Ex-PlayStation PR Will Powers Talks Sony, Says They’re “Sending Titles Out To Die”

[drop2]Will Powers, the first winner of Sony’s The Tester series, has openly talked about the company after parting ways.

In a series of outspoken Tweets (picked up by Kotaku) he claims that Sony are “sending titles out to die” and “they outsourced entirely too much work to overpriced agencies.”

Viewpoints that are a little alien to most of us here at TheSixthAxis – we don’t deal with SCEA’s PR department at all.

It’s perhaps worth noting that at least one journalist on Twitter that would be more familiar with SCEA was discussing the comments with some agreement.

Powers says that more than half of the PR team was laid off recently (he was part of that department) and that three titles in particular – LBP Karting, Sports Champions 2 and Wonderbook have “no PR support”.  “Worst part [is],” he adds, “the PR department was already under-staffed. I feel sorry for those that remain there, because their workload just doubled.”

“Sony in general is serving too many masters,” he says. “Each company should operate autonomously. PlayStation shouldn’t suffer [because] TVs are overpriced.”

It looks like most of the tweets were removed, Will saying he’s just genuinely unhappy about “a brand he grew up with” and that “there’s no anger or resentment, just genuine concern.”

16 Comments

  1. Wait, Sony has a PR department? :-O

    Without a full on advertising campaign, Wonderbook (with it’s massive potential at selling to families) will fail, hard.

    • Yeah christmas time will be THE opportunity to sell Wonderbook to families but they have to actually know that it exists in the first place.
      It doesn’t strike me as odd that Sony is mismanaged in some departments. It’s a huge company and too many departments are probably being run by their heads in Japan who refuse to let go of the olden days when Sony TVs were in demand.

  2. I have to agree with. While I love my PS3 and Vita, so many things seems really badly managed at Sony. Take a look at the new Super slim. Launching a new console in 2012 with only 802.11g and two usb ports, baffling.

    Take a look at how bad the PSN Store has been years and how poorly managed it is, properly because they are under-staffed.

    Take a look at the bad PR and missed opportunities with many 1st party Sony titles.

    The only really good thing from Sony lately has been PSN+ and the addition for Vita support.

  3. Sounds bitter, there’s a LBP (and Vita) advert playing on prime time TV atm

    • This is nothing to do with LBP Vita.

      Also: America.

  4. None of this can come as a surprise. Sony have been piss-poor at advertising from the start. From Will’s comments it’s obvious the problems are more serious. Does no one at Sony realise that advertising will sell more units?

  5. And that’s SCEA which Sony have invested massively in compared to the mess in SCEE-land.

    • Blimey o riley. SCEE is totally fucked IMO. It’s terrible at pretty much everything, you only have to read the blog top few posts to see how baffled most customers are with some of their decisions, or lack of.

      Sony need to do something with the next generation, or it will fail miserably. I’ve even considered looking at what Microsoft come up with, and that’s from a die hard Sony fan/gamer that’s a little fed up with them at the moment.

  6. Let’s not confuse marketing and PR, guys.

    • Ultimately, good marketing is great PR and some PR can act as decent marketing (ie. putting a spin on things). Either way, Sony are shockingly bad at times. Flashes of flowering genius in a garden of manure.

  7. Doesn’t sounds like he knows much about PR, because he certainly isn’t doing his any favours.

    Rule #1: Slagging an ex-employer publicly after being laid off isn’t going to endear you to potential future employers unless you have the resume to back it up. I’m tipping this guy doesn’t.

    • That’s very much the world of social media though isn’t it?

      It empowers folks to think they can get away with saying pretty much whatever they want & all too often say things that they then come to regret.

    • That’s right, never do it publicly, it will come back and bite you in the arse.

    • Thing is, as much as you say “slagging” (off) he’s pointing out some worrying comments that many of us believe to be the case. Personally, he does genuinely sound like he knows what he’s talking about. Also, perhaps it’s a good thing (for Sony) that things like this come to light. Sony must surely know they have below-par PR and Marketing departments at the best of times. Hell, they couldn’t even be bothered to wangle Kevin Butler for English speaking European countries at almost zero cost (or SCEE throw SCEA a few finskees for their troubles).

      However, employment options might be one of two things:

      1. Gobby git goes public
      2. Gobby git goes public but sounds informed, level-headed and didn’t offer to “do their mothers” so might be an asset.

      :-)

  8. Ah,SCCEE-land……a place where you go and YOU have to pay them for the privilege of being ripped off.

  9. touch bitter my boy :)

Comments are now closed for this post.