a friendly enough chap to trade a Pokémon with me. On the return flight I happened to be sitting with a gentleman who didn’t mind reading the offending article and having a chat about it. He told me that he, his wife and his daughter all have a DS and that he loves its diversity, the fact he can play Mario, Space Invaders of Sudoku depending on his mood. He got his DS because he was impressed and jealous of his wife’s. He also mentioned that he never even considered a PSP because it didn’t strike him as very accessible. So stick that in your pipe and smoke it Jacky boy. Sorry if you find that undermining but I figured you wouldn’t mind seeing as you called me a six year old.
The most worrying thing here is the underlying attitude Jack’s statement has betrayed. I don’t know if he realises there’s an overlap in the people who buy Nintendo and Sony gaming products. I’m no expert myself, but I’ll hazard a guess that it’s not just me who’s part of that overlap. And for a PR stunt this hasn’t done Sony’s reputation any favours in my book. So what if you think your little piece of gaming plastic is more ‘grown-up’ in its conception than market competitors’. I guarantee that just as many youths as adults are interested. In fact I’ve never seen a self-respecting adult playing a PSP. Perhaps that’s because just by looking at a PSP you can feel the aura of condescension and smugness radiating from it. Or perhaps it’s because, as a company, Nintendo is much more mature in the technology it produces and the way it markets.
I’m a Sony man; I’ve owned all three PlayStation consoles and love(d) all of them. Shame, really, that a plonker like Jack there manages to attain the level of presidency in the first place and that being in such a position means he can insult such a large number of people all in one go. As a result my reaction would be to spit on my PlayStation (were it not in another country at the time of writing) and hold my DS very close.
Now let’s try and be fair. I could be looking at this the wrong way… maybe he’s frustrated. The Nintendo DS has sold more than twice as many units as the Sony PSP so really, if the man had any sense he would be looking for a way into the family market, not making his best efforts to alienate SCEA from it. Still he’s doing such a good job of it that he probably goes home congratulating himself on his prowess as SCEA president and PR genius. But still, I bet that if he doesn’t already have a DS he spends his time wishing he had one. Or perhaps he has children who enjoy Nintendo’s handheld system so much because they’re sick of hearing daddy go on and on about his adult version.
I mean for heaven’s sake what’s he going to do? Slap the thing out of his children’s’ hands at the age of seven and force them to start playing games where they’re no longer blissfully platforming and dodging koopas but machine-gunning enemy troops, tears running down their innocent little faces? And soon they’ll be inured to it. What then? Jacky Jr. could grow up with an even more skewed idea about ‘grown-up’ gaming. His handheld will be a spiked hand grenade, triggered once enough blood flows over the surface from your impaled fingertips so you have to constantly weigh the chances of being blown apart against the worth of blowing up a few more people up in-game.
For goodness sake, gaming is supposed to be fun so Jack should just shut his gaping flaps and let people enjoy their hobby without piling guilt or insults upon their shoulders in a perverse attempt to win over a few people.
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