GamePro’s Jack Tretton ‘interview’ is a lollipop
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 9:46pm by Jack
Before you head over the GamePro interview between Vicious Sid and Sony Computer Entertainment of America President Jack Tretton, you have to close you eyes and do a little imagining for me. First, picture Jack Tretton shirtless and lying down on a massage table. Yeah, I know, it’s frickin’ weird, but bear with me on this one, please. Next. imagine Vicious Sid standing over him, massage oils already rubbed into his hands, generously applying some kick ass moves, holds and massages to Jack Tretton’s back while he asks questions like,
“Speaking from a personal perspective, I’m not a terrific fan of the Wii. I think it’s great for the industry, but it doesn’t speak to me as a gamer. The technology is pretty limited and I think that in 2-3 years that it could go into this casual Tamagotchi kinda thing. It seems like a different industry almost.”
Now, my track history aside, the Wii comments aren’t even what got me. It was the shoddy, irresponsible journalism that make me spit up the Klondike bar I had finished slurping down only minutes earlier. If ever there was visual proof that the current gaming media is ready to fall from grace, this interview was it.
Do you still have the disturbing massage images in your head? Good. Now imagine Vicious Sid (who certainly didn’t get his nickname for being a vicious journalist) rubbing Jack down while he asks that loaded question. Hey Sid, why not just lob a few softballs in Tretton’s general direction? Why not frame the answer for him so he doesn’t waste precious energy sweating out the tough questions? Oh, that’s exactly what you did? Great!
The first question was an absolute joke. As a journalist it offends me and as a gamer who embraces innovation and holding developers and publishers accountable it makes me laugh out loud at how pitifully unprepared the current crop of “gaming journalists” is for the future. And, if you don’t believe me when I say that ol’ Vicious was basically having a pow wow with Tretton and not an interview, just look at how Tretton answered that question: “I would tend to agree with everything that you said.”
But wait, it gets better.
“On that note, let’s shift gears to the PS3. You were talking about appealing to both casual and hardcore gamers, a sort of do-it-all approach. The PSP is almost a digital Swiss Army Knife, for instance.” – Vicious Sid
That wasn’t a question, that’s a press relations person coaching their company executive on how to answer a question. That was a press release.
But now onto the main course, so to speak. You’ll see what I mean.
How would you describe each current game console if you had to describe it as a meal or food?
JT: I probably couldn’t do it objectively.
Sid: You don’t need to be objective! (for f**k’s sake, I haven’t been! — added by Jack)
Tretton: I think the PS3 is the Surf ‘n Turf. You want the lobster and steak and you’re going to give yourself the treat of getting the best thing on the menu. The PS2 is your favorite burger restaurant — you go there for comfort food and it’s just always good and is a good value.
[As for the other two consoles], one [Wii] is a lollipop, and I’m too old for lollipops. The other one [Xbox 360] I get sick from once in a while because the cook isn’t always reliable.
Hmm. You can tell by this point that those massage oils are REALLY starting to heat up. Tretton is feeling VERY comfortable at this point — and why shouldn’t he? He’s getting the full service works from this interview. He’s being interviewed by a gamer, not by a journalist, so it’s all a big self-contained echo chamber.
Now as a follow up I — an actual real live paid journalist outside of Infendo — would have take Tretton to task for his little joke instead of immediately setting about writing my “controversial headline” as it is apparent the folks at GamePro did. Maybe I’d joke around a bit too, but you can be sure I wouldn’t let that comment stand as it was. I would ask, but Mr. Tretton (I’d be polite of course), you could have the best steak in the world, and lobster too, but right now you only have one plate (game) worth eating. Where are the other steaks, and why do they cost so much when I can get the same ones in Microsoft’s less expensive restaurant? How are you making sure that your “treat” as you describe it, remains exclusive to your restaurant? And, Mr. Tretton, I’ve seen the lollipop’s sales numbers. I’ve read the analyst reports and I’ve followed the things that matter to people like you: investor’s comments about your company and what people are saying about your stock. Those lollipops are what people want right now, your super steak house be damned. People think you’re going to have to compete with Microsoft’s shoddy steak house. Thing is, people are still rabidly devoted to the XBox steaks, because there are more of them and they taste the same as yours.
But no, we don’t get that at all. What we get is an actually “LAUGHTER” transcribed in the interview, as Tretton and Vicious Sid share a laugh at the competition’s expense. I’m pretty sure the laughter will be short lived though, given the state of the PS3 right now. Why? Because what Tretton’s brash food-laden outburst meant to me is that there’s some desperation at Sony right now. Why else would you lash out? Why else would you need to? When Nintendo was asked to respond to Sony’s slightly inaccurate PS3 “price cut” last week, George Harrison replied curtly that there were no plans to do anything at all. That was it. No desperate little quips necessary.
Is it over yet? Not quite. More mouth garbage from Vicious:
Concerning Microsoft’s hardware failure, does that show that they don’t have the experience in the hardware sector that Sony does?
Gee Sid, what’s Sony going to say when you serve up something like that? Luckily for Tretton, he’s regained some composure and simply says the PS3 is solidly built. Well, the hardware is anyway. Jury’s still out on that software, eh Jack? What Sid did there was actually a straw man argument. No one outside of Microsoft’s manufacturing division knows what the failure rate for the Xbox 360 is, and that “no one” includes Sid and Jack Tretton. “Some people ” say the 360 has problems — but it was only enough to warrant a warrantly increase, not a recall. I imagine the raging Internet minority claimed another victim here much in the same way Nintendo was “forced” to give out new wrist straps. Ten people bitching constantly on the Internet these days is akin to thousands of people sending in snail mail, apparently.
And that there above was the last question. I’m glad I haven’t read GamePro since the mid-1990s, because this was atrocious. Tretton’s answers, even with the coached questions, were equally bad. He still doesn’t come out and say the PS3 is too expensive, instead opting to give a looooong personal experience about photos and a $1,000 music player and HD television. He said he played some games on his personal PS3, but neglects to mention any. I’m going to guess they’re Motorstorm and Resistance.
But let’s not end on a low note. Let’s play along. Let’s pretend this interview were a food item. For all the meatballs Vicious Sid lobbed at Tretton today, the food item I’d choose is a big heaping bowl of processed Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs. Tretton brought the fork (which was Blu, by the way), and had himself a meal. Why, to me anyway, did it sound like his last?
July 17th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Also, there is a cigar hanging out of his mouth while he lays on the massage table. I can honestly hearing him blathering this nonsense with a stogie clenched in his teeth.
July 17th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Gamepro has had their head in Sony’s lap for a long time now. I’ve not read them regularly since ‘98 or ‘99, but even then the slant was ridiculous. Virtually none of the American mags are worth a damn, anyhow. And someone needs to remind Tretton of gaming history….Pokemon STARTED as a freaky little tamagachi thing…..does anyone even want to begin wondering how much money Pokemon has made over the last 8 or 9 years? If you really want the world’s best gaming magazine, stick with Famitsu. Play Magazine isn’t half bad, either. Anyway, though, we all know Sony’s screwed (and Xboxes really do break a lot) so instead of wasting too much time in here agreeing how stupid Sony and Gamepro both are, I’m going to go play with my Wii.
July 17th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
I don’t want to know what part of the body he was massaging, but I got a pretty disturbing guess.
July 17th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
I’ll be honest, when I first saw an Infendo post criticizing someone’s journalistic integrity, I was skeptical. But as I read more, I have to agree. This interview was completely atrocious. It really reads more like one of those advertisement puff pieces.
July 17th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Hilarity ensues when anybody interview Jack Tretton.
July 18th, 2007 at 12:06 am
EGM interviewed him a while ago and they asked him some pretty good questions that he danced around.
July 18th, 2007 at 12:27 am
Great read. You guys are doing some good work on this website.
July 18th, 2007 at 2:06 am
I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony pays these people under the table to write nice things about their products.
July 18th, 2007 at 2:37 am
A few thoughts:
1. Nothing says amateur more than pointing fingers, despite how entertaining my friend Jack (the blogger) made it sound. Sorry, I’ve just never been a fan of media cat fights.
2. Sid got Tretton to call Wii a “lollipop” and Xbox 360 an “unreliable cook.” I think that’s pretty funny (whether I agree with Tretton’s claim is another story).
3. Were I Sid, I would have avoided sharing my personal thoughts on Wii unless I were talking with Nintendo. The Xbox failure question felt a bit loaded. Other than that, I didn’t think the interview was as bad as dramatized above.
4. Sid is a reliable and responsible journalist. He’s not perfect; but neither am I, neither is Jack, and neither is any other professional.
DISCLOSURE: I am a paid GamePro editor-at-large and freelancer as some of you may know. I work more with Sid than any other GamePro editor, and I quite like the bloke.
July 18th, 2007 at 8:47 am
His final comments on the Wii were, “News? Oh no, I never read the news about what’s going on in the industry. I just ignore what is happening on every other console. My job is a lot easier that way”.
July 18th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Man, i really like Infendo because of this kind of articles, what a good read.
July 18th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
@ blake
at least someone likes him. sorry that article was crap and consistant with the crap gamepro has put out for a long time. i stopped reading gamepro a long time ago when i grew up and wasn’t impressed by fun factor faces. it lacked any journalistic atributes at was blatently giving sony the happy ending they need. on top of it all you feel the need to defend his bias by justifying his actions on perfection. lame
July 18th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Sony reminds me of the XFL (remember that farce), only difference being the XFL never had any success whereas the Playstion line has.
Anyway, the XFL came out saying it was “real” football and how the NFL was a bunch of pansies and how it sucked, etc. That was the first huge mistake they made. The XFL didn’t seem to realize that if they wanted to attract football fans, then attacking the most popular sports league in the US wasn’t the smartest thing to do; i.e. the fans they wanted were fans of the NFL. So when they insulted it, instead of getting football fans’ attentions, it mostly pissed them off.
I see the same thing here….the PSP has at best been average and the PS3 has been a failure anyway you slice it. The Wii, no matter how anyone may feel about it, is a rounding success. So there’s no reason for Sony to be this cocky and to insult Nintendo and Microsoft (in case Jack hasn’t noticed, the 360 is kicking their butts too). Since many of the people he wants to buy a PS3 and PSP are already owners of the Wii, DS, and 360, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to start ridiculing them. I own all 3 and neither the PS3 or PSP, and after readint that, I’m even more glad I don’t.
What jackass SHOULD be doing is admitting the gross miscalculations about the market and fanbase and talk about what they are doing to fix it. Instead, he’s hurling insults at the competition that make him look even dumber AND pretty much insulting us the gamers by talking about “educating” us. All it takes is simple math jackass….$600 = too much, especially when you get so little in return. Or how about this one…For $770 I can get a PS3 and PSP, or for $10 I can get a Wii, DS, and a 360. Hmmmm….
July 18th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
That should say “for $10 more I can get a Wii, DS, and a 360″. Sorry, I don’t know where you can get all that for $10
July 18th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
@ Booger
I hope the above disclosure provided ample insight into my bias so you can come to your own conclusions. I didn’t intend to write off anyone’s mistakes on a lack of perfection. All I meant to say is that I believe Sid to be a reputable journalist despite 2 flawed questions from a single 10 question interview.
July 18th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Blake, I love this site, and your opinions, but I have to disagree with you this time. I’m a paid journalist myself, having been the head writer for a local newspaper for more than two years now, and I have to say that Vicious Sid’s interview was pretty bad. He definitely shouldn’t have been throwing his opinion around during the interview, and the food analogy wasn’t just unprofessional — it was just plain stupid. What the heck do we, as readers, gain from that? Oh wait, I know, we gain the understanding that a Sony employee thinks a Sony system is better than all the other systems on the market. I never would have guessed.
I like games in general — all games — but Sony is really being the bully this generation, and I don’t particularly care for it. Nintendo pracitcally invented what is now known as the casual market — something into which Sony is currently trying to tap, so I wouln’t be so flippant with my comments if I were them. Sony needs to wise up and stop calling the Wii a toy, or a lollipop, or anything else that implies it’s for little kids, because, if that’s the case, then it’s apparent that those little kids have bigger wallets than their parents. Sony’s elitist point of view appeals to no one other than other elitists.
July 18th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Thanks for your comments, Doofus_J. While I still vouch for the interviewer on the whole, I in now way agree with what the interviewee said in response. As a person who also tries to sell headlines, I love the “Tretton calls Wii a lollipop” angle. It’s distinct and makes people want to read the story whether they believe it to be true or not.
July 18th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
As with most of my rants, retrospection is paramount. Was the post biased? You bet your butts it was. I put my opinion out there on Infendo a lot. I’m secure enough to do that, and I’m secure enough to take any and all heat that comes my way as a result of that.
There were several good questions in this interview. Unfortunately, they were all lost on me because of the tone that was established with the very first question. When a source can respond to your question with “I would tend to agree with everything that you said” — you have failed as a journalist. You haven’t even really asked a question, really.
Like I said at the very beginning of the post, this really wasn’t about the Wii or my fondness for Nintendo or the fact that Sony comes off as arrogant in this interview. It was the principal of the thing. This interview lacked objectivity, and I decided to call it out. I’m grown up enough to realize this post was biased and a bit over the top.
Is Vicious Sid?
July 19th, 2007 at 12:32 am
I got something he can suck on and it ain’t a lollipop.
July 19th, 2007 at 9:32 am
While it is obvious from his line of questioning that Sid hates the Wii and loves the PSP and PS3, I don’t think Jack Tretton came out as arrogant for a change. Sid really cornered him into delivering an arrogant answer, and Jack Tretton actually gave him a funny response instead.
I don’t think Tretton’s analogy was too far off, except: I would depict the restaurant not as being a single console, but the whole gaming industry, and rather the “menus” as the different consoles. The anger you see thrown against Nintendo by “hardcore” gamers is like stuffy clients trying to eat their Surf n’ Turf while watching hordes of people who had never set foot on a restaurant before coming in eating their lollipops and ice cream.
Oh, and Doofus_J, Wii is definitely a toy! So are the DS, the 360, the PSP, and the PS3… That’s what I think is being lost to the whole gaming community lately: these are sophisticated toys meant primarily for entertainment, not essential items for work or survival. There is nothing wrong with that, but let’s just keep things in perspective, shall we?
July 19th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Ah ha, InvisibleMan, you have me. You’re absolutely right, game systems are supposed to be toys, not high end gadgets designed exclusively for the wealthy. I forgot how funny it was when Sony claimed we should want to work harder in order to scrape up the cash needed to purchase a PS3. Is it any wonder Nintendo’s recent products have sold so well?
July 19th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Invis, I agree. I’d rather be the caddies in Caddyshack than the club members of Bushwood any day of the week. More fun, more options, more everything.
July 19th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
You had the “happy ending” reference right in front of you. You totally should have gone there, because that’s what that interview was. Pity.
July 19th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
i didnt know that gamepro was a legeitment gameing magazine. i remeber that they used to be cool when i was in middle school 10 years ago, i would be a disgraced and no longer be considered a gamer if i was caught with a gamepro in public!