So what does Sony do upon hearing that the Playstation 3 is being outsold 6 to 1 by Nintendo’s Wii in Japan?

It announces that its going to start spying on you.

In a round-about way, of course. There’s a great piece over at the Boston.com where Sony is going into a partnership with Nielson so that usage data by gamers on the Sony network can be analyzed by them. This is good news for Sony because in selling that data, they’ll be able to defray the costs of their wickedly expensive console. Now, while I am *sure* that no *personal* data will be analyzed, and that gamer behaviour will only be able to be measured in aggregate, this announcement only seems to make sense from a corporate point of view.

Sony — the company — will be able to defray costs of making their luridly expensive console by selling user gaming habits.

Sure, there are valid reasons to do this and the article brings them up. The gaming market is worth billions but is undercapitalized because advertisers don’t know anything about gamers.

Fine.

But the gamer in *me* says something else. Something like … you know what?

Rather than trying to offset the cost of your gargantuan strategic mistake of making such an expensive machine on the backend by leading to some misunderstandings and possibly creating a(nother) public relations nightmare — why not do the simple thing that will make both gamers AND stockholders happy?

Why don’t you just make better games? Exclusive games? Games that give people a reason to buy a console that for some, is the equivalent of a mortgage payment?

I recognize that it might not be easy, but for land’s sake gentlemen — on a background of failing sales and a summer where reading is otherwise light, this is a public relations firestorm that is just waiting to be lit.