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More PS3 Words From the Horse's Mouth

Posted by Zonk on Fri Sep 22, 2006 10:20 AM
from the heya-wilbur dept.
PlayStation (Games) Sony
Game|Life had the chance to sit down with Ken Kutaragi, Phil Harrison, and Kaz Hirai; Chris Kohler has some details on things left unsaid at the PS3 conference. From the article: "Q: You're the head of Sony's worldwide development studios. What the hell is up with that Africa game? A: Video games have a function in life, and that is: wish fulfillment. You can become a mercenary, a fighter pilot. On PS3, we can expand the realm of that experience. Africa allows you to experience a very interesting part of the world, a safari in the plains of Africa. The gameplay is entirely non-violent. You don't kill the animals. It emphasizes the positives rather than the negatives. It's about collecting experiences and keeping them for posterity."
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Joystiq had the chance to exchange a few words with Sony's Phil Harrison at the UK Develop Conference. They asked him some hard questions about the crazy comments that have been coming out of the company since E3. From the article: "There's always going to be a risk when you are market leader for ten years that we start to lose perspective; and we have to make sure that we don't lose perspective. But I don't think we're arrogant, I think we have to recognize that we're in a highly competitive industry and that anything that we say will be eternally editorialized by professionals and consumers alike. So we're always in the spotlight." After the tape was off he snarked that he hadn't been asked very nice questions. Poor guy, having to answer questions that aren't 'How awesome is the PS3 going to be?'
[+] Kutaragi Admits Sony Hardware In Decline 68 comments
An anonymous reader writes "In a surprising admission, Sony Computer Entertainment President Ken Kutaragi acknowledged that Sony's strength in game hardware might be in decline. BetaNews has the article, which reports on Sony's PS3 struggle for the holiday season." From the article: "In an extraordinary public statement of regret and despair over having to postpone his company's PlayStation 3 debut in Europe and Australia until March, and to limit availability elsewhere to only 500,000 units come November, Sony Computer Entertainment President Ken Kutaragi is quoted by Reuters as having told reporters, 'If you asked me if Sony's strength in hardware was in decline, right now I guess I would have to say that might be true.'"
[+] Sony's Ken Kutaragi To Step Down 81 comments
Joystiq reports that Chairman and group CEO for Sony Computer Entertainment Ken Kutaragi is retiring as of June 19th. The Sony reshuffling of executives late last year left Mr. Kutaragi out of the PS3 nitty-gritty, and one could imagine led to his decision to leave the organization. From SCEI's official statement: "[Mr. Kutaragi] stated that, in the six months since the appointment of Kazuo Hirai as President in December, the new generation of management, led by Mr. Hirai, has continued to develop. With the March introduction of PS3 in Europe completing the successful launch of PS3 worldwide, Mr. Kutaragi has identified SCE's Annual Shareholders' meeting in June as the ideal timing to pass on the torch to the new generation of management. Mr. Kutaragi will now apply his extensive technological knowledge and leadership skills to take on new challenges beyond the world of PlayStation."
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  • More PS3 Words From the Horse's Mouth

    Mr. Ed is Sony's new spokesperson?!?

    Figures.

    BTW, does this article remind anyone else of the Chief of Police scene in TMNT 2?

    "Is there anything else you'd like to not tell me, Mr Kutaragi?"

    • Unfortunately (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2006, @10:46AM (#16161107)
      They keep putting the wrong end up to the podium...
    • What the hell is up with that Africa game?
      Oh no - now I got that damn Toto song stuck in my head.


      It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
      There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
      I bless the rains down in Africa
       Gonna take some time to do the things we never had

  • This sounds familiar. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by steveo777 (183629) on Friday September 22 2006, @10:31AM (#16160975) Homepage Journal
    Anyone remember Pokemon: Snap [pokemonsnap.com]?

    Seriously, this doesn't really seem like a Sony game here. But I don't really know who's developing it either. So what if they want to make a game that's pure exploration. It'll probably look great, have descent controls, and very little need for AI in anything. I'm sure some one will enjoy it. But I don't see a lot of parents buying it for the kids (60-80 bucks).

    • Re:This sounds familiar. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tokyo_Otaku (1004495) on Friday September 22 2006, @10:57AM (#16161213)
      I was at TGS today and saw a whack of HD demos at the Sony booth. You're right in terms of looking good. Afrika looked great. In fact it was one of the best games there. Another really impressive one was Shirokishi and Motorstorm looks to be a contender for nicest overall presentation. Devil May Cry 4 didn't look too hot and there were a lot of forgettable demos, although Mina no Golf looked like a lot of fun with solid production values.

      What was *not* cool was MGS4. It was a major letdown. Yes, it was nicely presented in the same way one might put tripe into a fancy gift box. The in-game graphic quality has dropped down a sizable notch from previous demos. And the animation... Everything was very robotic and very unnatural; totally unlike the two previous movies.

      For example, firing a gun has literally two key frames. Normal position and recoiled position. There weren't even any in-between frames. He just fired his gun, snapping forward and back jerkily between the two positions. Not smooth or natural at all. It was a big, big, letdown.

      A lot of games were available to play, but MGS4 (unsurprisingly given the movie) did not appear to be among them. Speaking of missing games, there was not even so much as a whiff of Assassin's Creed, which was really too bad as I was looking forward to seeing it. Maybe tomorrow...

      But the ***HUGE*** loser of the day was the PS3's new Coded Arms game. They have really, really screwed it up. I was watching it for some time in quite some disbelief as I literally saw framerates drop below 5 per second. Like maybe 1 per second. Really. And that kind of stuttering was pretty regular. An unmitigated disaster by all appearances. I'm really hoping I'm mistaken and this is some low budget PS2 version.

      Overall, the PS3 beats out the XBox 360 on all accounts. What the XBox struggles to do, the PS3 does easily. Not only was that my impression, but also the opinion of all of the industry folk I spoke to.

      Enough to save them? Only time will tell...

      • Overall, the PS3 beats out the XBox 360 on all accounts. What the XBox struggles to do, the PS3 does easily

        Odd, since based on everything we know so far the PS3 has a weaker GPU than the Xbox 360.

        Not to mention that the PS3's Cell might be on par with the 360 CPU when it comes to game applications (as opposed to gene folding.)

        As far as I can tell, everything about the PS3 is the same or worse. The only notable advantage it has anymore is the size of Blu-Ray discs.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Tokyo_Otaku (1004495)
          Sure. Basically it comes down to frame rate and detail. A number of the heavier 360 games can't always maintain their frame rates and also don't look as good as the PS3 games. MotorStorm is a great example of this. It has incredible detail and great backgrounds as well as solid effects all around. And not a single frame lost that I could see. Not even when things got hairy. Everything pretty much looks like a cutscene...

          This is not to say that there is anything wrong with the 360. Realistically, if the game
          • I could say the exact same thing you said about MotorStorm to describe PGR3 on the Xbox 360. Framerate issues are not always due to hardware, but unoptimized software.
        • Upon recieving actually PS3 devkits they found out that the PS3 doesn't perform (at least in any easy way) on the level of Sony's theoritical numbers
          Well, duh. They trusted Sony's specs? The same company that promised the PS2 would display 66 million polygons per second. That's true... for a monochrome wireframe! In-game, when you add textures, shading, effects, the whole rest of the game, it can actually do around 1/6th of that.
  • I haen't followed the PS3 story much, and am mostly familiar with it from that YouTube video ridiculing it. ("So here's this giant enemy crab....Riiidge Raaacer!") From that point of view, the game with the chewing rhino (I assume that's the one mentioned here) is the title I'm most looking forward to!
  • Will the PS3 include component video cables in the box?

    I'm not sure, but I think the answer might be "no."

    Yeouch, that surprised me a bit. No HDMI thats fine, makes sense actually. But where the consoles are now I don't think its too much to expect a cable capable of HD. At least in the 360s release you got an HD cable on the more expensive version.

    But who knows, he did say he wasn't sure.

  • In these territories, the prices we announced were very well accepted.

    I find it very hard to accept the 'GDP of a small country' for a PS3, a white british IT Professional.

    Ken Kutaragi: (Was accompanied at all times by PR handlers who wouldn't let him answer certain questions)

    shouldn;t that read "...ANY questions..."

    What the hell is up with that Africa game?

    Is that the BEST question you can come up with when faced with the three sony head honchos?

    • Is that the BEST question you can come up with when faced with the three sony head honchos?

      If you read the article, it's far from the "best" question. However, it is one of the few questions that Sony actually answers.
      • I am just thinking that it might have something to do with that $600 graphics card is part of a computer, that you can do unlimited things with? A console is made for playing games, that is it. Yeah, yeah, it's going to be made into the 'center of the living room' or some such tripe, but it boils down to 'it plays games'.

        Yeah, that $600 graphics card is bought to play games, but it also has other qualities that make it worth that price. But honestly, I know a grand total of 1 person that has a $600 graphi
      • ...have $600 video cards in their Windows game PCs...

        I never had! My gaming rig runs linux! ;)

        On the other hand, I've never owned a console. What's the point with them? Computers are better value for the money, as I see it :)

        • My Gamecube was cheap ($229 including a game), low power, quiet, plugs directly into the TV, and saves me from having to bother looking to see if I meet the system requirements for a given game. Seems a reasonable value to me. :)
      • I'd be very surprised is "the grand percentage" of people blow $600 on a video cards. Among the people I know (mostly geeks) I know of only one person who likely has something in that range (wife bought him a ludicrously priced Alienware box for their 10th anniversary), a handful of people who bought in the $200-300 range, a bunch of people who bought in the $100-200 range, and a ton of people who use some form of on-board video because they game on consoles exclusively or not at all.

        I fall into the last

  • From the article: "" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Psykechan (255694) on Friday September 22 2006, @10:40AM (#16161064)
    Straight from the horse's mouth as long as you can bypass the "PR handlers"; Ken Kutaragi only answered one of the four questions presented to him and that was with a distinct "maybe".

    My favorite comment was from Phil Harrison:

    "We started by calculating the price for the US and European territories by looking at what consumers considered the 'magic price points'. In these territories, the prices we announced were very well accepted."

    I would really like to see these consumers who accepted the $500-$600 price points well. People that I've talked to, including staunch PlayStation supporters, have said that they don't plan on buying a PS3 because of the high price point.
    • OMG that's me. -cries- I buy them all. I really can't help myself. I fought buying an X360 until only a month ago, but buy it I did. And I'll buy the Wii at launch and the PS3 sometime in the next year, most likely. If I get bored with my x360 and Wii, it'll be sooner rather than later. Of course, if it never comes out with a game I want, I won't buy it no matter the price.

    • People that I've talked to, including staunch PlayStation supporters, have said that they don't plan on buying a PS3 because of the high price point

      I have to agree. I wonder who the hell he asked about these "magic price points." I have no doubt that the PS3 will sell out during its first few months, but the console race isn't a first-few-months affair. Most of my friends could afford a PS3, but guess what? Nobody I know has even bought an Xbox 360 - even those who own and love the old Xbox.

      Both the 36

      • Do you know anyone who is really happy with the price? Because if you don't, and I don't, and GP doesn't, sure that's not market research, but it's pretty strong anecdotal evidence, and makes Phil's quote worth questioning.
        • Do you know anyone who is really happy with the price? Because if you don't, and I don't, and GP doesn't, sure that's not market research, but it's pretty strong anecdotal evidence, and makes Phil's quote worth questioning.

          In a country with 190 million people, i can determine market trends by asking 3 guys on slashdot what their friends think about something? Wow. That's gonna save companies a fortune.

          • Yes, information can be learned from the fact that three people don't know anyone who is happy about a price. You're being silly to assert otherwise. No, the information gained is not as valuble as a real study with a viable sample size, that's why I said it was anecdotal evidence, and not flat out proof.

            Lets say each of we three have discussed the matter with 10 people, now clearly that's not a really good sample size, so our margin for error is quite high, but it is fairly random, so that helps. Now

            • Lets say each of we three have discussed the matter with 10 people, now clearly that's not a really good sample size, so our margin for error is quite high, but it is fairly random, so that helps.

              it's an insignificant sample size. the margin for error is so high it makes the results meaningless. A sample built from the friends of people who read slashdot is not fairly random.

              Now the fact that apparently not a single one of those 30 people can be said to be happy about the price means that even with a huge e
              • You keep blowing my statement way out of preportion. I'm not making a "sweeping definitive statement about the entire population of a country", I'm simply saying that someone else's sweeping statement is questionable. I didn't even say it was wrong, I said questionable.

                I said that I belive that we have sufficent anacdotal evedence to suggest the statement "In these territories, the prices we announced were very well accepted." may not be entirely true. I didn't say I had absolute proof that Phil wa

          • Three guys on slashdot maybe not, but you don't need many. Sampling size for national opion polls in the US is typically only 1,500.
            • Three guys on slashdot maybe not, but you don't need many. Sampling size for national opion polls in the US is typically only 1,500.

              I agree that if you build a truly random sample and construct your opinion poll properly, you can determine trends using a surprisingly small sample size.
              There's a whole industry built around those polls. I imagine Sony has probably availed themselves of that industry when trying to figure out how much they could get away with.

              I think we could also agree that the original poste

  • Lemme get this straight (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Opportunist (166417) on Friday September 22 2006, @10:50AM (#16161144)
    You're there with the key top brass of the PS3 crew, the guru, the really big cheese, and the best question is "what's up with that Africa game"?

    Who the heck cares about a game nobody has even heard of. Or wants to hear of. Or could even remotely consider buying.

    How about new sequels of already very much loved games? How about asking 'bout the damn cables? How about BluRay and what about the rumor that you can't "lend" discs because they're being "tied" with your box somehow as soon as you put them in the first time?

    Or was that the only question that guru was able/allowed/willing to answer?

    • That's what you get when you get Chris Farley to ask the questions.

      "Hey, do you remember, er, like that game where, er, er, the Ninja... you're the Ninja, and, er, you have to do that thing with the joystick, and, er, you get the bonus screen?"

      "Erm, yep. Yep Chris, I do"

      "That was awesome!"

    • Who the heck cares about a game nobody has even heard of. Or wants to hear of. Or could even remotely consider buying.

      How about new sequels of already very much loved games?

      This really bothers me. I thought it was unimaginative studios that were pushing all these sequels on us but you're here actually demanding the rehashes over something at least unusual if not totally unique. Because of you (and, presumably millions more like you), I'm going to have to wade through shelfs chock full of things like "Devi

      • If the game is a new idea, great. The same game again just with better graphics is boring, granted. But at the very least I'd expect to get SOME information of the game background. A question out of the blue like "Ah, btw, that awesome new game of yours..." sounds a lot like it's been set up to advertise a game. That's not journalism, that's marketing.
  • I don't see the appeal. If I wanted to look at pictures of animals, I would just watch a national geographic movie, or do a search on YouTube. The appeal of actually seeing animals in real life is a bit different (and I could probably just go to the zoo).
    • What the hell IS "that Africa game"? Google didn't help me. :(

    • I don't see the appeal. If I wanted to look at pictures of animals, I would just watch a national geographic movie,

      Meanwhile the rest of the world plays Grand Turismo instead of driving on a real racetrack, plays FIFA instead of doing real soccer and playing Counter-Strike instead of... uhm... ok lets stop here. It of course depends on what kind of gameplay they pack into that Africa game and how good the animal AI is, but I can imagine this to be great fun. That Africa game seems to have some quite reali

  • From the article:
    "Will the PS3 include component video cables in the box?
    I'm not sure, but I think the answer might be "no."

    We know it doesn't come with HDMI cables. [slashdot.org] So how do you connect it to your TV? Is it really composite [wikipedia.org] only? That's remarkable. So out of the box, it will look like poo no matter what television you have.
    They are adding HDMI to all the PS3s now, but they aren't including a decent cable to connect with. Strange.
    • I'm guessing it will come with component cables like the 360 did. They would be stupid not to (oh wait, this is Sony.)
  • For the same price as a PS3, you could go on a real safari!
  • I wonder if Kutaragi's PR gaurd was there to keep him from accidentally 'adding' any features by answering questions. Which probably is what got Sony into a lot of this mess.

    Your typical PR guys get the question, "Can your product do this?"

    Then the answer, "Yes!" even though they have no clue.

  • ...and that wraps up your weekend forcast. Back to you Tom.

    Thank you Mary Ann. Tonights top story, the Sony Runaway Trial. Shortly after noon in San Diego the lawyers representing Fathers Against Runaway Teens opened the court proceedings with hefty accusations against Sony. They charge that Sony has been negligent in its review of computer games and their affects on teenagers. This case originated when Brandon Hill, a runaway teen sixteen years old, was found in Africa three months later. When questioned,
  • The Horse's Mouth? You sure you don't have that horse backwards on this one?
  • The news to me (that I may have missed earlier) was that the $500 model will also include HDMI.

    As for the Africa game, that actually could be really interesting and educational, if the AI for the animals is any good. I wonder if they will show lions taking down impala or the like...
    • The video at TGS shows a cheetah running down some sort of antelope, (at one point from a first person perspective) which is close enough. It may not be the type of game that gets the fanboys foaming at the mouth i.e. Halo, but it definitely has my interest up.
      • I'll have to hunt down some video from the game. Amusingly I was actually just in Africa on a few game drives so I have a great recent memory to compare it to, I found it funny they had made a game - though I might actually buy it as it was an interesting experience.
  • You don't kill the animals.

    The animals kill you!

  • Q: You're the head of Sony's worldwide development studios. What the hell is up with that Africa game?

    He attacked his Weak Point for MASSIVE DAMAGE.

    m-
    • I'm guessing that you've had this problem before and were unable to solve it, eh? Maybe you should choose a different forum to get your answer next time. This one is for 'techs' not 'sex'.

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