Earlier this month, Papa John’s and Sony announced a joint venture that would bring the ability to order pizza to the Playstation 3 video gaming console. 

Basically, users will be able to select an icon located on the PS3 main menu bar, and from there a Papa John’s menu will pop up that lists all menu items, and allows the user to place an order from start to finish and have it delivered to their door.

The supposed benefit to gamers is that they will never have to take a break from the action of their favorite games to take care of that pesky need to eat.

Recently, Sony has been hitting the cable television market hard with commercials advertising the fact that the price of Playstation 3 has recently been reduced to $299 in conjunction with the release of a new slimmer, pared-down version of the console. These advertisements culminate with a screen that states, “Playstation 3…it only does everything,” and in light of this new ability to order pizza, this tagline is certainly appropriate.

Pizza Hut, Domino’s Pizza and Papa John’s have all offered the ability to order their products online for quite a few years now, utilizing the internet due to the many practical benefits that it offers. First of all, there is the advertising angle. These companies can utilize internet advertising in various high traffic sectors of the web at a relatively low cost compared with television and even print media, and these ads often link to their home pages which offer the ability to actually place an order. The whole process is streamlined, from advertisement to purchase, in just a few clicks.

Another benefit to online ordering is the ease of communication.

“Having orders come in over the internet just makes life so much easier,” Matt McReynolds, manager of a Raleigh-area Pizza Hut, said. “Instead of us having to read out 10 minutes of specials over the phone, the customer can just look at the whole menu, and decide what they want.”

McReynolds said that as of about two years ago, when Raleigh Pizza Huts first began to offer online ordering, the number of errors in orders has been reduced considerably.

“I mean, they can just click on what they want, and then we get the order directly,” he said.

Pizza Hut has recently released an iPhone application that operates similarly to the PS3 Papa John’s system, allowing users to select their order from a pictorial menu via the touch screen. Both of these applications are merely front ends for the Internet ordering side of these company’s operations, but they bring new customers into the fold by offering new ways to order conveniently.

The benefits to Papa John’s and Pizza Hut are readily apparent, but what about the benefits to potential users?

President of the Multiplayer Gaming Club Kyle Bolton said he already orders his pizza online almost exclusively. In fact, even when he is ordering from a restaurant that does not yet offer internet ordering, a Chinese place for example, he regularly consults their Web site anyway to peruse the menu and check for specials. On the topic of ordering via Playstation 3, he was very positive.

“Oftentimes we have LAN parties going on, and I don’t want to have to take off my headset and find a cell phone to place an order,” he said. “I’d love to be able to pull up a dashboard or a HUD (heads up display) of some kind to order between missions.”

Brandon Graves, a senior in psychology as well as a member of the Multiplayer Gaming club on campus, is cautiously optimistic about these new options.

“I have no problem with having the ability to order pizza through my personal electronic device, so long as it doesn’t clutter or hamper the device’s primary function,” he said. “If I’m bombarded with ads, however, I would probably take offense.”

Graves said he doesn’t think that most people would use the service, unless it was “streamlined, or maybe offered platform specific deals or incentives.”

For pizza companies to be successful in getting PS3 gamers or iPhone users to order via these devices, they need to incentivize the process, and structure it to better fit into the lives of this target audience. Special deals for gamers, available only over PS3, or special icons on an iPhone screen that automatically order a favorite type of pizza to be delivered, would likely drive a new generation of consumers to order their food in a brand new way.