Continuing our theme of Rant Wednesday, Stuart Roch is ranting about the PS3 insisting it’s not a gaming machine.

Why, why, why?! Why must Sony persist in their efforts to make a PlayStation console to replace DVD players and stereos in people’s living rooms? Is it just not cool enough anymore to make great game machines? I swear I wish they would just get over this preoccupation with the uber home entertainment system and be satisfied with the fact that they make great gaming consoles. I promise you that I’m not going to buy a PS3 and trade in my PC and high-def DVD player in favor of this supposed all-in-one solution.

Of course, the PS3 is not the only ones guilty of this line of thinking. Here’s Game Girl Advance on the 360 announcement.

Xbox 360 does not compete with Sony or Nintendo. It is not a gaming console. It is a powerful device to deliver content online and over WiFi. Microsoft’s real competition is Apple, Yahoo, and Google. Apple’s movie-download service. Yahoo’s retail channels. Google’s – well, everything. Heck, throw Comcast and TiVo in there for good measure. The games are merely a means to an end – an “instant-on revenue to support an exponential expansion into the livingroom,” as Eric put it over an IM chat we had.

Come to think of it, the Pointless Waste of Time article I just linked also mentions this in a throwaway line.

Just imagine it; an expensive box that will magically do the job of several machines you already own. Only not as well, because by definition a TiVo will do TiVo’ing better than an all-purpose box that TiVos on top of also trying to do twelve other things, all for the price of a TiVo.

I’ve brought up exactly this before when talking about convergence vs divergence (only I was talking about it in the scope of game design). Here’s what marketing guru Al Reis said on the topic:

[The problem is] technology doesn’t converge, it diverges… Television used to be just television. Today, we have broadcast TV, cable TV, satellite TV, pay-per-view TV. Television didn’t combine with another medium. It diverged
…
Why are divergence products generally winners and convergence products generally losers? One reason is that convergence products are always a compromise. The Intel microprocessor inside the Phillips DVX8000 [computer/TV combo] should be good for three years or so. The home-theater half of the machine should last twenty years…. recently, we visited a consumer electronics store that had a wall full of [combination TV/VCRs]. “How are the sales of your combination television/VCRs” we asked the clerk. “Infinitesimal,” he replied.

How much more is my PS3 going to cost, in order to provide me with substandard features that I will never use? I’ve used the DVD player in one of my existing consoles exactly one time. It turns out that the DVD player that I paid $200 dollars for does the job much better than the PS3 that does the job as a sideline. It also turns out that a PS3 controller makes for a crappy remote control.

Original comments thread is here.