We have to admit, even with all the negative press floating around concerning Sony, they can certainly take a licking, yet keep on ticking! Now, we can even figure that they can also take working under pressure at the same time. Because, in order to get the birds eye low down on what the current status is with the PS3, Gamespot spoke with Sony Computer Entertainment American president, Kaz Hirai. The interview touches on his company's ongoing preparations for the PS3's November launches in Japan, North America, and Europe.
With only 90 days or less to launch, the electronics giant's representative admitted, that they have yet to turn a tap on the first PS3! Can you imagine the internal messaging going on at this company at the moment? I would not recommend calling in sick for the next 3-4 weeks if you would like to continue getting a paycheck from Sir Howard Stringer, if you have anything at all to do with this project.
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KH: Well, I think that you know this is all relative, but you need to put it in context. I think that we've always talked about shipping 2 million units worldwide within the calendar year. [UPDATE--Sony has contacted GameSpot to clarify the number of PS3s available at the end of the calendar year. The company is targeting 2 million PS3s available at launch, and an additional 2 million by the end of 2006.] Since we're going with three territories, we haven't really come up with an allocation just yet. But even if you do the simple math you're talking about less than 700,000 units per territory, per major territory, between launch and the end of the year. So even if there was some fluctuation--you give Japan more, you give the US more, what have you--you're going to end up with some shortages. So I think that if we've done our jobs right and if we've been able to really have the consumers become interested in this product, then, unfortunately, I think it's going to be very much of a challenge to be able to meet every single unit demand that's out there in the market. That's just a logistical impossibility. Unless we suddenly say, "Well we want to wait until June of next year to launch because we want to stockpile product," I don't think that's the approach we want to take. GS: So is the PS3 already being manufactured? KH: We haven't started manufacturing yet. Some of our ops guys were actually just in China, and also in Japan just reviewing the [production] lines and everything else. But they are, again, preparing as we speak to get the manufacturing going. We've not announced and we haven't set really a specific date to say, "As of this day we're going to start manufacturing." GS: How many games do you plan to have available at launch? KH: That is still very hard to determine. Even looking at our first-party portfolio, from the [Sony] Worldwide Studios, we're looking at what titles are going to be available at launch. We don't want to launch everything on day one, because we certainly want to manage the portfolio, and say, "These two titles need to be launched in December, or this one needs to go in January," just to keep the portfolio fresh. It's also a matter of which games actually have enough polish to go out on day one as opposed to those which could use another good three weeks and still make it within the year, but really become the second wave. I think the third parties are basically doing the same thing as well. As with any console launch, I think the definitive title lineup for launch--and possibly up until maybe the end of the year--that sort of list will probably not be finalized until a month before launch, give or take. I think it's too early to say at this point in time which games definitively are going to be launch titles, and I certainly can't speak for the third parties. |
Kudos to Gamespot and especially Sony for granting this great interview! Although this interview was taken late last week, there is quite a bit of discussion going on now, as a result. If you are excited about the PS3 launch, then this is a must read. The questions are most interesting and pertinent as we can see in this small quote and the answers are direct and revealing.
We can only keep our fingers crossed that the PS3 is going to be a killer gaming platform, that will give the Xbox 360 a run for the money and maintain the 60% market share that the PS2 already enjoys. One thing that is very intriguing about the PS3 is the internal Blu-ray drive that this console features. With a suggested retail price of 600 dollars, this thing is going to be one heck of a bargain if it lives up to the hype and also quite "future proof" as well. For instance, it will be one of the first devices to hit the street, that is HDMI 1.3 compliant, which is the latest thing in high definition video and sound. Who needs a $1000 Blu-ray player with this thing around? From Wikipedia:
HDMI 1.3 released on 22 June 2006.
- Increases single-link bandwidth to 340 Mhz (10.2 Gbps)
- Supports 30-bit, 36-bit, and 48-bit (RGB or YCbCr) color depths or over one billion colors, up from 24-bit in previous versions.
- Supports xvYCC color standard.
- Incorporates automatic audio synching (lip sync) capability.
- Supports output of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio streams for external decoding by AV receivers.
- TrueHD and DTS-HD are lossless audio codec formats used on HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. If the disk player can decode these streams into uncompressed audio, then HDMI 1.3 is not necessary, as all versions of HDMI can transport uncompressed audio.
- Availability of a new mini connector for devices such as camcorders.
Source: Gamespot UK
