PS3 News, Notes and Reviews (11/13/09)

The last week has been a big week for Playstation 3 owners.  At the end of last week, Streaming Netflix came to the PS3.  On Tuesday, Modern Warfare 2 released.  Naturally, I have participated in both events and here are my thoughts:

• Netflix on the PS3 is just plain awesome.  Watched my first movie as soon as I received my disk in the mail and the picture quality was great.  It looked like I had a regular DVD playing.  You can also surf the movies available, rate movies and pretty much everything else Netflix owners know and love.  The Streaming Netflix on the PS3 has great functionality along with a great picture.  A must have for all Netflix and PS3 owners.
• Modern Warfare 2 launched at midnight Tuesday morning.  With what was the biggest pre-order for a game ever for Gamestop, there were lines out the doors.  With 4200 Gamestops opening their doors at midnight, that meant for big crowds all over the country.  I attended an opening in San Diego and there were at-least 200 people there waiting to pick up their copy.  This was a pretty big attendance considering how many stores within a 10 mile radius were having midnight openings.

This was only a third of the line

• So by guestimation 200 people per store, and 4200 stores means roughly 840,000 people picked up a copy of their game at midnight.  This seems relatively accurate as almost 700,000 people were playing online on the Playstation Network at 1am pacific time.
• As for the game, it is one of the best games ever.  I’ve only played the campaign for a few minutes but the first two missions were intense and a lot of fun.  The multiplayer is somehow better than in the original Modern Warfare (which is an impressive feat)
• On a more disappointing note, on Wednesday the PS3 dedicated servers went down for a few hours (thus why I played campaign), they got them back up relatively quickly.
• The party system sucks in MW2.  You can’t meet up with friends.  This is supposed to be fixed with a patch on Friday.  I have to say the two previous problems (server being down and no partying) is quite annoying.  But, I give Activision a lot of credit for their quick response.  This is the kind of attention Gen Y wants (needs).  Way to know your target audience.
• There was another announcement this week saying that Twitter, and Facebook are coming to XBox360 and the PS3.  The two systems are clearly really trying to diversify.

So that’s about it for the PS3 update.  For all you out there who aren’t into the gaming systems remember one thing:  The days of “gaming systems” are over.  Now they are “entertainment systems”.  Marketers need to take note of the functionality of these devices and potentially how they can help them with their marketing in the future.

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