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Why exactly did Sony make the new PS3 so ugly?
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What the hell is this?
The announcement at GamesCom of a price drop on the PlayStation 3 was well timed and wonderful news for the gaming community as a whole. People had expected a price drop as early as march of this year, and were a little baffled when that didn't come to pass, but what was even stranger was the leaked shots of a supposedly thinner, redesigned system. Surely, right when Sony had made their console cheap enough to be profitable they weren't going to sacrifice that by fundamentally changing their design... right? Well, I thought so.
At first, I didn't believe any of it. It seemed like it was too soon, and without any merit, to believe that they were already making a smaller version of the PS3, and the leaked shots all looked like cheap Chinese knockoffs anyways. There was no way this was going to be real. After about six months of insider reports and leaks, I began to accept that there was, in fact, a redesign of the Playstation 3, but there was no way all those shots we had seen could be the final product. It's so... unstylish, and what is with that font. That simply isn't Sony's MO. Well, come GamesCom in mid-august and here is Sony, announcing exactly what all the leaks and rumors had said they were making. I was in shock. I believed it, I just couldn't understand it.
As I stated above, the price drop is great, that is exactly what the PS3 needed, but who asked for this redesign? The old PS3 was barely bigger than the Xbox 360, and while it was heavy and used a lot of electricity, there was no reason to redesign the box to fix those small issues. I just don't understand why they felt like this was the right move to make at this juncture. The PS2 redesign made the system tiny and way more attractive than the aging old system, I traded up in a heartbeat for that, partly because I was fascinated by just how small they had made it. The PS3 'slim,' as the press has dubbed it, is in some ways bigger than the original. it is now a square shape instead of a rectangle because they made it longer from front to back. To me, that says that it is premature to be trying to redesign it.
The size of the system isn't my main issue though, a smaller system is probably better in the long run, but what isn't better is the look of this new system. The matte finish changes what was a shiny attractive console into some old beater from the 1970s that your uncle gave you for a first car that you pretended to be excited about. Seriously, it looks like a big black slab of ugly. There is way too much area for so little actual stuff. Furthermore, what is going on with that new logo? I will be the first to tell you that the spider-man font of yesterconsole was lame from day one, but how did they manage to mess up the second time even worse with only three figures to display? It doesn't look like a sleek electronic device, it looks like a big stone that someone carved his initials into in comic sans. Finally, they changed the futuristic touch sensitive buttons into old school buttons, just like they had on the original Playstation. Did I fall into some sort of time warp here? It is as if, one day, they just tried to replace Star Trek with Buck Rogers and pretend that it was this great improvement. Instead of Data, the android who was a little too human, you have Twiki, a midget in a dumb costume who has to say 'bidi bidi bidi' before he talks just to remind you that he's an idiot.
This is not ugly
Getting rid of the multimedia ports doesn't bother me; I don't think people have that much urgency to put their photos onto their PS3 anyways, but if you're going to do cost adding measures to increase sales how about adding back the USB ports you took away or the built-in PS2 compatibility? Even if people don't use those things, they see them as value, and the best thing the PS3 has going for it is it's value for the dollar. If you're that desperate to start losing money on the consoles again, why not listen to what your consumer base has been asking for?
I know I'll get used to the new PS3 design, the same way I got used to there being a console called the 'Wii,' but that doesn't mean I have to like it. They could have very easily made it a smaller version of what it looked like before, but someone in R&D seemed to think that people were so concerned about dust that they would rather have an ugly console than have to wipe it occasionally, and whoever chose the new font just needs to be fired; normal people don't screw up that badly. I hate to sound like a reactionary, but I know what looks good, and this isn't it.
That said, I fully intend to purchase one when I get the funds together.
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