Slacker George
02-22-08, 05:07 AM
Gamesindustry.biz interviews SCEA's new vice president of product marketing.
Full article:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=33414
We noticed that you haven't made a keynote this year, and unless you're saving something for tomorrow, it doesn't seem as if you'll be making any big announcements this year at GDC. Is there a reason for that? Are you waiting for E3?
Well, I'll announce it here – there won’t be any announcements, so don't worry about tomorrow. There's no news coming out.
In terms of titles you are looking at in 2008, what do you have to counteract the just-announced Gears of War 2? One of the downsides of having a breadth of titles is that you might not be able to point to any one title like a Halo 3 or a GTA that are going to sell consoles. Is there a single strong PS3 title in your mind that you can point to like that?
Well, I think it is really easy to point to one when you've only got one. And so by default, that sort of solves itself.
I don't want to say that we have an embarrassment of riches, but we have the ability to go in a bunch of different directions depending upon the choice and the taste of the gamer. So we're not just forcing one genre upon our population, our installed base.
Let's break it down by calendar. It makes it a little easier to keep them organised.
We start with – and these are for the most part exclusive – but we are starting with our baseball game MLB: The Show. And quite frankly then go into a great month of April where we've got Grand Theft Auto IV and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. Anybody on the sidelines waiting for some exclusive content – Gran Turismo has been emblematic of the PlayStation brand. It's celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2008. A lot of people bought their PS2 for GT, so I think it is an important sea change product for us.
We almost go into a completely different mindset with Little Big Planet. It's very…You could almost say unusual in the sense that it's not a shooter, it is something you would definitely not see from any of the other companies. It's a very social, sharing, creating style game. Shipping in the summer/fall.
SOCOM: Confrontation shipping in the summer. SOCOM is also one of those emblematic PlayStation brands. Multiplayer. A lot of folks have grown around the PS2 [version]. Killzone 2…not quite new IP, but certainly not an established brand like SOCOM. That will be a huge FPS title.
And I think one of the biggest games for us will be Resistance 2. We expect that, in November, to go toe-to-toe against Gears of War 2. It will be our third-generation PS3 product. Insomniac, having shipped Resistance 1, quietly sold a million units. And then Ratchet & Clank last fall. This is the third [game] on their technology shipping in November.
I welcome the head-to-head competition. I think it is going to be really exciting to see how we sort of put some distance graphically and from a fidelity standpoint with third-generation tech against the HD-DVD effort.
Some of these games you are seeing, like a Metal Gear Solid 4 which is a summertime exclusive, plus Resistance 2 – they're tipping the scales at 30, 40, 50GB. And if you tried to do that on HD-DVD, it would be like those old-school floppy [disc] games in your Apple and Commodore [mimics switching disks in and out]. I don't know about you, but I've been there, done that. I'm probably not ever going to go back. Even if you are double-layer on the DVD side, you are nowhere near that size and scale.
So I think you'll see the biggest blockbusters feel and certainly exude the kind of Blu-ray magic and Blu-ray gaming that will become something important for the back half of the year.
What about Home? It has been a year since we first officially heard about it. Is it going to be ready?
That's the other side of why 2008 is so important. It's the year that we unfurl home.
We're still in the closed beta phase. And if you are a student of the game, you know closed beta will begat a more open beta, and we still haven't announced when that potentially would be, but the notion behind 2008 is that we come to the table with a kick-butt line-up software-wise and we show the full articulation of Home and the network…and maybe some special surprises within that context.
And I think we end the year with incredible momentum with those two elements working in concert together and really adding an exclamation mark to the PS3 for the year.
Last year we saw the price drop, coupled with the introduction of new SKUs and the discontinuation of some SKUs in certain territories. It still doesn't seem to be very settled. Can you talk about any plans for this year in terms of finally settling on hardware?
We're still looking at a lot of that stuff.
The lessons from the fall were pretty acute to us. We expected to sell a lot more of the USD 399 system than the USD 499 system. We entered 2008 pretty dry on the 80GB at USD 499 because of the equilibrium on sales for both systems.
We found that the hardcore guys were willing to spend that extra hundred dollars, and the more casual consumers without the bells and whistles were quite comfortable with a Blu-ray machine that, from a consumer electronics comparison, is still much more expensive than USD 399.
We weren't quite predicting that. We weren't predicting the evenness of those sales numbers and we got pretty light on the 80GB. You'll see that correct itself as we get deeper into the year. We are still sort of evaluating what that means from a going forward strategy. We're pointing to that commercial flow in the fall as a reason why we are still a little bit light at retail for those 80GB machines.
One thing that still distinguishes the Xbox 360 from the PlayStation 3 are the movies and television shows that can be purchased and downloaded. Why has it taken so long for Sony to offer something similar, especially considering that your company already has a movie and music studio?
I would beg you to look at history a little bit and remember how long it has taken the Xbox 360 to get to this point in time. It was by no means an overnight phenomenon.
I think that is one of the things that Sony brings leverage-wise to the table that our competition doesn't have, that we are an entertainment brand. We have the friends and family – Sony BMG music, the movie side of things. I can't answer it directly relative to when we are going to be launching, because we haven’t announced that. It is 2008.
That's why I can say that 2008 is so important to us not just from a product software standpoint, but from a services standpoint and from a network and store perspective.
The value add that we bring, and the leverage that we bring which our competition can't touch, is that we are an entertainment company. We have those relationships because they are us, and we can leverage that to a much greater degree.
Once we do it, it is going to be terrific. It's just a matter of later this year before we can really talk about it. Leverage is key in my mind as to why we are going to win – leverage with retail, leverage with movie studios, leverage with entertainment brands, leverage globally.
You know the story that's happening in Europe. The story has already been written in Japan relative to who's a player and who's not. Development and other publishers, especially the publicly-traded ones, need to look at the world globally and that's where our leverage and the PlayStation brand's leverage really pays dividends.
I think all that makes for why we talk about 2008 as being such a critical year.
Full article:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=33414
We noticed that you haven't made a keynote this year, and unless you're saving something for tomorrow, it doesn't seem as if you'll be making any big announcements this year at GDC. Is there a reason for that? Are you waiting for E3?
Well, I'll announce it here – there won’t be any announcements, so don't worry about tomorrow. There's no news coming out.
In terms of titles you are looking at in 2008, what do you have to counteract the just-announced Gears of War 2? One of the downsides of having a breadth of titles is that you might not be able to point to any one title like a Halo 3 or a GTA that are going to sell consoles. Is there a single strong PS3 title in your mind that you can point to like that?
Well, I think it is really easy to point to one when you've only got one. And so by default, that sort of solves itself.
I don't want to say that we have an embarrassment of riches, but we have the ability to go in a bunch of different directions depending upon the choice and the taste of the gamer. So we're not just forcing one genre upon our population, our installed base.
Let's break it down by calendar. It makes it a little easier to keep them organised.
We start with – and these are for the most part exclusive – but we are starting with our baseball game MLB: The Show. And quite frankly then go into a great month of April where we've got Grand Theft Auto IV and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. Anybody on the sidelines waiting for some exclusive content – Gran Turismo has been emblematic of the PlayStation brand. It's celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2008. A lot of people bought their PS2 for GT, so I think it is an important sea change product for us.
We almost go into a completely different mindset with Little Big Planet. It's very…You could almost say unusual in the sense that it's not a shooter, it is something you would definitely not see from any of the other companies. It's a very social, sharing, creating style game. Shipping in the summer/fall.
SOCOM: Confrontation shipping in the summer. SOCOM is also one of those emblematic PlayStation brands. Multiplayer. A lot of folks have grown around the PS2 [version]. Killzone 2…not quite new IP, but certainly not an established brand like SOCOM. That will be a huge FPS title.
And I think one of the biggest games for us will be Resistance 2. We expect that, in November, to go toe-to-toe against Gears of War 2. It will be our third-generation PS3 product. Insomniac, having shipped Resistance 1, quietly sold a million units. And then Ratchet & Clank last fall. This is the third [game] on their technology shipping in November.
I welcome the head-to-head competition. I think it is going to be really exciting to see how we sort of put some distance graphically and from a fidelity standpoint with third-generation tech against the HD-DVD effort.
Some of these games you are seeing, like a Metal Gear Solid 4 which is a summertime exclusive, plus Resistance 2 – they're tipping the scales at 30, 40, 50GB. And if you tried to do that on HD-DVD, it would be like those old-school floppy [disc] games in your Apple and Commodore [mimics switching disks in and out]. I don't know about you, but I've been there, done that. I'm probably not ever going to go back. Even if you are double-layer on the DVD side, you are nowhere near that size and scale.
So I think you'll see the biggest blockbusters feel and certainly exude the kind of Blu-ray magic and Blu-ray gaming that will become something important for the back half of the year.
What about Home? It has been a year since we first officially heard about it. Is it going to be ready?
That's the other side of why 2008 is so important. It's the year that we unfurl home.
We're still in the closed beta phase. And if you are a student of the game, you know closed beta will begat a more open beta, and we still haven't announced when that potentially would be, but the notion behind 2008 is that we come to the table with a kick-butt line-up software-wise and we show the full articulation of Home and the network…and maybe some special surprises within that context.
And I think we end the year with incredible momentum with those two elements working in concert together and really adding an exclamation mark to the PS3 for the year.
Last year we saw the price drop, coupled with the introduction of new SKUs and the discontinuation of some SKUs in certain territories. It still doesn't seem to be very settled. Can you talk about any plans for this year in terms of finally settling on hardware?
We're still looking at a lot of that stuff.
The lessons from the fall were pretty acute to us. We expected to sell a lot more of the USD 399 system than the USD 499 system. We entered 2008 pretty dry on the 80GB at USD 499 because of the equilibrium on sales for both systems.
We found that the hardcore guys were willing to spend that extra hundred dollars, and the more casual consumers without the bells and whistles were quite comfortable with a Blu-ray machine that, from a consumer electronics comparison, is still much more expensive than USD 399.
We weren't quite predicting that. We weren't predicting the evenness of those sales numbers and we got pretty light on the 80GB. You'll see that correct itself as we get deeper into the year. We are still sort of evaluating what that means from a going forward strategy. We're pointing to that commercial flow in the fall as a reason why we are still a little bit light at retail for those 80GB machines.
One thing that still distinguishes the Xbox 360 from the PlayStation 3 are the movies and television shows that can be purchased and downloaded. Why has it taken so long for Sony to offer something similar, especially considering that your company already has a movie and music studio?
I would beg you to look at history a little bit and remember how long it has taken the Xbox 360 to get to this point in time. It was by no means an overnight phenomenon.
I think that is one of the things that Sony brings leverage-wise to the table that our competition doesn't have, that we are an entertainment brand. We have the friends and family – Sony BMG music, the movie side of things. I can't answer it directly relative to when we are going to be launching, because we haven’t announced that. It is 2008.
That's why I can say that 2008 is so important to us not just from a product software standpoint, but from a services standpoint and from a network and store perspective.
The value add that we bring, and the leverage that we bring which our competition can't touch, is that we are an entertainment company. We have those relationships because they are us, and we can leverage that to a much greater degree.
Once we do it, it is going to be terrific. It's just a matter of later this year before we can really talk about it. Leverage is key in my mind as to why we are going to win – leverage with retail, leverage with movie studios, leverage with entertainment brands, leverage globally.
You know the story that's happening in Europe. The story has already been written in Japan relative to who's a player and who's not. Development and other publishers, especially the publicly-traded ones, need to look at the world globally and that's where our leverage and the PlayStation brand's leverage really pays dividends.
I think all that makes for why we talk about 2008 as being such a critical year.