Previously in the series: The Playstation and Me: David Jaffe, Part 1, The Playstation and Me: David Jaffe, Part 2, The Playstation and Me: David Jaffe, Part 3, The Playstation and Me: Ted Price, part 1, The Playstation and Me: Ted Price, part 2, The Playstation and Me: Ted Price, part 3, The Playstation and Me: Evan Wells, Part 1, The Playstation and Me: Evan Wells, Part 2,The Playstation and Me: Evan Wells, Part 3, The Playstation and Me: Scott Rohde, Part 1, The Playstation and Me: Scott Rohde, Part 2
To wrapping things up with Scott Rohde, I asked the Sony Playstation exec to about the PS3’s main competition and the plans for motion-control games and Move, along with the possible future of the PSP.
I think everyone would have to agree that the $299 price point, and the slim redesign were the things that really reinvigorated people’s interest in the machine. But can you speak to a little bit about how developers maybe have maybe warmed up to it as well? I think at launch, the lead development for a lot of cross-platform games was happening on the Xbox 360. Anecdotally, I’m hearing that a lot of people are doing the opposite now. Can you speak to maybe why this shift might be happening?
Well, I think that, 360 was out to market first. So there’s a natural tendency for all multi-platform developers to establish themselves in that space and then have to move into the PS3 space. So that is where we started in this competition with our friends at Microsoft.
And that was probably a key part of their strategy.
Absolutely. Without a doubt. Now, over time, what happened was–we touted this over and over and it took some people longer than others to realize this–Playstation 3 is a very powerful machine with multiple processors. It takes a little bit of extra doing to pull the best out of the Playstation 3. But, once people peel back a couple layers, they start to realize how much power is still untapped in the machine, and that’s a very, very good feeling for a software developer.
When you’ve built a title, you’ve built an engine. Let’s just call it an engine, not even call it a title. You’ve built an engine and you’re two years into the life cycle of a hardware platform, and you realize, “Wow, my engineers are telling me that there’s a lot of horsepower I can still pull of here.” So, I can make my engine that much better over the next two, three, four, years. That’s a nice feeling to have as opposed to creating an engine and realizing, “Man, I’m pretty close to hitting my limits right away.”
With the competition, there’s a couple of different places where there are limitations, one of them being the space to store assets on the DVD as opposed to a Blu-ray. It’s night and day. So the natural assumption now is when you’re going in to build a new title, you would lead on the PS3, not only because it’s more powerful, but because there is so much more that you can store on the Blu-ray disc, and then you might have to take a subset of that and figure out what you can do on the competitions’ machines.
Which is their problem.
Yeah. [laughs]
Move is just out. Is it too soon to say that you guys face a little bit of skepticism, maybe? Some curiosity, too? How do you create positive buzz there? Because, honestly, Kinect is rolling out a few weeks after you guys. What are the selling points in your mind on Move right now?
OK, so, you’re talking to the right person. I have been personally involved with all the different technology that turned into the Playstation Move really from the get-go.
From EyeToy days?
Not from EyeToy days. Our London studio specialized in EyeToy games but Rick Marks was sort of the father of the EyeToy. He was heavily involved in the US in terms of helping to decide which technology we should use for the Playstation Move. We researched a lot of different technology and settled on this one for a number of different reasons.
I think we’ve kind of gone through a whole cycle with the EyeToy where you can only do so many things without holding a controller in your hand. There’s something, that tangible feeling of holding something in your hand, I firmly believe is key to a gaming experience. Can you have gaming experiences without that? Of course.
But I do believe that, inevitably over time, those experiences are limited. When you have something in your hands, I think there are so many different things you can do. And with the Playstation Move, because we also have the camera, you are able to use the trick of augmented reality.
Games like EyePet, and Start the Party. They’re interesting games. I really believe we’re just scratching the surface there. But in addition to that, you have a totally different type of gaming with games that are specifically created for the Move. Games like Sports Champions, where we are, really mimicking the types of moves that you do as an athlete and bringing those onto the screen, allowing you to experience those in a way that you haven’t been able to do before.
Then there’s a third type of gaming, which is core gaming where the Move is used to enhance your experience. So these are some things that you’re going to start to see coming out both from first-party and third-party deveopers in the future. We’ve shown some titles like SOCOM 4, for example, where, yeah, you can play the title with the DualShock or you can play it with a Playstation Move navigator and a Move in another hand, it’s a totally different experience. We’re really proud of the whole breadth that this new peripheral offers to the machine.
And one more thing that I think is a big appeal with the Playstation Move, something that I fell in love with right away, is that color ball on top. I have seen in focus group tests and with my own kids: when you’re holding a controller in your hand and you do something, something changes on the screen and what you’re holding in your hand changes color. All of that is just different. It’s something you haven’t experienced before and I think it’s very special.
It’s a nice subtle feedback. So my last question is, not intentionally, probably the hardest one. With regard to PSP. I think you guys are in a very embattled place right now. I’ll be perfectly frank, I haven’t turned on my PSP, either the Go or the Classic series, in months. How do you get the magic back? All the magic that we talked about for the PS1 launch, PS2 launch, PS3 launch, what’s the strategy to re-engage owners or curious people onto the platform?
Well, first thing, I want to remind you of is that Playstation Portable has had a pretty nice long run. Right?
Yeah.
So I think there’s been a lot of good things that have happened on that platform. There is a game that’s coming out very soon, God of War: Ghost of Sparta. I don’t know if you can tell from just this short conversation from me. And I’m a pretty enthusiastic guy, but I’m also not a person who’s going to overhype a game when it’s not deserved. That is easily the nicest looking Playstation Portable game that has ever been developed. It is really that good.
I’m going to interrupt you here, Scott.
Yeah.
Only because, while I agree–and I know that that team does great work, and is probably likely to be a good game–we are talking about one title.
Oh no, I totally understand. But at the same time, I’m telling you that, that’s why I lead off with saying that this machine has been around for a long time, and what I’m trying to indicate is that from a first-party perspective, we are still building great titles for this machine, and that’s a good example of a great title being built for that machine.
But I think at the same time, where I’m coming–and I think where a lot of consumers are coming from–is this hunger for the next iteration of the hand-held Playstation experience.
Now you’re searching for a scoop, aren’t you?
No… well, maybe a little bit. Seriously, is that something that you can address? Are people being impatient and not seeing the good stuff that’s there already? I wanted to love the PSP Go a lot but I couldn’t, and that’s just my honest opinion. Part of my biggest problem was not being able to get legacy content onto the machine. I still got 50 to 100 UMD games that I love, that I would love to play on that machine, but I can’t. And that felt like a disconnect to me.
All you’re going to get out of me is that, the portable space is very important to us. That the PSP Go, we’ve learned a lot from that experience for sure. And that will certainly effect what we do in the portable space moving forward.
OK. All right. Because you know other people have their strategies mapped out for next year. That’s all I’m saying. And I know you know that.
I hear ya. [laughs]