Does Sony need a "Major Nelson"?

If there's one thing that Sony seems to lack, it's a well-loved employee public figure amongst the fans. While Reggie and Miyamoto hold status as legendary with Nintendo fans, and Microsoft's Xbox Live honcho Major Nelson provides the fans with much needed correspondence from inside the company, as the PS3 launches Sony lacks such a figure, one who can be an important buffer between the fans and the company. But does Sony need one?

One of my most-visited websites is Major Nelson's blog. Its RSS feed sits in pride of place on my browser, and it also streams the feed directly to my Xbox using the "XBStream" software. But, I suppose some of you will be asking why, and, even more so, just who is Major Nelson?

Major Nelson is the Xbox Live GamerTag of Larry Hryb. Larry works at Microsoft. His job? The Xbox Live Director of Programming. He uses his blog to communicate valuable information and news about Xbox Live, and that's why I visit it. It's often the first place I can find information on new Xbox Live Arcade Games, and he's run excellent blog posts on the events of the Tokyo Game Show, E3 and X06.

Every day there are new things added to the marketplace, he posts to let the fans know what has been put up. He plays Xbox Live, and thanks to his Xbox 360 blog and gamerscore Xbox gamers everywhere see how this industry insider is doing, what he's playing, and how good he is. And of course people can catch him online playing Xbox Live games.

Larry has become in many ways far more than the head of Xbox Live in terms of his job -- he has become an icon for the fans, a figurehead of the Xbox Live userbase, somebody for them all to look to, a man who is truly passionate about the system he has helped to create. Most important of all, he has helped to build the community.

Similarly, Nintendo's community of fans -- while not yet linked by a unified service like Xbox Live -- are certainly linked by those two magic names: Reggie and Miyamoto. They are practically heroes to Nintendo fans everywhere, giving them somebody to unite under when marching for Nintendo.

Thinking about this led me to this question: just who could Sony fans band together underneath? Who could be the figurehead of the Sony fans' movement? Kaz "Riiiidge Racer" Hirai doesn't really seem the type to have much interaction with the fans to me, and neither does Phil Harrison.

While they've both had their fair share of internet publicity thanks to the rather incredibly bad E3 2006 Press Conference, I somehow don't see them gaining a particularly good rapport with the fans. Just for one moment imagine a blog run by Kaz Hirai; do you feel it could work?

Reggie is little more than a businessman, but yet he is asked to sign autographs on Nintendo products whenever he pays one of his regular visits to a Nintendo store. He has promised to be at one of the Nintendo stores, playing DS with and supporting fans on Wii launch night, handing out Wii consoles and signing things. I don't know why, but I simply can't imagine Phil Harrison hanging out with his PSP at the PS3 launch.

The next question of course is would it be beneficial to Sony to have such a figure? Would it be necessary? This next generation of consoles is certainly being fought on more fronts and in more ways than ever before -- could this be a new, unforeseen front?

Certainly the likes of Reggie, Miyamoto and Major Nelson have proven incredibly popular with the fans. Major Nelson has been an instrumental figure in the success of the extra features of the Xbox 360; he has promoted them to the fans, and actively encourages extra user-created features such as the Xbox 360 blogs, XBStream and so on and so forth. Every one of these I have found through Major Nelson. He speaks with small-time game journalists, offering them words of encouragement, and I know for a fact he reads a lot of the gaming press in order to find out just what he and his team have done wrong and right with the Xbox 360.

Personally, I think that with Sony's plans for a single, unified online service to rival Xbox Live with the PS3 would benefit immensely from having a figurehead within the company who acts as, for want of a better phrase a "go between" the development teams of the online service and the fans. In my eyes if anything it's a new form of customer service that offers the user an even larger opportunity to interact with the companies that created their consoles.

Hopefully Nintendo's message board channel will also see Nintendo staff posting on it as many of the Xbox 360 "Launch Team" have done with the official Xbox Boards, and I truly hope we can expect the same from Sony.

While it's not something that appeals to every group of people that play games -- the casual market and kids, for example, the existence of these people allows the part of the market that is most opinionated -- the core gamers, those who have a very clear opinion on what they want and what is good and bad -- to interact with somebody who can actually bring about change.

Hell, on a lesser note, it even gives the fanboys someone to worship.

While it isn't vital, I'm certainly of the opinion that it could certainly help Sony's online service and chances of success with it. A sense of community is definitely what is needed with a unified online service, and every community had somebody at the head.

Sony's only problem now would be who? Right now I don't see Ken Kutagari, Kaz Hirai or Phil Harrison being a particularly strong public figure with the fans. Despite all this, I think getting one would be a step in the right direction for Sony's online service, whatever it may be called.

Here's where I'm open to ideas. This is an open article; I wanted to start a debate. Do you think such a figure would help Sony? How important would it be? Who would such a person be? Feel free to reply in the comments, or click my name at the top of the article to send me an email.

Enjoyed this Article? Digg It!