Sony Chief Andrew House talks about the PS4

Sony Chief Andrew House talks about the PS4

July 4th 2013 8:00 am GMT-7
By Maya Mayfield

E3 continuously has winners and losers. This year, Sony had one of the most stunningly winning shows in its history, at the expense of its biggest rival within the videogames market, Microsoft. you may argue that confusion over Xbox One's used games policy led to the machine's PR defeat, however Sony brilliantly appealed to angry gamers in its conference, reassuring world audiences that PS4 would feature no invasive DRM measures.

So who higher to approach for sony's perspective than Andrew House, president and corporate executive of Sony computer entertainment (and thereby the last word boss of the PlayStation business)? we met with the genial, articulate European every day and a half after that triumphant E3 press event, and he was clearly buoyant: "We've been very happy with the reaction. it has been a really positive show for us."

At Sony's E3 news conference on the evening of ten june, all the speculation surrounded whether or not the japanese company would follow Microsoft's unpopular  lead and detail some variety of on-line registration or digital rights management geared toward killing off the second-hand games market – the presumption being that Microsoft wouldn't have gone out on such a limb while not having roped in Sony to imitate. however Sony declared, to abundant surprise, and therefore the gratification of hardcore gamers, that the PS4's used games policy would be precisely the same as that of the PS3.

House explains why Sony determined to leave well alone: "There's a remarkable backstory on it. I guess, dating from about our Feb event, there had been questions on what our on-line policy would be. and i have to be compelled to say that we were slightly baffled, as a result of we had no intention of adjusting from a model that i believe has served us very well for many platform life-cycles. And then, of course, it absolutely was really the actions of others, and therefore the reaction returning from customers, that led to a lot of speculation. therefore we felt that with E3, and monday night's conference, it was a really smart chance to set the record straight. however there weren't any changes that we'd been considering."

Had the third-party publishers, who hate not obtaining a cut once games are sold  on by people who have finished playing them, lobbied Sony to alter that model? "Not that i have been conscious of, no. and we did not feel any sense that we wanted to reply to any external pressure."

Later on, House joyfully grappled with the thorny issue of second-hand games: "I suppose there is a very careful balance to strike. We're a game publisher ourselves, so there is a certain argument for us that there ought to be one thing of a model for content-creators to participate in second sales. Having said that, however, the buyer sees possession as a very key benefit when buying a physical product. The flipside of the argument is that retailers can tell you that the overwhelming majority of trade-in worth gets immediately repurposed into new purchases of games, and those} people successively generate word of mouth and build additional interest."

Clearly, Sony, at the very highest levels, has put more thought into the topic than Microsoft, whose executives contradicted one another alarmingly in interviews conducted when the Xbox One was originally disclosed. House generated ecstatic approval at Sony's conference with comments to the result that the buyer is king, and was happy to flesh them out.

"What you saw coming back from gamers isn't just, in my view, the views of the vocal minority. It became an expression of a little bit of concern bubbling up round the subject of what ownership meant in an age of digital content overall. we and other industry players have to be very responsive to that and extremely careful. Bringing it back to the basics once more, we'd like to be honest and to think about the buyer experience 1st."

With the Xbox One, Microsoft committed the cardinal sin of introducing needless complications (such because the now-rescinded need to log on each day), whereas with the PS4, Sony kept it easy from the off. House contends that that approach extends beyond gamers to developers (who magnificently found it tough to get to grips with the PS3's programming demands, as he tacitly acknowledges): "I see our approach on PS4 as really taking Sony computer entertainment back to our original roots.

"When we 1st launched with the PS1 and certainly the PS2, the goal was to offer the consumer additional alternative, and plenty of flexibility at a time when the delivery mechanism of games, on cartridges, placed lots of restrictions on the business. And also, by shifting to disks, to offer developers – and notably smaller ones – the chance to take risks and build a business. I believe you are seeing precisely those sorts of principles applied to PS4."

Reluctant tho' he clearly is to get into a slanging match with Microsoft, House cannot resist a crafty dig at one complication the Xbox One will retain – the forced purchase of a Kinect motion-sensing system (which surely accounts for why the PS4 are £80 cheaper than the Xbox One once they arrive this Christmas).

"There's consumer flexibility. We've a camera which can build some nice consumer experiences, especially once it's utilized in conjunction with the Dual-Shock four, however we're not mandating that, or forcing that purchase on the buyer.

"Secondly, we've got a brand new development setting, that developers are telling us is considerably easier to create nice games for, and we've undertaken a big amount of outreach to smaller developers. Therefore web result's that we're seeing plenty of developers coming out of the mobile space, and that i suppose shows a staggeringly positive trend for console play. Primarily, we've access to an entire new set of talent in gaming that we did not have before."

In recent years, House has often spoken of his desire to get the disparate parts of Sony operating in a additional joined-up manner, and the presence of Sony pictures entertainment ceo Michael Lynton on stage at the E3 conference offered an illustration of that. but it was tough to translate Lynton's rather nebulous address into something concrete. Could House explain?

"It was vital that he was on stage: it is a testament to how far we've come with PlayStation three in building a really substantial community of networked gamers, who are inquisitive about different forms of entertainment. Whereas i believe you may have slightly accused Sony of a bit of forced synergy, if we'd been making an attempt to enact this collaboration many years ago, the fact is now, with one hundred ten million PlayStation Network (PSN) accounts worldwide, that is a considerable business opportunity for Sony pictures to achieve a unique audience.

"So he was talking regarding 2 things. One is critical interest and work that is already under way to develop original TV-style programming content, that might be created available with some kind of exclusivity to folks on the PSN – primarily using PSN as a distribution network. The second point was to find ways that give earlier or exclusive access to other types of content that Sony pictures has – again, for people who are on PSN and notably for members of PlayStation plus."

Such collaborations, however, appear rather at odds with recent (mainly analyst-led) mention the chance of ripping Sony up into its constituent parts. House looks to recommend that, at the terribly least, Sony computer entertainment, Sony pictures entertainment and Sony Music entertainment can stick together: "We've been clear, and [Sony corporation president and CEO] Kaz Hirai has been very clear, that the entertainment businesses are a core part of Sony's overall strategy.

"Where that starts to come together is that after you've got a huge, global network of customers, then having access to entertainment content assets will enhance the services that you are providing, differentiate you from the competition and supply customers with one thing new and doubtless exclusive. That makes our entertainment businesses even more vital to Sony's overall strategy than maybe they had been within the past."

Perhaps the only space in which the Xbox One looked to own a small edge over the PlayStation four involved the several quality of the 2 consoles' launch games – a tad unsurprising, since the Xbox One's developers' kits were distributed before the PS4's equivalents.

House hints that there'll be more to come before Christmas, tho' – which will almost definitely break cover at the Gamescom show in Cologne in late August, along with a launch date for the PS4: "I suppose there are additives to what's shaping up to be an excellent launch line-up of traditional blockbuster titles.

"We've got something like one hundred forty titles in active development for the first year after the launch, that is really substantial. Again, because of the design decisions we've created, developers have told us that they're up to now ahead compared to previous launches."