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A Chat With Phil Harrison
Next Generation sat down with Phil Harrison after the Sony keynote last week, and they discuss the PS3, the PlayStation Network, and Harrison's place in the company. From the article: "Q: Aren't retailers going to be slightly annoyed that they're selling this hardware for next-to-no margin, just so the software can ultimately be sold directly via downloads? A: I completely disagree with that. The software business for PlayStation 3 will continue to grow. PlayStation 2 has more software on it than PlayStation 1 - more units sold in more countries to a wider demographic of consumers. PlayStation 3 will continue to grow the market and will generate a bigger opportunity for everybody - retailers, developers, and publishers alike. So I do not accept your statement that retail is going to be in any way affected by this other than positively."
Q: How is PS3's new distribution model going to affect retail?
A: PS2's old distribution model was great at retail, therefore PS3's new model will also be great at retail.
Seems like a valid question to me, but then again, I'm really looking forward to not having to stand outside EB at midnight to get the hot new game of the month. (But I'm also not looking forward to waiting a week for it to download because they don't have adequate bandwidth.. let's hope Valve's streamed release of Half-Life 2 taught the industry some lessons).
Sure, but most people are going to have the Hi-Def TVs that make the blu-ray component useful. I don't have any numbers, but I would imagine more people have cable/DSL than HDTVs. That's just what I think though.
"Clearly, you are not going to use a keynote by the head of first party studios to announce the price of PlayStation 3. I don't think anybody was surprised yesterday when I neglected to include that slide in my deck."
Maybe not surprised, but disappointed certainly. While there may be smaller concerns for consumers right now, the biggest one (and one that will affect every consumer and their wallet) is the price. That little tidbit of news probably would have caused more articles, blogs, and rumors on the web than anything that was in the GDC keynote.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
I thought it said a chat with Phil Hartman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Hartman and I pictured a seance.
So what's this PS3 thing? Did IBM make another PC?
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. - Edward R. Murrow
I don't think Sony can afford to have much(if any) complete works distributed as digital download. Think about it, they're using this thing as a trojan horse for BluRay. How is that going to work if you can download stuff without using BluRay at all?
And there's a lot more hardware than just the base console for retailers to sell...3rd party controllers, skins, faceplates, etc. I'm sure they have a better markup than the actual consoles.
Looks like Sony is banking on increasing market penetration. (At the price they'll be charging? Are they insane?). Nintendo says that the market is pretty much tapped out and a new market needs to be targeted in order to grow.
(Yeah, -1 for obviousness, but I find it interesting.)