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Kaz Harai has taken a side-swipe at Nintendo and Microsoft by saying they’ve done the consumer a disservice by getting rid of both GameCube and Xbox as soon as they released their next consoles.
When asked who was winning the console wars by Eurogamer Hirai said: “I think that ‘winning’ and ‘won’ are two different things. Where I stand, we look at it in the context of a ten-year life cycle as we’ve done with PSone and PS2, which is certainly on its way.
“So it’s really a matter of looking back after ten years minimum and asking what you’ve actually accomplished in terms of the installed base,” he went on.
“If somebody wants to say that they’re going to have a larger installed base, we should compare notes after ten years, because otherwise we’re not talking about the same thing.
“And we certainly don’t do the consumer the disservice of basically saying that the consoles have gone by the wayside because we have a new one. Right now, a prime example? PS2 is nine years into it. Where’s the Xbox? Where’s the GameCube?”
Full interview – with both Hirai and Mattrick answering the same set of questions about where they see their respective business heading – through the link.
By Mike Bowden
Viewing 6 responses
Psychotext said:
Hirai still doesn’t get that a 10 year lifecycle is not something you can choose to do… it’s something that your sales let you do. If the PS2 had sold like the xbox it would have been killed pretty fast too. Same goes for the PS3… it either picks up or they’re going to need to start looking at the next machine pretty sharpish.
It’s quite telling that this 10 year lifecycle thing was never actually mentioned until the PS3 came around. It’s not something they planned to do for the PS1 or PS2… it’s just a happy side effect of those machines utterly crushing their competition.
Talking of which, I’d love to find when they first used the term.
Michael said:
Please don’t tell me I’m not the only person who sees the irony in this?
Their current consoles support the games from their last console, *and* they sell their current console at a reasonable price point.
The only reason the PS2 still has some life in it is because it was so huge in the past generation. The other formats were not. Lets try making the PS3 profitable, yeah?
Make up your fucking minds, Sony.
Gamoc said:
He has a point, you know. Sony can’t possibly lose if they’re going for 10 years and their competition isn’t simply because they’re building, selling and supporting them for so much longer.
Whizzo said:
They’d did potential customers a disservice by dumping PS2 BC on the PS3 after they’d been taking the piss out of Microsoft’s attempts at it on the 360 (which at least works for a lot of titles).
Well done, you certainly showed those Redmond boys!
mortiferus said:
It’s a disservice to themselves. If Im a shareholder I want maximum ROI on PS3. Afterall they spent an exorbitant amount of money on R&D and then on manufacturing. The smart thing to do is offer a year of dev support on last gen and then concentrate on the new kid. The old hadware/software will sell on it’s own. This is part of the 3rd place puzzle for Sony.
mortiferus said:
Also if Sony is so big on not fucking their customers, why is it that every Blue-ray player sans the newest models being released this fall are feature crippled compared to PS3… and with no firmware upgrade path to Profile 2.0?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9808376-7.html