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Ask Sony's Phil Harrison About PS3 and Games
During GDC Sony made an effort to answer questions directly from the gaming community, taking steps to put aside the problems of the past several months. Today, we have a chance to take another step in the right direction with the company. Phil Harrison, President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, has been the face of the PlayStation 3 here in the United States since before the machine launched. He's agreed to answer questions from the Slashdot community about the PlayStation 3, the console since launch, and their recent announcements about LittleBigPlanet and Home. I've linked a trio of other interviews he's done recently below, to give you an idea of topics that he's already covered. I'm sure there are plenty of questions we might ask that have yet to be put forward in a public forum. So - feel free to ask away. One question per comment, please, and keep in mind that Mr. Harrison is here to answer questions about the PS3 and games only; any other Sony-related questions are outside the scope of this interview. The highest-rated comments will be passed on, and we'll post his answers as soon as we get them.
You say "prevent this from occuring further" as if it's a bad thing. Bad to who?
-users of other consoles, who get to enjoy the game?
-the developers, who see their creation go to a wider audience?
-the distributor, who attains higher profit?
It is the highest degree of fanboy asshatism to want to deny other gamers something that "belongs" to "your system" because they committed the sin of not supporting it.
I've long held that the biggest thing holding back modern consoles were the input methods, a simple controller obviously does not cut it anymore. Sony had a decent start with the Eyetoy, but had a lot of accuracy problems, and could only see motion in 2D. Obviously the Wii has taken a great step forward with sensing 3D motion, going beyond the Sixaxis. Sony has an HD Eyetoy and microphone on the way, are there any plans to use them in a big way beyond simple voice chat? Will it be able to sense motion in 3D? We know the PS3 already does simple face recognition, will the PS3 eventually recognize me and log me in to Home automatically? Are voice commands on the way?
Who hates the PS3? Seriously, if it were $200 I would consider it. At $600 it's simply too expensive for what you get. (and for most it's simply too expensive for what they have to spend with) Frankly, I wouldn't buy it even if it were the same price as the 360 because: I like the 360 games better (especially XBox Live Arcade ones that I can buy for ~$5). I prefer the 360 controllers over the PS3 ones. Nothing currently competes with XBox Live. Halo3 This doesn't really enter the decision process but I also appreciate that the 360 comes with component cables with support for digital audio output.
I know by my name this might seem like a hate mail think but it's not! I just want to know two thing. One do you have a Wii? If you do what game do you play?
I'm sorry, but I don't think this is happening as much as you'd like to believe. Have you considered that it's genuinely possible that the public attitude toward Sony and the PLAYSTATION 3 is simply negative right now? It is frustrating in a situation like this to see that the only questions that will be going to him are either incredibly shallow or are intended to be an attack on Sony, but I don't think there is some giant conspiracy being orchestrated. I don't doubt that Microsoft is using the aforementioned marketting methods, but I think it's on a far smaller scale than you portray it to be.