During their Press Announcement today, Sony took a brief moment to remind their fans that their augmented reality experiment, The Playroom, will be pre-installed on every PS4.

While the Playroom is nothing new to us – the idea was revealed in their E3 conference earlier this year – the reminder rung to me as an unfortunate example of shooting yourself in the foot. You see, the concept of the Playroom is to use your Playstation Eye to create an augmented reality experience on your console, connecting you to other players through a virtual playroom. By sensing the controller’s lightbar and using other features exclusive to the console, a Wii Sports-style experience can be played. However, Sony announced just several weeks ago that to cut the cost of purchasing the console at launch, The PlayStation 4 Eye camera will NOT be included with all consoles.

Reminding your next customers that your console will include a feature that they can’t even use without purchasing an optional accessory – as well as failing to provide said accessory when much of the console’s unique new abilities rely on it – smacks of a fail to me. Disagree? Let us know in the comments.