In an exclusive interview with GamePro editor Bro Buzz, Sony's resident PlayStation 3 expert, Phil Harrison, touches on a variety of topics: Xbox exec Peter Moore's praise for the Nintendo Wii, pricing for PS3 games and hardware, and rumors concerning the PS3's abilities.
GamePro editor Bro Buzz had the opportunity to sit down with Sony executive Phill Harrison. The two industry veterans spoke about a wide range of topics. Here are the key highlights from that conversation, in Harrison's words. Sony fans should take note -- there are quite a few PS3 tidbits revealed in this sprawling, three-page article.
...On Peter Moore's Praise for the Nintendo Wii
"I think Peter Moore is exactly right. I think Nintendo will be the second system consumers purchase after PlayStation 3."
"I haven't had a chance to check out the Wii myself, but Nintendo has a great history of innovation and has always done great things for gaming and long may they do so. But as it relates to our strategy they are very much in a different market."
"I know what Peter was getting at with his price point issue but he's not comparing apples to oranges. He's not even comparing the same kind of food products at all. It's clearly a case that PlayStation 3's price is justified by PlayStation 3's value. That's what consumers base their purchasing decisions on -- value."
"What we have in addition to a great game system is a Blue Ray player, a network platform, a new controller, and HDD in every system combined in an unbelievably compelling package. And frankly I'm amazed that we can do it so cheaply."
...On the Differences Between the 20 and 60 GB PS3 Models
"The main differences are the 60 GB drive and the 20 GB drive in terms of disc storage. The 20 GB has HD component rather than HDMI. The 60 GB machine has additionally memory card slots on it, which are great for archiving photo and other content. But the 20 GB machine has USB ports so you can get all the functionality with external devices."
...On Whether the 20 GB PS3 Will Fully Support Blu-Ray
"That seems to be a misunderstanding and I'm happy to clear that up. Both machines have Blue Ray disc as standard. Both machines play Blue Ray disc movies as standard. Both machines will play Blue Ray disc movies as HD. The only difference is that the high end machine uses a more convenient digital interconnect called HDMI which is a digital standard and the 20 GB unit uses HD component which is an analog standard. The picture quality is fantastic."
"The end user will not notice any quality difference. Perhaps if you were projecting onto a gi-normous screen you might notice some difference, but also not every HD display has HDMI. So we're providing a choice to the consumer."
"Both versions will support 1080p."
...On PS3 Game Prices
"We've not announced the [PS3 game] pricing yet. Clearly we will wait until closer to launch until we announce the catalog and lineup of titles."
...On the New PS3 Controller
Nobody in the world picked that [original PS3 boomerang] controller up and held it in their hands. . . . [that's because] it was always a design concept.
"As you will remember when we showed the [boomerang] controller last year every photograph showed the comment 'This is a design concept subject to change.' Nobody in the world picked that controller up and held it in their hands -- nobody did -- because it was always under glass. But everybody formed an opinion based on what it looked like."
"[The PS3 boomerang controller] was always a design concept. If you look at our controller design R&D group in Japan since 1994, in an area of their office they probably have hundreds of design concepts for controllers and [the boomerang] is just one of them."
...On the PS3 Controller's Wii-Like Motion Sensor
PS3 mastermind Ken Kutaragi shows off the redesigned PS3 controller
PS3 mastermind Ken Kutaragi shows off the redesigned PS3 controller
"As mentioned, this R&D group in Japan is constantly looking at innovation in both useability, technology, and various other sensing devices and what happens is they will invent something or plan something but it can't be built because of cost reasons or supply reasons. Obviously when we make a controller we have to sell over 100 million of them so we have to make sure we have sufficient quantity of them in order to ramp up."
"I think what happened was the evolution of sensing technology was getting high enough volume in manufacture and low enough in price that we could adopt it in our controller. Now clearly we were not the only ones who thought this at the same time. But that's fine. That's natural."
"That's what technology innovation is about, but I think where we have an advantage is that shape of a controller like the PS2 controller has become like an industry standard. There's like 370 million [PlayStation controllers] around the world so that by maintaining the primary man-machine interface as something that is very familiar we have a lot of benefits to the gameplay because not only do you have the controller you're familiar with but now have additional motion."
The new PS3 controller has softer, more trigger-like R2 and L2 buttons
The new PS3 controller has softer, more trigger-like R2 and L2 buttons
"We can now do with this controller what human beings do anyway which is move the controller around when they play games. So now as a game designer we can take that additional [motion-sensing] input and add it to the game experience either in a very obvious way or in a very subtle way. And we're now experimenting with various ways to do this."
...On Backwards Compatibility
[The PS3 will have] almost perfect backwards compatibility. There will be some exceptions, but we believe those will be even less than we saw from PSOne to PS2.
"Backwards compatibility, as you know from PlayStation One and PlayStation 2, is a core value of what we believe we should offer. And access to the library of content people have created, bought for themselves, and accumulated over the years is necessary to create a format. PlayStation is a format meaning that it transcends many devices -- PSOne, PS2, and now PS3."
"If the developer wrote the game according to our technical requirements checklist, we will have what we believe will be almost perfect backwards compatibility. There will be some exceptions, there always are, but we believe those will be very few and far between. Even less so than we saw from PSOne to PS2."
...On Microsoft's Difficulties with Xbox 360 Backward Compatibility
"I don't believe that was backwards compatibility."
...On the Importance of the PS3's Hard Drive
The standard hard drive allows for downloadable content, but also better graphics -- just look at Heavenly Sword
The standard hard drive allows for downloadable content, but also better graphics -- just look at Heavenly Sword
"We know that the future of gaming is in a network era, and we have to have a writeable format. We have to have a format were users can purchase and download online and the only way to do that is with a hard disc drive."
"The 60 gig capacity is not only to download but to archive locally. The 60 gig solution will be attractive to users who want to PS3 as their primary music players, like me. I will put my entire music collection onto my PlayStation 3. I will archive all of my photos onto my PlayStation 3. It seems like a really insignificant feature but being able to simply slideshow your photos on your tv is actually a really compelling feature of PlayStation 3."
"And over time, downloading HD content -- whether it be TV content, film content -- clearly needs a lot of hard drive space."
...On the PS3's PSP Support
The 60 GB model will support Memory Sticks, which helps bridge content from the PS3 to the PSP
The 60 GB model will support Memory Sticks, which helps bridge content from the PS3 to the PSP
"With the PSP you've seen that, over time, the operating system has been upgraded to include many new features and functionalities and capabilities and we will do the same regarding the PS3. We will see the two devices become much more interoperable both at a media level, allowing content from one to the other, and at the applications level, where games for the PS3 will have a PSP component and vice versa. We demonstrated at the press conference one example of this where the PSP serves as a wing mirror for a driving game, a Formula One game."
"That was not intended to be a gimmick, but a feature we will add to the PS3 version so that when you play the PS3 version you can gameshare from the PS3 to the PSP the program required to do that. That will be a free of charge component that we ship on the PS3."
...On Memory Stick Support
"The PlayStation 3 60 GB version has Memory Stick slots and you can use Memory Stick as a support mechanism between the PSP and PS3."
GamePro editor Bro Buzz had the opportunity to sit down with Sony executive Phill Harrison. The two industry veterans spoke about a wide range of topics. Here are the key highlights from that conversation, in Harrison's words. Sony fans should take note -- there are quite a few PS3 tidbits revealed in this sprawling, three-page article.
...On Peter Moore's Praise for the Nintendo Wii
"I think Peter Moore is exactly right. I think Nintendo will be the second system consumers purchase after PlayStation 3."
"I haven't had a chance to check out the Wii myself, but Nintendo has a great history of innovation and has always done great things for gaming and long may they do so. But as it relates to our strategy they are very much in a different market."
"I know what Peter was getting at with his price point issue but he's not comparing apples to oranges. He's not even comparing the same kind of food products at all. It's clearly a case that PlayStation 3's price is justified by PlayStation 3's value. That's what consumers base their purchasing decisions on -- value."
"What we have in addition to a great game system is a Blue Ray player, a network platform, a new controller, and HDD in every system combined in an unbelievably compelling package. And frankly I'm amazed that we can do it so cheaply."
...On the Differences Between the 20 and 60 GB PS3 Models
"The main differences are the 60 GB drive and the 20 GB drive in terms of disc storage. The 20 GB has HD component rather than HDMI. The 60 GB machine has additionally memory card slots on it, which are great for archiving photo and other content. But the 20 GB machine has USB ports so you can get all the functionality with external devices."
...On Whether the 20 GB PS3 Will Fully Support Blu-Ray
"That seems to be a misunderstanding and I'm happy to clear that up. Both machines have Blue Ray disc as standard. Both machines play Blue Ray disc movies as standard. Both machines will play Blue Ray disc movies as HD. The only difference is that the high end machine uses a more convenient digital interconnect called HDMI which is a digital standard and the 20 GB unit uses HD component which is an analog standard. The picture quality is fantastic."
"The end user will not notice any quality difference. Perhaps if you were projecting onto a gi-normous screen you might notice some difference, but also not every HD display has HDMI. So we're providing a choice to the consumer."
"Both versions will support 1080p."
...On PS3 Game Prices
"We've not announced the [PS3 game] pricing yet. Clearly we will wait until closer to launch until we announce the catalog and lineup of titles."
...On the New PS3 Controller
Nobody in the world picked that [original PS3 boomerang] controller up and held it in their hands. . . . [that's because] it was always a design concept.
"As you will remember when we showed the [boomerang] controller last year every photograph showed the comment 'This is a design concept subject to change.' Nobody in the world picked that controller up and held it in their hands -- nobody did -- because it was always under glass. But everybody formed an opinion based on what it looked like."
"[The PS3 boomerang controller] was always a design concept. If you look at our controller design R&D group in Japan since 1994, in an area of their office they probably have hundreds of design concepts for controllers and [the boomerang] is just one of them."
...On the PS3 Controller's Wii-Like Motion Sensor
PS3 mastermind Ken Kutaragi shows off the redesigned PS3 controller
PS3 mastermind Ken Kutaragi shows off the redesigned PS3 controller
"As mentioned, this R&D group in Japan is constantly looking at innovation in both useability, technology, and various other sensing devices and what happens is they will invent something or plan something but it can't be built because of cost reasons or supply reasons. Obviously when we make a controller we have to sell over 100 million of them so we have to make sure we have sufficient quantity of them in order to ramp up."
"I think what happened was the evolution of sensing technology was getting high enough volume in manufacture and low enough in price that we could adopt it in our controller. Now clearly we were not the only ones who thought this at the same time. But that's fine. That's natural."
"That's what technology innovation is about, but I think where we have an advantage is that shape of a controller like the PS2 controller has become like an industry standard. There's like 370 million [PlayStation controllers] around the world so that by maintaining the primary man-machine interface as something that is very familiar we have a lot of benefits to the gameplay because not only do you have the controller you're familiar with but now have additional motion."
The new PS3 controller has softer, more trigger-like R2 and L2 buttons
The new PS3 controller has softer, more trigger-like R2 and L2 buttons
"We can now do with this controller what human beings do anyway which is move the controller around when they play games. So now as a game designer we can take that additional [motion-sensing] input and add it to the game experience either in a very obvious way or in a very subtle way. And we're now experimenting with various ways to do this."
...On Backwards Compatibility
[The PS3 will have] almost perfect backwards compatibility. There will be some exceptions, but we believe those will be even less than we saw from PSOne to PS2.
"Backwards compatibility, as you know from PlayStation One and PlayStation 2, is a core value of what we believe we should offer. And access to the library of content people have created, bought for themselves, and accumulated over the years is necessary to create a format. PlayStation is a format meaning that it transcends many devices -- PSOne, PS2, and now PS3."
"If the developer wrote the game according to our technical requirements checklist, we will have what we believe will be almost perfect backwards compatibility. There will be some exceptions, there always are, but we believe those will be very few and far between. Even less so than we saw from PSOne to PS2."
...On Microsoft's Difficulties with Xbox 360 Backward Compatibility
"I don't believe that was backwards compatibility."
...On the Importance of the PS3's Hard Drive
The standard hard drive allows for downloadable content, but also better graphics -- just look at Heavenly Sword
The standard hard drive allows for downloadable content, but also better graphics -- just look at Heavenly Sword
"We know that the future of gaming is in a network era, and we have to have a writeable format. We have to have a format were users can purchase and download online and the only way to do that is with a hard disc drive."
"The 60 gig capacity is not only to download but to archive locally. The 60 gig solution will be attractive to users who want to PS3 as their primary music players, like me. I will put my entire music collection onto my PlayStation 3. I will archive all of my photos onto my PlayStation 3. It seems like a really insignificant feature but being able to simply slideshow your photos on your tv is actually a really compelling feature of PlayStation 3."
"And over time, downloading HD content -- whether it be TV content, film content -- clearly needs a lot of hard drive space."
...On the PS3's PSP Support
The 60 GB model will support Memory Sticks, which helps bridge content from the PS3 to the PSP
The 60 GB model will support Memory Sticks, which helps bridge content from the PS3 to the PSP
"With the PSP you've seen that, over time, the operating system has been upgraded to include many new features and functionalities and capabilities and we will do the same regarding the PS3. We will see the two devices become much more interoperable both at a media level, allowing content from one to the other, and at the applications level, where games for the PS3 will have a PSP component and vice versa. We demonstrated at the press conference one example of this where the PSP serves as a wing mirror for a driving game, a Formula One game."
"That was not intended to be a gimmick, but a feature we will add to the PS3 version so that when you play the PS3 version you can gameshare from the PS3 to the PSP the program required to do that. That will be a free of charge component that we ship on the PS3."
...On Memory Stick Support
"The PlayStation 3 60 GB version has Memory Stick slots and you can use Memory Stick as a support mechanism between the PSP and PS3."
they should just keep their mouth shut) here was claiming that $499 PS3 doesn't come with Blu-ray technology. Few kids at work were actually freaking out. 
