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Sony: Educating Consumers Key to Digital Devices’ Success
The fact that the PSPgo doesn’t have a physical media drive has a surprising amount of people scratching their heads. Perhaps Sony placed a little too much stock in the general knowledge consumers have regarding digital distribution, because the company is now saying the masses need to be thoroughly taught what downloadable games are.
Eric Lempel, director of PlayStation operations and strategies planning, recently spoke about the new handheld. Lempel says, “It's really education, I don’t know how many times after E3 that I saw on blogs, ‘Well, I love the [PSP]go, it looks nice and portable, but where do I put my disk?’ That just kind of rubs me up the wall [laughs], and I go, ‘this is an all digital device, and it's centered around digital.’”
What the hell does being rubbed up the wall entail? It sounds like Sony has some peculiar business practices.
“Education is where a lot of our marketing efforts are going,” Lempel continues. “I think we are going to have to continue that, not just now, but all the way through launch, an probably beyond, as we continue to push the PlayStation Network as a center of a lot of things we do.”
So it’s easier to sell things to people if they know what they do? Preposterous! How would anyone ever peddle an air purifier if that were the case? Either way, Sony clearly has their strategies laid out, and if they think that telling potential buyers how the PSPgo works will move units, then so be it. Good luck Sony, you renegades, you.
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