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Sony’s family-friendliness is generational
July 13, 2007
Santa Monica: Sony is a little puzzled at all the plaudits Nintendo is receiving at E3 for its family-friendly gaming.
Wasn’t it Sony who earlier introduced the EyeToy and a range of games that depended on body movements rather than controller buttons? There have been karaoke, fitness and dancing games to play and the PlayStation3 controller has more motion sensitivity built in than the Wiimote.
But Kaz Hirai, who took over as president of Sony Computer Entertainment from Ken Kutaragi, the father of the PlayStation, last November, stressed in our interview that Sony traditionally focuses on hard-core gamers at the beginning of a new console cycle.
He also discussed the recent PS3 price cut, his management style and hopes for the Home virtual world. The highlights:
The $100 PS3 price cut: "The primary driver for the price adjustment on the 60Gb model was the fact that we wanted to introduce the 80Gb model bundled with Motorstorm in the August timeframe. Therefore, you are going to have inventory of the 60Gb at the retailers and we’ve done this in the past, where we’ve done the model change and the then current model does get a price adjustment so that we can make sure that we clear the inventory in the field as quickly as possible. That’s so that we have the primary or the ongoing frontline [model] in the market as we get into the holidays So that was the primary reason for the timing, it wasn’t a strategy really to say we were dropping the price by $100."
Favouring hard-core games rather than being family-friendly?: “If you look at the lifecycle either of the original PlayStation or with the PS2, you need to look at it with a 10 year not a five-year perspective. What we’ve really tried to do as we launch new platforms is have a core base of really hard-core gamers, who in turn can really become your evangelists for further expanding the platform to the lighter users. It’s always been, when you launch a platform, you have more games geared towards gaming enthusiasts and perhaps less in terms of family-oriented games, and as you progress through the lifecycle that shift in emphasis turns to more family-friendly gamers.
"We are fortunate in having a very viable platform in PS2 where the majority of games are family friendly, and are for the more casual gamers, perhaps a younger demographic, a viable entry point into the PlayStation family. So, while we can focus the PS2 strategy in that section of the market, we can work on the PS3 side right now to get the core gaming audience going."
Management style: “Nobody has told me that you must do X,Y and Z, and Ken and I are not the same person, I’ve worked with him for the last 12 years or so and I’ve got a lot of insight and ways of strategic thinking and business acumen from Ken as I have from other senior people at Sony and I do intend to bring in my own way of running the worldwide organisation that’s going to be different from the way Kuturagi San was running it, because we’re not the same person.
"I also bring a different perspective to the worldwide headquarters in that I was running a regional headquarters [RHQ] for the longest time at Sony Computer Entertainment America. The main difference really is giving the RHQs more autonomy, for example, the colours of the PSP. I’ve told them tell me what colours you want as opposed to saying here are the five colours, you will sell these - because that‘s a cultural and market issue that the RHQs have an understanding of and it’s something that people in Tokyo shouldn’t be dictating. So small things like that are starting to change already but I will also be looking at larger changes with the eye again to giving the RHQs more autonomy in running their business."
The potential of the Home online world coming this autumn on the PS3: “I think that Home has a lot of potential in bringing a different community experience for PlayStation users on a worldwide basis and doing it in a very different and entertaining way and also allowing us to come up with different sorts of business opportunities that we’ve not been able to tap into with previous generation consoles. Obviously it lends itself very well to in-Home advertising, which means we get to take a portion of the business transacted. We also have the opportunity to allow game publishers and non-game publishers to provide ecommerce services like travel agents and real estate agents, so a lot of things that can be done on the 2-D internet can be brought to Home for a very different experience. It really expands the horizon of what the PS3 experience can be."
