cliffbo
05-21-2007, 09:06 PM
The State Of The Station: The Peter Dille Interview
by Billy Berghammer
POSTED: 5/18/2007 3:19 PM
uring this week’s Sony Gamers’ Day in San Diego, both Billy and Kato got a few moments with Sony Computer Entertainment’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, Peter Dille to ask a number of questions. We hit up such pertinent topics as the new PSP download network, second-gen titles, new rumble controllers, PSP 2.0, and much much more.
Game Informer: What’s it like to not have to do E3 until July?
Peter Dille: Well, we are going to have to do E3, so we’re not completely off the hook. I think it comes back to that it’s really important to talk to the press this time of the year. You’ve got long lead press. You’ve got a market that needs to understand what are the plans. We want to show everything. If we waited until July and just showed up at E3, it’s really too late to generate a lot of the momentum behind the products that we want, so we need to start now and that’s why we’re doing a big event like this–focusing on games.
GI: You’ve got a lot playable games here, and you announced SOCOM today [ed: SOCOM: Confrontation]. Can we expect SOCOM playable at E3? Killzone at E3?
Dille: Yeah. I think all the stuff you can have playable at E3. And then the one we’ve been holding back on is Killzone, so it’s a good reason for you to come to E3, because we’ll have some updates on that. By all means, you need to save something to keep people interested.
GI: One of the things that was discussed was the fact that the PSP will have some sort of online network for downloading content. Are you talking music and movies? Is that the plan, and will it be through Sony Connect?
Dille: We were a little bit coy about revealing all of the plans, but I think all of the above. We’re looking at downloading games, and you can do that now via the PlayStation Store on PS3. Download it on the PS3, slide it over to your PSP, take a PS1 classic or other content directly to your PSP. The missing ingredient for us has been making it easier for consumers to get video content or music content to the PSP, because the device has this awesome technical playback capability, awesome screen built for video and yet we don’t make it terribly easy for people to access any content. So we’re looking to fix that. We’ve got a lot of people hard at work on it we look forward to rolling that plan out and that service out later this year. But be patient, we hope it won’t be much further.
GI: Will this be something you’ll be able to do over Wi-Fi, or will you have to connect your PSP to your PS3?
Dille: We haven’t really announced details, but, again I think if you look at that product I think you can get a bit creative and say, it already connects to the PS3, it’s got Wi-Fi connectivity, I think both paths are open to us.
GI: Was the Home feature created as something responding to a need or a want that PS3 owners have expressed? That they want some open world or was it more something that you created and hoping that they’ll adopt?
Dille: It wasn’t in response to what they wanted, because when Home was started there were no PS3 owners so we didn’t know what they wanted. Home has been in development for a while. It would have been nice to have had it on November 17th, but our perspective is don’t announce things too early. You never have a second chance to make a first impression. I think Home really demonstrates the creativity and unique approach that we have to this business. When we were preparing to launch PS3 a lot of people said, “Okay, I guess they’re going to match Live feature by feature and we’ll just expect a derivative approach.” That’s not Sony’s way of doing things. We take a step back and say, we want online gaming for sure. Resistance you’ve got 40-player multiplayer on November 17th. Check that box. But Home from my perspective leapfrogs the competition. What’s going on with community in the console environment, because now you’ve got a true 3D based community. You’re not going to see anything like Home on any other platforms. I think it really speaks to the creativity and individuality you’ve seen in PlayStation products throughout the years.
GI: In one of the demonstration with Ratchet, they were talking about it as second generation of PS3 titles. Do you expect your third-party partners to also be on that second wave even though that some partners, say Ubisoft, may have been holding back from their first titles.
Dille: You have to have a first-generation title to have a second-generation title. Insomniac had Resistance: Fall of Man, so they’re able to share some of that tech, and have a second-gen title like Ratchet. I think if you look at other second-gen titles, NBA ‘08 from the Sony studio, that’ll be a second-gen. But if you go out to the third parties, you have to say, “Okay, who had launch titles? And which of those will be second-gen?” You guys would probably know better than I would with what is going on with the third party community. But you can look at what the launch line-up was last year and say, “Who’s working on a sequel? Is it Madden? Is it Tony Hawk?” I’m not saying those are the answers.
GI: Do you expect those third-party partners to come up to speed a little quicker, a little easier?
Dille: Absolutely. Number one, you always come up to speed on your own, because the first one is the hardest, and things get better with second-gen—that’s kind of the beauty with second-gen. I think some of the things we’re doing on our side are helping them get up to speed. We talked at GDC about sharing our tech with the third-party community, the whole EDGE initiative, we’ve had some really great feedback to that. So I think that’s helping them ramp up the learning curve. The PlayStation 3 is a very technically advanced system. Any help we can give, sharing some of those secrets I think are really welcome by the third party. I think it’s helping.
GI: One thing you said you were doing is sharing your tech. The Hall of Fame and trophies are something gamers are really excited about, and kind of your version of the achievement set up. I’ve been visiting the third parties for the last month or so, seeing their games, and asking them if they’re going to have the trophy system in their games, and so far they’ve been saying they don’t have the tech yet. When do you think we’ll see third party games with trophies?
Dille: Hopefully, as soon as possible. I think its one of those things where it’s a chicken and an egg. We’ve got to build out some of the first-party capability and make sure all of that’s working and then roll it out. You might see some of that in first-party games this year and then, I’m not saying there won’t be any third parties this year, but it would be impossible to catch all of the development that’s going on, having them implement that system, and have that be in the games that are going to be on retail shelves this Fall. We’ll showcase that technology and that ability, and they’ll want to get on board as well, and we’ll share that with them. So it’s kind of a rolling approach to this. Not unlike some of the things you’re seeing across the PlayStation Network, because we did keep our cards a little bit close to the vest behind everything. I spoke a little bit earlier about people just assuming we were going to go down the same path, but I think using the network to create content that was built specifically for the PS3 wasn’t something that people really imagined that we’d be doing. They thought, “Okay it’ll be mission packs, it’ll be microtransactions for a weapon or a vehicle but I don’t think anyone imagined games like Fl0w, or Blast Factor or Calling All Cars, where we’re building games that aren’t retreads, they’re built to take advantage of Cell and the PS3 technology–1080p, et cetera.
So the only places you saw that was Sony. Now the third parties understand that’s an opportunity. Down the stream, you’re going to see that. A little bit of the same thing with the technology, you said to show off the Hall of Fame. We’ve got to build it first and make sure they know how to do it.
GI: Will the Hall of Fame be a requirement for third parties?
Dille: I’m not in charge of third-party requirements, so I’m not sure I can say. Whether or not it’s a requirement, I think there’s a lot of self motivation to do it because it’s a great way to keep people interested in their games. It provides the great challenge to them [ed: gamers] as well as great community aspects. I don’t think it will be a hard sell.
GI: One thing Cory Barlog from the God of War team mentioned at the God Of War II launch event was that God of War III will have rumble capabilities. I was wondering when we’ll start having controllers with rumble in them.
Dille: Well, as you guys know Sony and Immersion settled a lawsuit. The companies are talking about what ways could that technology manifest itself in PlayStation products going forward. No announcements to make yet, but when we do, it’ll be sure to be big news.
GI: Is there a potential for people to–I mean I have a PS3, Kato has a PS3, I bought controllers and they’re expensive–is there any way that Sony will have some sort of a replacement program where you can get the controller that you really want, which is the one with rumble in it?
Dille: Well we don’t have a controller with rumble yet, so there’s no replacement plan. Again, the conversations with Immersion are forward looking, but your question is something I really can’t address because there’s no product that features it outside of the existing controllers with PS2.
GI: When you talked about the trophy system in Home and seen the overview at GDC how open-ended is Home for third parties or for Sony itself to add different kinds of functionalities beyond what we’re expecting to come out in the Fall.
Dille: We’re providing the tools to third parties so they can build their own environments that can live in Home, so that can be, and I’ll just pick an example and I’ll do a fake publisher so it doesn’t look like I’m taking sides, but if Acme publishing wanted to have the Acme publishing area, then a consumer can go into that. But if Acme publishing had a really big game, then they could create a really big themed area, as well. There’s a lot of flexibility there. If you’re talking about is it a really open system so that any other brand could build out a space? No. They’ll have to work through us and we’ll want to work with the right partners to make sure it’s in keeping with the PlayStation brand.
GI: When you were talking about the new SOCOM title for PS3, a lot of people were surprised that you would offer that as a download and as a Blu-ray disc product. Could you explain how Warhawk will work?
Dille: Warhawk from a distribution perspective, it’s kind of a similar strategy as SOCOM. Warhawk will be available as a download from the PlayStation Network, but we’ll also have a retail SKU. There will be differences between the two. The game will be the same, but in the retail SKU we’re able to take advantage of that Blu-ray disc and pack that disc with behind-the-scenes information, developer interviews, demos of other games and again, if you’ve got Blu-ray why not take advantage of that. On top of that, we’ll have a Bluetooth wireless headset so that you can jump into the fray day one and start trash-talking. We think that’s a great way to A. offer consumers a choice, if you’re already involved in the PlayStation Network and want the convenience of downloading, it will make that possible. If you’re not a member yet of the PlayStation Network or haven’t registered and are kind of curious, you have another way to go and get that headset at the same time as well as some other content. That also gives our retail partners another way to stay involved in both so they’re not involved in the Network business
GI: Do you have a price on those SKUs?
Dille: Not one that we’ll announce.
GI: Do you see this model going forward with having separate download and retail? Will this be a common thing or does the headset make it special.
Dille: It’s not going to be terribly common because there’s not that many games that we’ll do this for. The vast, vast majority of our products are Blu-ray disc products that are sold at retail. We have a number of games that are downloadable for the PlayStation Network but they’re very different experiences. Again, Blast Factor and Calling All Cars–they’re not full $60 retail products. They help represent the full range of content that you get on the PlayStation 3. But I think Warhawk and SOCOM are special examples. We’re coming up with approaches for them that fit the needs of those two products.
GI: Microsoft is having a lot of success with downloadable movies, TV shows, that sort of thing. Does Sony have any similar plans along side the PSP?
Dille: I don’t think we’ve been terribly secretive about that. I think you expect a company like Sony that has a motion picture division, a music division, and a device like the PlayStation 3 that offers tremendous opportunities to download content. The PlayStation 3 doesn’t care what type of content it is. But the consumer does. We’re looking for the right model, like with the PSP, to offer consumers an easy to use service to be able to access that type of content. Hopefully gamers aren’t going to have to be too patient; you’ll be seeing those types of announcements in the not-too-distant future.
GI: One thing you’ve been doing a great job with, and I commend you guys, is patching the system with new features such as Folding. One thing a lot of users are waiting for is the ability to stream music, pictures or video from their home computers. Is that something we may see?
Dille: I won’t address those two specifically but what I’ll tell you is we probably have a long list of things that the marketing department has said lets prioritize these. The same time the engineering team in Japan have their own lists and they’re working on as many as they can as fast as they can. I think as you said, they have a pretty good record of pumping out these firmware upgrades fairly regularly, so they’re trying to check them off the list as soon as they can. I think it’s safe to say we know what gamers want, we’re listening, we’re trying to address them as soon as we can, and hopefully we’ll get to everyone’s wish lists as quick as possible.
GI: There’s been some talk that some third-party publishers have games ready in the chute but have held back in releasing them until the install base for the PS3 grows. Is that something you anticipated when you released the system or is that more of a surprise.
Dille: First of all, I haven’t heard that. Any specifics? It’s sort of counter-intuitive, because the question suggest that, first of all you have to take a step back and say most third parties are doing cross-platform development, so that suggests that they’re holding back a 360 SKU and a PS3 SKU, and if that’s the case then that speaks to our position in the marketplace as a force to be reckoned with . Because they’re forgoing the headstart that we gave Microsoft, and if they want to wait for us I guess that’s good news from our perspective.
GI: Some of the talk is like with Ubisoft and their Rainbow Six title, which is a SKU that’s already available for the 360.
Dille: I hadn’t heard that they were waiting. That’s an economic decision that a publisher makes, and they’re entitled to make those decisions. I think our focus, I think this event hopefully communicates it, we feel that we’ve got the horsepower to drive each of the platforms. If you talk about PlayStation 3, we’re not going to rely on the third parties to come up with exclusive content, we’ve got 15 games that are just shipping this fiscal year, so that doesn’t even include Resistance which will still be relevant, Motorstorm which will still be relevant, it doesn’t include the content you’ll find on the PlayStation Network. 15 Blu-ray games that we’ll use to differentiate the PlayStation experience across every genre you can think of, from RPG, to shooter, to racing, sports, action, and then stuff that defies being put in a box, like LittleBigPlanet, SingStar, Eye of Judgment—I challenge anyone to offer that type of lineup on any other system, so again I think third parties can make the decisions they need based on how they run their business.
GI: Speaking of LittleBigPlanet, some people that are into Xbox Live Arcade complain that the games aren’t timely enough. They’ll hear about a game, the release date shifts, and some of the Live Arcade games didn’t come out as fast as they would have hoped. Do you have a concrete time table for when you want to bring out your PlayStation Network titles like Bowling or LittleBigPlanet.
Dille: We do have timetables, every development team has their schedules–we keep track of it. Our approach is to try to have a steady stream of new content so when consumers go back to the PlayStation Network there is always something new there’s a reason to come back and surprise them with compelling content. As we map out the schedule and put it on the wall, you know, some of it will move but by and large I think we have a pretty good track record of hitting the dates that we need to hit. Again, when there’s a studio organization as large as ours, as Jack said our organization is larger than Microsoft and Nintendo combined, we have a lot of teams working on a lot of stuff. Hopefully, we’re able to have that type of content so if something does move, there’s something else going on.
GI: You mentioned that with the price drop of the PSP a lot more units are moving of shelves, but there’s also been recent talk that there’s some sort of PSP 2.0 in development. Will you have both SKUs or do you think with the price drop you won’t need to release that next-gen PSP this year?
Dille: You know, we get a lot of questions about rumors and speculation. Sony’s a technology company so there are lots of people out there wondering what we’ll do next. But as a rule, we don’t comment on rumors or speculation.
GI: It was someone from Sony Europe who said it, I think.
Dille: I’m not aware of that. Again, people can speculate about what Sony is going to release. What I can tell you is that we’ve shipped 25 million PSPs and 8 million sold through in North America. The platform is doing really, really well. We’ve got a lot of momentum behind the platform now with the price drop. There are 140 games in development. We are 100% behind PSP as a format, and that won’t change going forward.
GI: Would you also say the 10 year cycle also includes the PSP as you said it would for the PS3, PS2 and PS1?
Dille: Absolutely. We consider the PSP a platform, just like the other two hardware systems. Again we now start talking about the PlayStation Network as our fourth platform with its own focus. By all means, the PSP is still early days here. There’s a plan in place, and we get a lot of questions, “Are you going to react to this, are you going to react to that.” The ability to be able to bring the price down to $169 is based on the manufacturing facilities being able to get 25 million units out and be able to drive the manufacturing price down. That’s all planned out when you start architecting a system way back before it ever gets manufactured. So far, so good, with the PSP. We just need to keep doing what we’re doing and round out the offering. I personally believe that download service is something that could be the missing ingredient that will energize the market and give people that much more reason to keep the PSP that they bought by their side everywhere they go.
http://www.gametab.com/news/911785/
by Billy Berghammer
POSTED: 5/18/2007 3:19 PM
uring this week’s Sony Gamers’ Day in San Diego, both Billy and Kato got a few moments with Sony Computer Entertainment’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, Peter Dille to ask a number of questions. We hit up such pertinent topics as the new PSP download network, second-gen titles, new rumble controllers, PSP 2.0, and much much more.
Game Informer: What’s it like to not have to do E3 until July?
Peter Dille: Well, we are going to have to do E3, so we’re not completely off the hook. I think it comes back to that it’s really important to talk to the press this time of the year. You’ve got long lead press. You’ve got a market that needs to understand what are the plans. We want to show everything. If we waited until July and just showed up at E3, it’s really too late to generate a lot of the momentum behind the products that we want, so we need to start now and that’s why we’re doing a big event like this–focusing on games.
GI: You’ve got a lot playable games here, and you announced SOCOM today [ed: SOCOM: Confrontation]. Can we expect SOCOM playable at E3? Killzone at E3?
Dille: Yeah. I think all the stuff you can have playable at E3. And then the one we’ve been holding back on is Killzone, so it’s a good reason for you to come to E3, because we’ll have some updates on that. By all means, you need to save something to keep people interested.
GI: One of the things that was discussed was the fact that the PSP will have some sort of online network for downloading content. Are you talking music and movies? Is that the plan, and will it be through Sony Connect?
Dille: We were a little bit coy about revealing all of the plans, but I think all of the above. We’re looking at downloading games, and you can do that now via the PlayStation Store on PS3. Download it on the PS3, slide it over to your PSP, take a PS1 classic or other content directly to your PSP. The missing ingredient for us has been making it easier for consumers to get video content or music content to the PSP, because the device has this awesome technical playback capability, awesome screen built for video and yet we don’t make it terribly easy for people to access any content. So we’re looking to fix that. We’ve got a lot of people hard at work on it we look forward to rolling that plan out and that service out later this year. But be patient, we hope it won’t be much further.
GI: Will this be something you’ll be able to do over Wi-Fi, or will you have to connect your PSP to your PS3?
Dille: We haven’t really announced details, but, again I think if you look at that product I think you can get a bit creative and say, it already connects to the PS3, it’s got Wi-Fi connectivity, I think both paths are open to us.
GI: Was the Home feature created as something responding to a need or a want that PS3 owners have expressed? That they want some open world or was it more something that you created and hoping that they’ll adopt?
Dille: It wasn’t in response to what they wanted, because when Home was started there were no PS3 owners so we didn’t know what they wanted. Home has been in development for a while. It would have been nice to have had it on November 17th, but our perspective is don’t announce things too early. You never have a second chance to make a first impression. I think Home really demonstrates the creativity and unique approach that we have to this business. When we were preparing to launch PS3 a lot of people said, “Okay, I guess they’re going to match Live feature by feature and we’ll just expect a derivative approach.” That’s not Sony’s way of doing things. We take a step back and say, we want online gaming for sure. Resistance you’ve got 40-player multiplayer on November 17th. Check that box. But Home from my perspective leapfrogs the competition. What’s going on with community in the console environment, because now you’ve got a true 3D based community. You’re not going to see anything like Home on any other platforms. I think it really speaks to the creativity and individuality you’ve seen in PlayStation products throughout the years.
GI: In one of the demonstration with Ratchet, they were talking about it as second generation of PS3 titles. Do you expect your third-party partners to also be on that second wave even though that some partners, say Ubisoft, may have been holding back from their first titles.
Dille: You have to have a first-generation title to have a second-generation title. Insomniac had Resistance: Fall of Man, so they’re able to share some of that tech, and have a second-gen title like Ratchet. I think if you look at other second-gen titles, NBA ‘08 from the Sony studio, that’ll be a second-gen. But if you go out to the third parties, you have to say, “Okay, who had launch titles? And which of those will be second-gen?” You guys would probably know better than I would with what is going on with the third party community. But you can look at what the launch line-up was last year and say, “Who’s working on a sequel? Is it Madden? Is it Tony Hawk?” I’m not saying those are the answers.
GI: Do you expect those third-party partners to come up to speed a little quicker, a little easier?
Dille: Absolutely. Number one, you always come up to speed on your own, because the first one is the hardest, and things get better with second-gen—that’s kind of the beauty with second-gen. I think some of the things we’re doing on our side are helping them get up to speed. We talked at GDC about sharing our tech with the third-party community, the whole EDGE initiative, we’ve had some really great feedback to that. So I think that’s helping them ramp up the learning curve. The PlayStation 3 is a very technically advanced system. Any help we can give, sharing some of those secrets I think are really welcome by the third party. I think it’s helping.
GI: One thing you said you were doing is sharing your tech. The Hall of Fame and trophies are something gamers are really excited about, and kind of your version of the achievement set up. I’ve been visiting the third parties for the last month or so, seeing their games, and asking them if they’re going to have the trophy system in their games, and so far they’ve been saying they don’t have the tech yet. When do you think we’ll see third party games with trophies?
Dille: Hopefully, as soon as possible. I think its one of those things where it’s a chicken and an egg. We’ve got to build out some of the first-party capability and make sure all of that’s working and then roll it out. You might see some of that in first-party games this year and then, I’m not saying there won’t be any third parties this year, but it would be impossible to catch all of the development that’s going on, having them implement that system, and have that be in the games that are going to be on retail shelves this Fall. We’ll showcase that technology and that ability, and they’ll want to get on board as well, and we’ll share that with them. So it’s kind of a rolling approach to this. Not unlike some of the things you’re seeing across the PlayStation Network, because we did keep our cards a little bit close to the vest behind everything. I spoke a little bit earlier about people just assuming we were going to go down the same path, but I think using the network to create content that was built specifically for the PS3 wasn’t something that people really imagined that we’d be doing. They thought, “Okay it’ll be mission packs, it’ll be microtransactions for a weapon or a vehicle but I don’t think anyone imagined games like Fl0w, or Blast Factor or Calling All Cars, where we’re building games that aren’t retreads, they’re built to take advantage of Cell and the PS3 technology–1080p, et cetera.
So the only places you saw that was Sony. Now the third parties understand that’s an opportunity. Down the stream, you’re going to see that. A little bit of the same thing with the technology, you said to show off the Hall of Fame. We’ve got to build it first and make sure they know how to do it.
GI: Will the Hall of Fame be a requirement for third parties?
Dille: I’m not in charge of third-party requirements, so I’m not sure I can say. Whether or not it’s a requirement, I think there’s a lot of self motivation to do it because it’s a great way to keep people interested in their games. It provides the great challenge to them [ed: gamers] as well as great community aspects. I don’t think it will be a hard sell.
GI: One thing Cory Barlog from the God of War team mentioned at the God Of War II launch event was that God of War III will have rumble capabilities. I was wondering when we’ll start having controllers with rumble in them.
Dille: Well, as you guys know Sony and Immersion settled a lawsuit. The companies are talking about what ways could that technology manifest itself in PlayStation products going forward. No announcements to make yet, but when we do, it’ll be sure to be big news.
GI: Is there a potential for people to–I mean I have a PS3, Kato has a PS3, I bought controllers and they’re expensive–is there any way that Sony will have some sort of a replacement program where you can get the controller that you really want, which is the one with rumble in it?
Dille: Well we don’t have a controller with rumble yet, so there’s no replacement plan. Again, the conversations with Immersion are forward looking, but your question is something I really can’t address because there’s no product that features it outside of the existing controllers with PS2.
GI: When you talked about the trophy system in Home and seen the overview at GDC how open-ended is Home for third parties or for Sony itself to add different kinds of functionalities beyond what we’re expecting to come out in the Fall.
Dille: We’re providing the tools to third parties so they can build their own environments that can live in Home, so that can be, and I’ll just pick an example and I’ll do a fake publisher so it doesn’t look like I’m taking sides, but if Acme publishing wanted to have the Acme publishing area, then a consumer can go into that. But if Acme publishing had a really big game, then they could create a really big themed area, as well. There’s a lot of flexibility there. If you’re talking about is it a really open system so that any other brand could build out a space? No. They’ll have to work through us and we’ll want to work with the right partners to make sure it’s in keeping with the PlayStation brand.
GI: When you were talking about the new SOCOM title for PS3, a lot of people were surprised that you would offer that as a download and as a Blu-ray disc product. Could you explain how Warhawk will work?
Dille: Warhawk from a distribution perspective, it’s kind of a similar strategy as SOCOM. Warhawk will be available as a download from the PlayStation Network, but we’ll also have a retail SKU. There will be differences between the two. The game will be the same, but in the retail SKU we’re able to take advantage of that Blu-ray disc and pack that disc with behind-the-scenes information, developer interviews, demos of other games and again, if you’ve got Blu-ray why not take advantage of that. On top of that, we’ll have a Bluetooth wireless headset so that you can jump into the fray day one and start trash-talking. We think that’s a great way to A. offer consumers a choice, if you’re already involved in the PlayStation Network and want the convenience of downloading, it will make that possible. If you’re not a member yet of the PlayStation Network or haven’t registered and are kind of curious, you have another way to go and get that headset at the same time as well as some other content. That also gives our retail partners another way to stay involved in both so they’re not involved in the Network business
GI: Do you have a price on those SKUs?
Dille: Not one that we’ll announce.
GI: Do you see this model going forward with having separate download and retail? Will this be a common thing or does the headset make it special.
Dille: It’s not going to be terribly common because there’s not that many games that we’ll do this for. The vast, vast majority of our products are Blu-ray disc products that are sold at retail. We have a number of games that are downloadable for the PlayStation Network but they’re very different experiences. Again, Blast Factor and Calling All Cars–they’re not full $60 retail products. They help represent the full range of content that you get on the PlayStation 3. But I think Warhawk and SOCOM are special examples. We’re coming up with approaches for them that fit the needs of those two products.
GI: Microsoft is having a lot of success with downloadable movies, TV shows, that sort of thing. Does Sony have any similar plans along side the PSP?
Dille: I don’t think we’ve been terribly secretive about that. I think you expect a company like Sony that has a motion picture division, a music division, and a device like the PlayStation 3 that offers tremendous opportunities to download content. The PlayStation 3 doesn’t care what type of content it is. But the consumer does. We’re looking for the right model, like with the PSP, to offer consumers an easy to use service to be able to access that type of content. Hopefully gamers aren’t going to have to be too patient; you’ll be seeing those types of announcements in the not-too-distant future.
GI: One thing you’ve been doing a great job with, and I commend you guys, is patching the system with new features such as Folding. One thing a lot of users are waiting for is the ability to stream music, pictures or video from their home computers. Is that something we may see?
Dille: I won’t address those two specifically but what I’ll tell you is we probably have a long list of things that the marketing department has said lets prioritize these. The same time the engineering team in Japan have their own lists and they’re working on as many as they can as fast as they can. I think as you said, they have a pretty good record of pumping out these firmware upgrades fairly regularly, so they’re trying to check them off the list as soon as they can. I think it’s safe to say we know what gamers want, we’re listening, we’re trying to address them as soon as we can, and hopefully we’ll get to everyone’s wish lists as quick as possible.
GI: There’s been some talk that some third-party publishers have games ready in the chute but have held back in releasing them until the install base for the PS3 grows. Is that something you anticipated when you released the system or is that more of a surprise.
Dille: First of all, I haven’t heard that. Any specifics? It’s sort of counter-intuitive, because the question suggest that, first of all you have to take a step back and say most third parties are doing cross-platform development, so that suggests that they’re holding back a 360 SKU and a PS3 SKU, and if that’s the case then that speaks to our position in the marketplace as a force to be reckoned with . Because they’re forgoing the headstart that we gave Microsoft, and if they want to wait for us I guess that’s good news from our perspective.
GI: Some of the talk is like with Ubisoft and their Rainbow Six title, which is a SKU that’s already available for the 360.
Dille: I hadn’t heard that they were waiting. That’s an economic decision that a publisher makes, and they’re entitled to make those decisions. I think our focus, I think this event hopefully communicates it, we feel that we’ve got the horsepower to drive each of the platforms. If you talk about PlayStation 3, we’re not going to rely on the third parties to come up with exclusive content, we’ve got 15 games that are just shipping this fiscal year, so that doesn’t even include Resistance which will still be relevant, Motorstorm which will still be relevant, it doesn’t include the content you’ll find on the PlayStation Network. 15 Blu-ray games that we’ll use to differentiate the PlayStation experience across every genre you can think of, from RPG, to shooter, to racing, sports, action, and then stuff that defies being put in a box, like LittleBigPlanet, SingStar, Eye of Judgment—I challenge anyone to offer that type of lineup on any other system, so again I think third parties can make the decisions they need based on how they run their business.
GI: Speaking of LittleBigPlanet, some people that are into Xbox Live Arcade complain that the games aren’t timely enough. They’ll hear about a game, the release date shifts, and some of the Live Arcade games didn’t come out as fast as they would have hoped. Do you have a concrete time table for when you want to bring out your PlayStation Network titles like Bowling or LittleBigPlanet.
Dille: We do have timetables, every development team has their schedules–we keep track of it. Our approach is to try to have a steady stream of new content so when consumers go back to the PlayStation Network there is always something new there’s a reason to come back and surprise them with compelling content. As we map out the schedule and put it on the wall, you know, some of it will move but by and large I think we have a pretty good track record of hitting the dates that we need to hit. Again, when there’s a studio organization as large as ours, as Jack said our organization is larger than Microsoft and Nintendo combined, we have a lot of teams working on a lot of stuff. Hopefully, we’re able to have that type of content so if something does move, there’s something else going on.
GI: You mentioned that with the price drop of the PSP a lot more units are moving of shelves, but there’s also been recent talk that there’s some sort of PSP 2.0 in development. Will you have both SKUs or do you think with the price drop you won’t need to release that next-gen PSP this year?
Dille: You know, we get a lot of questions about rumors and speculation. Sony’s a technology company so there are lots of people out there wondering what we’ll do next. But as a rule, we don’t comment on rumors or speculation.
GI: It was someone from Sony Europe who said it, I think.
Dille: I’m not aware of that. Again, people can speculate about what Sony is going to release. What I can tell you is that we’ve shipped 25 million PSPs and 8 million sold through in North America. The platform is doing really, really well. We’ve got a lot of momentum behind the platform now with the price drop. There are 140 games in development. We are 100% behind PSP as a format, and that won’t change going forward.
GI: Would you also say the 10 year cycle also includes the PSP as you said it would for the PS3, PS2 and PS1?
Dille: Absolutely. We consider the PSP a platform, just like the other two hardware systems. Again we now start talking about the PlayStation Network as our fourth platform with its own focus. By all means, the PSP is still early days here. There’s a plan in place, and we get a lot of questions, “Are you going to react to this, are you going to react to that.” The ability to be able to bring the price down to $169 is based on the manufacturing facilities being able to get 25 million units out and be able to drive the manufacturing price down. That’s all planned out when you start architecting a system way back before it ever gets manufactured. So far, so good, with the PSP. We just need to keep doing what we’re doing and round out the offering. I personally believe that download service is something that could be the missing ingredient that will energize the market and give people that much more reason to keep the PSP that they bought by their side everywhere they go.
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