Apparently, The 360 Is A Computer... So Why Isn't The PS3?
Remember how Ken Kutaragi drew a lot of fire from both gamers and the press when he claimed the PS3 was a computer in its own right? It’s OK if you don’t… there were so many weird claims about the PS3’s god-like capabilities by so many Sony executives that it gets tough to keep them straight after a while. Well, now Microsoft’s own Bill Gates has claimed that the 360 is a computer in its own right%. Strangely, though, no one really seems to be taunting Mr. Gates for his comment… though his logic seems no easier to follow than Mr. Kutaragi’s:
It’s a computer-like product, I suppose, something that doesn’t necessarily play games. Back when the Xbox was rumored, the PC industry was afraid of it, believing that Microsoft was going to start selling locked-down PC hardware, so Microsoft made sure to convince them and the public that the Xbox was a gaming machine only. This makes the new claim unusual. Sony’s PlayStation 3 browses the web and reads RSS feeds, as well as plays back a variety of video and audio formats. It even allows you to install an alternate operating system, and even now not one but two distributions of Linux are available for it. Sony’s product is closer to a computer, and I don’t think anybody expected Sony to make it as configurable as it is, but these are details that were unknown at the time Kutaragi made his much-ridiculed comment.
Aeropause’s Paul Munn goes on to theorize on a possible nationalistic bias on behalf of the American press, since Microsoft is one of those grass-roots companies that has come to dominate so many markets. I’m not sure if I agree with him on that front, mainly because I occasionally like to believe that some journalists are able to overcome such petty loyalties and at least pretend to remain objective when they write a story. Personally, I think Gates is getting a little more room to comment because Microsoft made… what was it called again?
Oh, yeah: Windows.
Gates Gets Free Pass Calling 360 A Computer [Aeropause]
Boy of Tomorrow
Posted to on 15 January 2007
· Comments (4)
Other stuff like this: 1up, bill gates, evil avatar, ken kutaragi, microsoft, PC, ps3, sony, xbox 360
I reckon he gets a free pass now because he got so much flack about it the first time around… from Sony.
A little Google-Fu should find you all the disparaging comments Sony made about the original XBox in the months leading up to its release. They boiled down to: “The Xbox is just a general purpose PC, the PS2 on the other hand is a dedicated gaming machine”.
This is all silliness anyway. They all are, started out as, and will continue to be PCs with custom interfaces. This squabbling is a matter of petty marketing semantics.
And it’s ironic because Sony included stuff in the PS2 and PS3 just to make them both general-purpose computers for the purpose of EU (or maybe it was just UK) taxes. (They failed, in the PS2’s case.)
Anyway, I’m thinking the reason they give Gates some slack isn’t because of Windows, but because the first Xbox was literally a cheap, locked-down PC.
MS may make Windows, but Sony actually makes computers (like the Viao), so I don’t think that’s the reason Sony gets the hate and MS doesn’t. You don’t have to dig too deep (even on this website) to see that Sony gets blasted for plenty of things that MS gets a pass on (like that bogus noise-level article). For some reason it’s currently fashionable to hate on Sony. Sad.
The PS3 is far closer to deliver on its “its a computer claims” than the 360 ever could. Gates has also made alot of crazy predictions, no one using physical media in a couple of years, to no one needing more than a few kb of memory. But its currently the “in” thing to hate sony.