Back in December I contacted Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony to ask if they would be willing to participate in an experiment.
I wanted an executive from each company to write an open letter welcoming new gamers to their specific platform. The idea, I thought, was to serve two purposes.
First it seemed like it would be interesting to hear what someone so high up in the company would tell a person who had just purchased their console. What games would they recommend? What about their platform do they think stands out?
While interesting, it certainly doesn't apply to the typical Kotaku reader. So the other thing that I thought would be interesting was to look at the way these executives wrote their letters, the language they used.
To be clear, don't fault any of the companies for the slant toward new gamers they took when writing the letters, I asked them to do that. But maybe look beyond the face of the letter and try to read something into what you find their beyond what to buy for a console.
These are, all three companies tell me, letters actually penned by these executives. So lets skip the normal fanboism and dig into something that could actually be quite insightful.
Welcome To the Family: A Letter From Nintendo's Cammie Dunaway
Welcome To the Family: A Letter From Playstation's Peter Dille
Welcome To the Family: A Letter From Xbox 360's John Schappert