PR versus journalism

Well, this is disappointing.

Popular game blog Kotaku posted some rumors earlier today of a new service that Sony is reportedly preparing for the PS3. The editors at Kotaku said they contacted Sony to get an official confirmation or denial, but, rather than just issue the standard "We don't comment on rumors and speculation," Sony apparently asked Kotaku not to report the story.

When Kotaku chose to publish anyway, Sony retaliated by officially blackballing the site from all executive interviews and industry events, and seems also to have decided to no longer supply the site with hardware and games for review.

That's very poor form on Sony's part, and I expect they'll reverse course before long as the media coverage is likely to get extremely negative.

I'm also surprised that Sony went so ballistic over a rumor item (that is now obviously accurate) that was favorable to the company. The PS3 needs all the PR help it can get nowadays, and the reports of a social networking function that married achievements and Mii-like avatars seems like a good idea.

Sony seems to have forgotten the role of press. The press is not supposed to be an avenue to republish press releases, but to report on and uncover the news. Now, if Kotaku had received an official briefing after promising to honor a publication embargo until a certain date, and then had broken its promise and published the news anyway, that would be indefensible. But that doesn't seem to be what happened here.

An anoymous source contacted the site, spilled the beans, and Kotaku reported the rumors, and clearly labeled them as rumors. If Sony doesn't like that, tough. If Sony wants to fire the insider who leaked the rumors, that's fine. But Kotaku doesn't work for Sony.

Sony, of course, also doesn't work for Kotaku, and they're free to blackball anyone they want. But Sony needs Kotaku a lot more than Kotaku needs Sony, and this may go down as the worst PR blunder in the history of the PlayStation division.

And that's saying a lot.

Victor update: That didn't take long. The execs at Sony apparently recovered from their brief bout of mental instability and backed off their blackball approach to Kotaku.

That's the right thing to do, and kudos to Sony for realizing that they were in an untenable situation (and big kudos to Kotaku for standing their ground). But this situation never should have occurred in the first place. I wonder if Sony truly did just have a momentary lapse in judgement, or whether this is the standard M.O. at Sony and Kotaku was simply big enough to call them on it.

In any case, I think Sony has done itself tremendous damage among both the gaming press and the gaming community with this episode. It will be interesting to see if this becomes a teachable moment for Sony, or the first salvo in a growing war between Sony and the gaming media.