It seems that when Sony gets a little boost in the console industry, they get a bit full of themselves as PlayStation CEO Jack Tretton demonstrated over the weekend. In an interview with Fortune, he went after Microsoft and Nintendo pretty hard, calling out the Xbox 360’s reliance on the DVD format as a weakness, and decrying Nintendo’s DS as a “babysitting tool”.
A little trash-talking in the industry is nothing new (and seems to be making up most of the news lately), but I think that Mr. Tretton is a little off on his comments on the Nintendo DS. He’s quoted as saying that “no self-respecting twenty-something is going to be sitting on an airplane with one of those” as they’re “too old for that”. Being a twenty-something that uses a DS frequently (especially on airplanes, and to play Pokemon, no less), I think he’s kind of misinformed on the DS’s demographic. If people are that self-conscious, they’re not going to be playing the PSP in public either, because the average consumer doesn’t really know the difference between the two.
While a lot of Nintendo’s sales definitely go to kids, I’ve seen just as many grown up people using the DS on planes, public transit, or in a movie theater. Jack Tretton is obviously trying to reinforce the notion that the Nintendo DS is just for kids, but like I said above, people don’t necessarily identify the PSP as an “adult gaming machine” either.
Being a person who uses his DS a lot, I think that Mr. Tretton’s being a little bit of a mudslinger, but I was wondering what you guys think. There’s definitely a social stigma that comes with using a handheld gaming device in public, but I think that as time has gone on a lot of that has gone away. It’s still there, though, so what say you? Do you use your DS in public? If you use a PSP, do you feel a bit more manly than those girly DS gamers? Go!
Source – Fortune