10 Biggest Mistakes In PlayStation History, Ranked | Game Rant
Remaining at the top of the gaming industry is an incredibly difficult thing to do. Still, the PlayStation brand has won Sony three of the past four console generations, with the PlayStation 5 in prime position. However, it’s hardly been smooth sailing for this brand.
Since its debut over a quarter century ago, the PlayStation family has seen its fair share of failures. For the most part, it was the PlayStation 3 that brought the most difficulties. A whole lot of PR disasters, bad decisions, unfortunate mistakes have been seen in PlayStation’s history. Before the PS5 releases, it’s worth ranking the ten biggest mistakes of the lot.
10 PSP Go's Late Release And Absence Of UMD
Released in late-2009 and already discontinued by early-2011, the PSP Go represents a horrible timing on Sony’s part. At a time when the PSP’s life was winding down, there was no business of a new model to be out in the first place.
It was made worse by the lack of UMD slot. This meant those who purchased the PSP Go couldn’t borrow games from their friends or purchase from stores. A wide variety of announced games were also quietly cancelled, rendering the PSP Go meaningless, and a failure.
9 Xross Media Bar
The PlayStation 2 received criticism for not following suit with the Xbox in its online and interface features. Unfortunately, Sony misfired in trying to right this issue with the Xross Media Bar on the PS3. This interface never caught on, and was scrapped altogether for the PS4.
The mistake here had to do with how the interface was hardly user friendly, with the theme too dull to attract interest. A whole lot of fluff in the Xross Media Bar ended up making it all show and little depth.
8 Announcing Lofty PS3 Sales Targets, Resulting In Media Backlash
There remain several good PS3 games that still hold up, but PR needs to be perfect in order for a system to sell. Sony’s fault in this regard was constantly announcing expectations for huge PS3 sales, but media reports gave evidence to the contrary. This took away from the brand value, as it made the PS3 seem low in quality.
In July 2008, SCE CEO Kaz Hirai went so far as to claim that the PS3 would sell 150 million units! Sales trends guaranteed that was an impossibility, but rather than admit their failure, the company stuck to this claim. By the end of the PS3’s life, it had sold 87 million units, about half of the expectation.
7 The PlayStation Home
A sort of precursor to the virtual reality games Sony eventually started to market, the PlayStation Home was meant to be a hub for gamers. Think of it like a hands-on version of Facebook, as people all around the world could meet and “attend” PS events.
However, Sony got a bit too enthusiastic, announcing it before the PS Home was ready. Fans complained there wasn’t much to do in this virtual world. PS Home never got past the beta phase, and now remains known as a failed idea with some potential.
6 Failure To Make The PlayStation Vita A Viable Purchase
While the PS Vita had a few notable games, the system’s image is marred by Sony’s overall lack of belief in it. The big mistake here was creating the Vita itself, as it was clear by this point that the handheld market had slipped away.
With Nintendo’s DS line dominating proceedings, there was no chance for the Vita to be a success. And yet, things were made worse by the severe lack of games for the Vita. The handheld’s collection remains almost barren, leaving the fanbase next to no reason to consider it a legit purchase.
5 PlayStation Move
There are more quality Wii games than one can count, but can you name a single PS Move game? Sony’s mistake was attempting to cash in on the fad of motion sensing rather than create titles that truly captured the spirit of this gaming style.
While Microsoft’s Kinect was a mixed bag, the PS Move flopped harder for the lackluster implementation of the wand controller. Sony would have done better to make motion sensing closer to the Kinect rather than a weaker version of the Wii controller. The low quality of games certainly made things worse, and not even integration with the PS Virtual Reality resurrected the Move’s image.
4 Delayed Announcement Of The PlayStation Network Hack
Although competitors like Microsoft and Nintendo have also made severe blunders, the 2011 hack remains more well-known than others. PSN was down for users starting from April 20, although the hacking had taken place between 17 and 19 April.
The real blunder on Sony’s part, though, had to do with their announcement on April 26. On this date, they revealed that sensitive information of up to 77 million PS users could have been exposed to the hackers. The company faced harsh criticism for waiting up to a week to disclose this information, and the PSN outage lasted as many as 23 days.
3 Giant Enemy Crab
Undoubtedly one of the biggest reasons why the PS3 was underestimated, E3 2006’s demonstration of Genji 2 brought this moment. Here, producer Bill Ritch claimed the game was historically accurate, only for the next fight scene to show a “Giant Enemy Crab.”
Ritch continued by claiming the gameplay was original due to “attacking weak points for massive damage” and “weapon changes,” when these things weren’t innovations in the slightest. Following this, memes against the PS brands dominated the internet, and a whole lot of negative attention came towards the PS3, which was still unreleased.
2 The Sixaxis' Design And Removal Of Rumble
Looking to make a different kind of impact, Sony ditched the Dualshock at the time and went for the Sixaxis. Unfortunately, the boomerang shape of the prototype received all kinds of criticism. However, the biggest issue was the Sixaxis’ lack of rumble.
Sony messed up by claiming that rumble was “last generation,” and the Sixaxis would avoid it altogether. With gamers very much favoring the vibrating mechanism of the controllers, especially FPS gamers, the Sixaxis was lambasted. Better sense did prevail with the DualShock 3’s arrival, but the PS3’s farcical initial controller remains in memory.
1 PlayStation 3's Botched Launch And Lackluster Branding
The gaming community had already seen what a seventh generation HD console could offer in the Xbox 360. And the PS3’s release a whole year later led to it severely lagging behind the Xbox 360 in sales. Along with that, moving away from the PS2 branding hurt the PS3’s identity, as Sony chose to go with the Spider-Man 3 logo style and promotion, which fizzled out within months.
Mostly, though, it was the hefty $599 price that proved as the biggest mistake. The PS3’s lack of exclusives — simultaneous releases were also available on the cheaper Xbox 360 — meant gamers weren’t willing to spend so much on a console that wasn’t as unique.
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