Long and interesting article from gamedaily.
I read a very provocative interview in Game Informer magazine today about the new SCEA President Jack Tretton who took over Kaz Harai's position recently. What he had to say, for me, was revealing and a very big eye opener that gave me a whole new perspective on the state of Sony and the PS3.
I know there is the possibility of some real bias here considering its the President of Sony America talking but from the interview it seemed like he was really just shooting from the hip and telling it like it is. I feel his word can be trusted. He said that Sony is extremely commited to the gamers and the Playstation brand. The PS2 was a large investment over the PS1 but the PS3 was an enormous investment compared to the PS2. Sony has built the factories that can produce every component for the PS3 many years ago. They believe in long term investments of billions of dollars towards the Playstation brand.
Tretton apologized for the initial shortage of systems but said there was bound to be at least some pitfalls when mass producing such an ambitious piece of hardware. He said their vision was to design the PS3 to be future-proof, to be a viable and strong platform for 10 years. That is why they invested heavily in designing their home-brew Cell processor with the 8 core configuration. They knew that multi-core CPU's are the future even if in the short term developers won't know how to harnass all the power.
I used to think that the RSX GPU will become out-dated too soon but I did not understand the unique architecture in the PS3 that connects the Cell to the RSX. Over the years as programmers learn more and more about the hardware, they will be able to offload many tasks from the RSX to the Cell's SPE cores essentially allowing the RSX to evolve it's graphics potential. In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, it means that PS3 games will look significantly better as the system ages to stay current with the standards of games. Even if MS releases another Xbox soon, the PS3 will probably be able to keep pace. At least enough to not warrant buying a new system from the competition. Anyway, as console gamers I don't think many of us want to buy a $500-600 system every 3-4 years. But I'm sure MS will try it.
Sony was also aware that standard DVD's would no longer be sufficient for storage much longer but also wanted to offer some real extra value to the PS3 by going with the blu-ray drive. Storage space for games is just as important to them as having a successful format for the next generation of high definition movies. Kojima recently stated that even 50GB of storage was not enough for MGS4 so that is proof already that standard DVD is a mistake if the PS3 had gone with that medium instead.
Tretton said that they knew it would be very expensive to launch an ambitious system like the PS3 by trying to use current technology to make it future-proof. This is the main cause of the blu-ray diode problem causing the shortage but they had 1 million PS3's air shipped to North America during the holidays at great expense because he said they don't care what it costs. The know the PS3 is a long term investment and they are willing to go the distance.
When he was asked about the loss of exclusives such as Assassins Creed, he stated that Sony has never "bought out" developers or made special deals to secure exclusive games. The most they have done is provided help with marketing the exclusive games. Sony has the largest in-house development studios of all three competitors allowing them to have the largest number of exclusive games but he also realizes that due to rising development costs, very few companies can afford not to go multi-platform anymore. Exclusive games will be few and far between in this generation.
The most important thing to take away from this is that buying a PS3 is like buying a piece of the future. We don't yet know exactly what that future will look like but you can be sure that the engineering that has gone into this system will give game developers the most powerful tool ever to bring to life games that will be on a whole new level. On the PS3 we will experience some of the finest creations in gaming history. It's history in the making people. Sony just can't wait to unleash the power of the system and it's just getting warmed up. And I am sure now, more than ever that the PS3 is ahead of its time and will be around long after the Xbox 360 is a faded memory.
Similar interview to GameInformer's here: http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=13886
..
