While We Were Sleeping

(Breaking News: Sony To Take Ball, Go Home.)

It was a dark and stormy night, and I was out like a light, sleeping the sleep of the chronically afflicted. I have this cold from November through March, every year. As soon as the weather warms up, and I get some sun, and the sniffles finally disperse, it will be allergy season.

Somewhere in the gathering darkness Killa, too, was sleeping, dreaming his headshot dreams. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed! The maid screamed! Suddenly, PR snafu appeared on the horizon.

In an interview on Wednesday, February 28, the GDC executive director (Jamil Moledina) told the media that (SCEI executive) Phil Harrison's keynote speech at GDC next week would leave PS3 owners "very happy." I didn't pay too much attention to this at the time; I'm enjoying my PS3. I'd be "very happy" with a FFXIII demo, but that would be SE news, not SCEI news. Well whatever. I filed it away in my brain for future reference. Although prompted for further information, Moledina was rightly reticent.

Yesterday, March 1, Kotaku.com editors Brian Crecente and Michael McWhertor ran a rumor that the highly anticipated announcement Phil Harrison would be making on March 7 was to be the unveiling of PlayStation Home, Sony's take on XBox Live and Nintendo's Mii channel---a virtual space where PS3 players can house an avatar and display their gaming achievments (sort of like one's house in Animal Crossing, I have heard it said). When they tried to verify the story with Sony, Crecente and McWhertor were asked not to publish the story, then threatened with ominous consequences if they ran it, which they did anyway. Kotaku and Sony seem to have since made up, but not quickly enough to keep diehard Sony fanboys Tycho and Gabe over at PA from commenting on the events.

Let this be a lesson to anyone who is in the field of, or considering going into, public relations. The news media and the blogging community are not part of your PR machine. It is the job of your PR department to keep news under wraps until it is advantageous for you to reveal it, while generating as much excitement about it as possible. SCEI and GDC representatives did this by leaking teaser tidbits about Harrison's keynotes. That was the correct thing for them to do. It is then the job of the news media and the blogging community to disseminate information when they have it. It is ludicrous for Sony to expect Kotaku to hold their information for them, and the implication that Crecente and McWhertor were somehow behaving unethically or discourteously is equally ludicrous.

If Sony hadn't made such a big fuss over this, it would have remained a rumor. The gaming community would have speculated about it over the next week and then, come March 7, Phil Harrison could have made his keynote as planned with even more buzz than before, because Kotaku's readers would have all tuned in to find out if the rumors were true.

Instead, Sony essentially confirmed the story by vehemently insisting that Kotaku sit on the rumor. If Sony had simply said to Kotaku, "Hey, we wish you wouldn't run this," the story would have run as a rumor and that's it. But the PR explosion serves the dual purpose of convincing everyone who heard it that A) the information is true, and B) the Sony PR machine is a big jerk. Had Sony let the story run as a rumor and held back any comments, it would have turned out pretty well for them, I think. It's unfortunate that Sony's judgement was so poor in this case; they really need all the good PR they can get.

They had learned about public relations, but more importantly, they had learned something about life.