We are about two weeks away from PlayStation Vue shutting down. The failure of this much loved service among cord cutters has raised the question about why it failed. Also, if such a streaming service could fail then couldn’t other cord cutting services also fail? Let’s take a look…
Here are a few reasons PlayStation Vue failed.
Poor Marketing & Communication
From day one Sony has struggled to properly market PlayStation Vue. Sony often added amazing features but rarely would advertise them.
Take for example the addition of a new channel to the service. Most live TV streaming services would have at least distributed a press release about it. Sony only made a small mention of the new channel hidden on their website.
Sony never launched dedicated PlayStation Vue social media. Instead, Sony used PlayStation gaming social media accounts to represent PlayStation Vue. As you would expect, this confused customers and potential customers who already thought you needed a PlayStation game system to use the service.
The lack of communication from Sony has to be the primary reason the service failed.
The Name
PlayStation Vue’s biggest issue may be its name. We often hear how our readers would love to get PlayStation Vue but they don’t have a PlayStation game system.
With PlayStation being a well-known gaming console having PlayStation Vue in the name seems to be an obvious reason why people didn’t subscribe.
Sony’s most recent marketing efforts primarily went into convincing customers they didn’t need a PlayStation gaming console to subscribe to PlayStation Vue. When most of your marketing is tied to explaining your name, you are not convincing people to sign up for your service.
Putting Sony First
The last reason PlayStation Vue failed was the fact that Sony wanted PlayStation Vue to promote Sony more than it promoted PlayStation Vue.
Sony kept many of the best PlayStation Vue features limited to the PlayStation game system. Features like multichannel view were, for a long time, PlayStation exclusive. Once Sony started to open up it was too late.
Sony also forced PlayStation Vue customers to pay through PlayStation accounts, making the service less customer friendly.
Sony seemed more interested in using PlayStation Vue to help Sony grow than using Sony to help PlayStation Vue grow.
These are just a few of the reasons why Sony’s PlayStation Vue failed.
Here are two of the main reasons that caused PlayStation Vue to fail according to Sony employees who Cord Cutters News talked with.
The Price
Now you are likely thinking these employees thought the price was too high, but you would be mistaken. According to Sony employees, the company started off with the price too low. This created an expectation that subscribers could get even more content without the price going up, and later as Sony added more channels subscribers did not seem to care.
All the PlayStation Vue subscribers wanted was a low price and no matter how many channels Sony added to justify a price hike subscribers were unhappy.
Sony employees seem to think a higher price out of the gate could have helped make the service more profitable allowing it to continue.
The Name
Even Sony employees blame the PlayStation Vue name. For years many PlayStation Vue fans have been pushing Sony to rebrand the service to Sony TV or Vue TV. Now it seems that even Sony employees agreed that the name created confusion and caused PlayStation Vue to not gain subscribers who would have otherwise subscribed.
Even after Sony announced plans to shut down PlayStation Vue, we are still hearing from people who assumed that you needed a PlayStation gaming device to use the service.
All of this comes down to decisions Sony made and should be a warning for all of its competitors going forward.
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