OmniCloud
06-28-2007, 01:25 AM
This is in the same topic of discussion as the "Sony's plan to win Christmas battle" and the Software thread I made using Viper's numbers. So lets go at it again, this time, it's coming from Sony's CEO himself. What he thinks of the competition, and most importantly, how PS3 is gonna turn around in the sales department. Jack is the freakin' man btw...good interview in PSM-some nice parts and a look into Sony's strategy.
bare with me, no scanner...
We've got to bring out the features of the PS3 and show them to the consumers, then the consumers will demand them from the other publishers.
We have a very different approach to exclusives than some of our competitors. We don't buy exclusivity. We don't fund development. We don't, for lack of a better term, bribe somebody to only do a game on our platform. We earn it by saying "you can build a better game on our platform. if you focus your development on our platform, you will ultimately be more successful. We can try to partner up with you from a technology standpoint. but just economically and technologically, this is the system that makes the most sense for you.
I think what you'll see now is a lot more exclusive features if a publisher wants to sell that same franchise on multiple platforms. I think the thing that you so aptly pointed out is, 15 exclusive alone just from us. You know, if we were working on three games, it doesn't make for a very big exclusive list, but if we got 15, we've got a larger exclusive list before the third party comes to you with an exclusive. You almost get to point where Nintendo's at, where they can do it without the third parties, but I don't know if that makes for a healthy environment. I think we sit perfectly in the middle. Microsoft is too dependent on the third-party community, and Nintendo is too dependent on first-party. We like to feel that we got a pretty good mix.
PSM:You mentioned that Uncharted is the second generation of PS3 games, isn't that a little too soon?
Yeah, "second generation" is a term that people aspire to..you want to be a launch title because of the technological merit badge of saying you were there from day one; but everybody knows regardless of how good a game is, people are going to be it up during that launch time frame. Every platform that's ever shipped since the inception of this business has gotten that knock. So there is just this bias that says "Well if it's a launch title, it can't be really superior technologically," so people want to move to the second generation.
Uncharted has had the same amount of development time and has started at the same point that Resistance did, it just gets baked later. Every day that you get with the platform helps a little bit. We've always had the luxury on other platform life cycles of having an extra six to nine months after the Japanese launch, and every day in that first year is a pretty big leap on the learning curve from the development standpoint. I agree with you, it is really early to talk about second generation, but that's more of a marketing term than to say "The future is here." I mean, I think there's going to be a 25th generation on PS3 and I think we've proven that on PS3. What would you call God of War? Is that the "seventh generation?"
PSM:The Technology is something that a lot of third party developers are still getting a handle on. Do you have a view of how long it will take them? There's a mention of "if the developer is good enough, they'll figure it out." You can stab the pressure that way. Or that, "seriously, this is a complicated technology with a whole new ball game, and we understand that these guys are going to need some help." and you assign as many resources as required to that community?
First of all, there are a log of great developers out there, and they always figure it out. The one thing Playstation platforms have had in common, for better or worse, at least on the console side is "Wow, it's difficult to develop for, but once you harness it, it has a lot of power." As you deal with more and more complicated technologies, it behooves us to work more and more closely with the development community to do everything we can to put the tool in there hands. It's really the fist time that we're sharing our findings on the first party side with teh third party development community. We just rolled out a lot of tools and a lot of tools that we've created in our development to the third party community. I absolutely think that's something we need to do going forward is to work more closely with them and to help them help us.
PSM:Does that include HOME too? I've asked developers, do you have trophies? and I've actually had one say to me, "Do you know who we can ask over there about how to get his sorted?" Home was a real boost at the announcement. When are we going to see the kinds of things that it does promise coming out, and how your approaching the developer community to provide those pieces?
Tons of internal meetings are going on at a regular basis. I think the misconceptions is that we have all the information, but we aren't sharing it. The reality is that we tend to move so quickly with technology that it's literally being created as we're rolling it out. I think that approach, while it can be somewhat stressful for everybody involved, is what's led to us being so cutting edge and so successful over the years. We're always pushing the barriers of technology, and we're creating things that only exist in somebody's head, and a year later they'll be in a consumer's hands. So, my understanding and my belief with the Home tools is that they'll be very intuitive and that the ability to implement them will be a lot more seamless than people anticipate bases on how impressive the technology looks. I think we're very close on that. I would say June/July time frame ideally for a full rollout. We'll be able to put the tools in the developer's hands and ultimately allow them to take advantage of it for this Christmas.
bare with me, no scanner...
We've got to bring out the features of the PS3 and show them to the consumers, then the consumers will demand them from the other publishers.
We have a very different approach to exclusives than some of our competitors. We don't buy exclusivity. We don't fund development. We don't, for lack of a better term, bribe somebody to only do a game on our platform. We earn it by saying "you can build a better game on our platform. if you focus your development on our platform, you will ultimately be more successful. We can try to partner up with you from a technology standpoint. but just economically and technologically, this is the system that makes the most sense for you.
I think what you'll see now is a lot more exclusive features if a publisher wants to sell that same franchise on multiple platforms. I think the thing that you so aptly pointed out is, 15 exclusive alone just from us. You know, if we were working on three games, it doesn't make for a very big exclusive list, but if we got 15, we've got a larger exclusive list before the third party comes to you with an exclusive. You almost get to point where Nintendo's at, where they can do it without the third parties, but I don't know if that makes for a healthy environment. I think we sit perfectly in the middle. Microsoft is too dependent on the third-party community, and Nintendo is too dependent on first-party. We like to feel that we got a pretty good mix.
PSM:You mentioned that Uncharted is the second generation of PS3 games, isn't that a little too soon?
Yeah, "second generation" is a term that people aspire to..you want to be a launch title because of the technological merit badge of saying you were there from day one; but everybody knows regardless of how good a game is, people are going to be it up during that launch time frame. Every platform that's ever shipped since the inception of this business has gotten that knock. So there is just this bias that says "Well if it's a launch title, it can't be really superior technologically," so people want to move to the second generation.
Uncharted has had the same amount of development time and has started at the same point that Resistance did, it just gets baked later. Every day that you get with the platform helps a little bit. We've always had the luxury on other platform life cycles of having an extra six to nine months after the Japanese launch, and every day in that first year is a pretty big leap on the learning curve from the development standpoint. I agree with you, it is really early to talk about second generation, but that's more of a marketing term than to say "The future is here." I mean, I think there's going to be a 25th generation on PS3 and I think we've proven that on PS3. What would you call God of War? Is that the "seventh generation?"
PSM:The Technology is something that a lot of third party developers are still getting a handle on. Do you have a view of how long it will take them? There's a mention of "if the developer is good enough, they'll figure it out." You can stab the pressure that way. Or that, "seriously, this is a complicated technology with a whole new ball game, and we understand that these guys are going to need some help." and you assign as many resources as required to that community?
First of all, there are a log of great developers out there, and they always figure it out. The one thing Playstation platforms have had in common, for better or worse, at least on the console side is "Wow, it's difficult to develop for, but once you harness it, it has a lot of power." As you deal with more and more complicated technologies, it behooves us to work more and more closely with the development community to do everything we can to put the tool in there hands. It's really the fist time that we're sharing our findings on the first party side with teh third party development community. We just rolled out a lot of tools and a lot of tools that we've created in our development to the third party community. I absolutely think that's something we need to do going forward is to work more closely with them and to help them help us.
PSM:Does that include HOME too? I've asked developers, do you have trophies? and I've actually had one say to me, "Do you know who we can ask over there about how to get his sorted?" Home was a real boost at the announcement. When are we going to see the kinds of things that it does promise coming out, and how your approaching the developer community to provide those pieces?
Tons of internal meetings are going on at a regular basis. I think the misconceptions is that we have all the information, but we aren't sharing it. The reality is that we tend to move so quickly with technology that it's literally being created as we're rolling it out. I think that approach, while it can be somewhat stressful for everybody involved, is what's led to us being so cutting edge and so successful over the years. We're always pushing the barriers of technology, and we're creating things that only exist in somebody's head, and a year later they'll be in a consumer's hands. So, my understanding and my belief with the Home tools is that they'll be very intuitive and that the ability to implement them will be a lot more seamless than people anticipate bases on how impressive the technology looks. I think we're very close on that. I would say June/July time frame ideally for a full rollout. We'll be able to put the tools in the developer's hands and ultimately allow them to take advantage of it for this Christmas.