Tag Archives: David Reeves

SCEE president David Reeves has admitted that PSP performance has not been good enough but promised a stellar line up for 2009.

“The competition has been such that publishers have had four consoles, plus PC, to publish for. They did not put their chips on PSP, certainly in the US and Europe,” said Reeves when asked about why he thought the PSP’s performance had been lacking.

“In Japan, a lot of publishers put their chips on PSP. So games like Monster Hunter, Phantasy Star Portable and Dissidia have caused enormous spikes for PSP in Japan. But there haven’t been big platform drivers in Europe.

“Now I can look you in the face and say, the line-up for PSP in 2009 is two or three times stronger than it was last year, ” said.

“We ran out of steam on games around August, September last year. We didn’t have a Monster Hunter or a Dissidia. But probably from March to July, you’re going to see that type of thing starting to kick in.”

Eurogamer then confronted Reeves with the fact that 185 DS games have been announced compared with 44 for PSP. To that Reeves responded: “It depends on the quality of the games, doesn’t it? People come out on DS and want to compete against Nintendo first-party, and that’s a tough thing.

“It’s like when you watch six year-old boys play football, and they all follow the ball right the way across the field. Sometimes developers and publishers do that, and that’s what they’ve done with DS.”

Ok, David. If you say so.

By Mike Bowden

In a recent interview with Eurogamer, Sony Europe president David Reeves says he has no regrets about titles like Grand Theft Auto, amongst others, going multi-platform and completely understand the publisher’s rights to do so.

“I don’t think we were in a position not to give up exclusivity,” he said honestly. “You can’t live on exclusivity forever; in the end, you’ve got to be master of your own destiny.

“We’ve invested in studios like Media Molecule and gained exclusivity that way. We’ve made studios like Evolution and Guerrilla wholly-owned.

“Our strategy is to have 15 to 20 IPs by the time we get to 2009, 2010,” he added.

“We don’t have to go to Capcom or Take-Two and ask for an exclusive. And I don’t think we could afford it anyway. In the cold light of day, I would do exactly as those publishers have done and go multi-platform.”

When asked what his response would be if Konami announced it was going multiplat with Metal Gear Solid, Reeves replied: “That’s totally their decision. We’re not going to fall over ourselves just to try and keep that exclusive. We have to stand on our own two feet.”

More, as ever, through the link.

By Mike Bowden

When asked what the average [read: not 'hardcore', doesn't care about Blu ray] consumer would choose if he/she went into a shop and saw the expensive PlayStation 3 compared with the cheaper 360, SCEE president David Reeves expects them to go for “the green machine” – though only because they haven’t done their research.

“The price will affect their decision,” he told EG. “Yes, if I haven’t got that much money to spend, I will go for, let’s say, the green machine. Because the salesman will say, ‘Well, it’s got all the games,’ and he wants to sell that machine.

“But there are people who come in having done their research, thinking, ‘PS3 has got all the games, it’s free to go online, it’s got a Blu-ray player.

“I know I’m not going to have to ring up the customer careline saying ‘I’ve got three red lights.’”

“We recognised that those numbers would go down because we did not drop the price,” added Reeves. “But we reached the targets we expected to reach under those assumptions.”

By Mike Bowden

When quizzed on whether PlayStation 3 would remain the most expensive console on the market, Sony Europe president David Reeves concurred saying that you need a thick skin in order to know how to weather the economic storm.

“I think it will [remain the most expensive console, yes," said Reeves to EG. "I'm not saying there are going to be any price cuts at all in the short term or the medium term. I'm not saying we don't need to do it - we are expensive.

"It is possible that as the cost [of manufacturing] comes down, we will be able to do it.

“But we’re protecting ourselves with a very hard shell to get through the next one or two years of an economic situation,” he warned.

“If you’re experienced, you know you have to go into that mode – it’s like being an armadillo. You have to be hard, and then you will come out when the sun comes out.

“If, as an industry, we can get through the next six to seven months, we’re going to find a massive uplift in September and October. I’m very optimistic about it. ”

Still more through the link.

In a rather volcanic interview with Eurogamer, SCEE president David Reeves has said he feels that despite the recession, the videogame industry is in good health and will remain if “people” don’t go around “cutting prices” and ruining it for everybody else.

“It’s a function of the economic situation that you are going to find people who are resilient, who do not play with their pricing, who are very efficient,” said Reeves.

“Those people in that particular studio, they don’t have a job, but I think in a few weeks you’ll find them housed in other studios,” he responded when confronted with the many development houses that have either gone under or laid people off recently.

“Of course there are going to be some people who fold. But the videogames industry is inherently very healthy.

“It’s not a question of survival of the fittest, it’s the survival of people who are professional, and don’t just go around cutting their prices and destroying the market,” he added.

There’s more than you could possibly imagine through the link.

By Mike Bowden

David Reeves has told EG that despite Microsoft’s claims to the contrary, Xbox 360 is not as far ahead as the company thinks.

Reeves compared Sony stance of not dropping the price compared with MS as like “going ten rounds with Ali” and still standing.

“I don’t want to talk about the competition too much, but Xbox 360 is not ahead by a million units,” said Reeves, looking back on the post-December NPD fallout.

“We sold through 500,000 PS3s in November. We sold through 1.1 million units in December. Our installed base now is very close to 8.5 million units in PAL territories. Our numbers show we are absolutely neck-and-neck,” he said.

Looking ahead to the remainder of the PS3′s lifecycle, Reeves remains positive as now he claims that PS3 is number two in the market.

“What happened was, we overtook them, and they dropped the price. It’s almost as if we’ve gone ten rounds as Mohammed Ali and we’re still standing, because we didn’t drop the price. We held firm.

Now, going into the remaining rounds and the next seven years, we are going to be very strong. The last few weeks have shown we are clearly number two in the market. I’m as confident as I was before.

SCEE president David Reeves has said that in light of yesterday’s moribund Q3 financial results, Sony’s plan was never sales-minded, but profit-focused.

“We’ve said it would be 10 million, and it is 10 million,” said Reeves. “We had a price decrease in the previous year, and we didn’t have a price decrease this year. Xbox 360 did, and Nintendo was already quite low.”

“The plan wasn’t necessarily to hit sales, it was to hit a profit target – to do better than break even in Q3.

“The financial results show a break even in Q3 for Sony Computer Entertainment worldwide. So rather than then going for market share and sales, we went for profit, at least to break even,” he added.

“We’re two-and-a-half years into a ten-year cycle,” Reeves re-iterated. “For October, November and December we were in a holding pattern, especially with the pricing.

“We had to demonstrate we could make a profit with the business model, and that’s what we’ve done.”

Full thing over at Eurogamer.

According to a PSN release schedule obtained by videogaming247.com, the online music video service, operated by London-based company VidZone Digital Media will be available to download from PSN on 4th June.

Until now, the Vidzone service – which allows streaming of music videos to all PS3 users in Europe for free –only had a “2009″ release schedule.

Amid fears that you wouldn’t be able to play games and listen to music simultaneously, Sony’s David Reeves said of VidZone to VG247 last year that, “Because you can listen to it – you don’t have to see the music video – and play your game at the same time.”

By Mike Bowden

In an article at PlayStation.com featuring leading industry figures talking about what they are looking forward to most in 2009, SCEE president David Reeves has said that turning a profit is Sony’s main, short-term goal.

“The most important thing for us as a company in the very short term is for us to start making money,” said. “This is a pledge that was made last March and is something that we are still very much on target to achieve.

“Once we have achieved this, I think it will be a very exciting time for PlayStation. Once we have alleviated that specific pressure, we can move forward at a rate of knots.”

SCEE Worldwide Studios president, Shuhei Yoshida, said “2009 will be the year of big, exclusive PS3 titles.

“Just to name a few, the year will start with the much anticipated launch of Killzone 2, followed by a fresh, new take on the superhero/anti-hero open sandbox genre inFamous, a mind-bending thriller Heavy Rain, a massive 256 player simultaneous online shooter MAG, an augmented reality, virtual pet in your room experience EyePet, and some more big titles that we have not even announced yet.”

Loads more through the link including Phil Harrison saying he’s most looking forward MMOs on PS3.

SCEE president David Reeves has told MCV that substandard hardware will do nothing to grow the games market.

“We also grow the market through new products – some work, some don’t, that’s just the Sony way,” he said.

“And on that point, another thing we have committed to for supporting market growth is putting out quality hardware – you don’t grow the market by putting out shoddy machines.

“So we try to make sure that PS3s have a failure rate of just two to three per cent, which is very low by industry standards.”

Take that, Microsoft.

Thanks, Kotaku.

SCEE president David Reeves has said that the game industry is not recession-proof, and that it’s “difficult to explain” why PlayStation products are achieving European targets.

“From our point of view which is in the videogames division, in PlayStation, it’s not recession-proof, of course,” he told Dutch TV station RTL.

“I don’t think any industry is, and eventually we may see a downturn.”

Reeves said that SCEE’s products are holding steady across Europe, and that much-cited recession-related factors surrounding the games industry of late may be causing the trade to be suffering less than other sectors.

“For the moment we’re seeing that our sales for both hardware and software are hitting projections in most countries in Europe,” he added.

“Difficult to explain: it could be that parents don’t want to disappoint their children in buying PlayStations, or whether it’s the competition as well… or maybe it’s because people are spending more time at home and this is a safe haven, rather than going out to restaurants or spending money on buying cars and fridges and things like that.

“We seem to find that in timres of recession that people tend to stay at home, but they still want to be entertained.”

The exec went on to assure that there will be no scaling back of SCEE staff “at all,” despite Sony Corp recently announcing 8,000 job cuts.

Well worth a watch.

SCEE president David Reeves has told MCV that PS3 will not drop in price next spring – as was rumoured recently – and that the machine is ahead of Xbox 360 by around 300,000 units in Europe.

“No we are not going to go down in price; neither are we going to go down in price on PS3 in spring time either. Absolutely not, whatever you might have heard to the contrary,” he said.

“Our strategy is very much value added.”

The exec added:

“I am confident that in PAL territories our installed base is 300,000 units ahead of Xbox 360.

“When we came into the industry we started at zero. And we had to have a model that offered price elasticity. As soon as we got the manufacturing price down on PSOne we lowered the price. Same with PS2. But we’re not doing that on PS3 – that’s not the model, even if people are expecting it.

“We’re relying on the fact that the industry will keep growing and while we might have a comparatively smaller share of the market we will have higher sales. PS3 is tracking where PS2 was at the same point in its life. The value added strategy will continue for some years to come.”

More through there.

SCEE may be officially pegging a leak from its staff conference in London last week as “rumour and speculation”, but we’ve just been told that president David Reeves emailed staff this morning reminding everyone that an NDA’s built into their contracts.

A UK rep has just declined to comment on the truth of the matter, and we don’t have a copy of the alleged mail, unfortunately.

DPad reported over the weekend that Reeves told staff last Friday that Sony’s hardware it to become “more competitive in price from March 2009 onwards,” and showed those attending God of War III and Uncharted 2.

So there we go. Definitely a rumour. Biggest rumour ever.

DPad’s posted a report based on a source that attended the Sony Computer Entertainment Staff Annual Briefing in London on Friday, claiming SCEE president David Reeves said the firm “will be getting more competitive on price from March 2009 onwards.”

Apparently the PSP version of LittleBigPlanet – which the report says has been worked on for the past four months – was shown, as was Uncharted 2 and God of War 3, which looked so good the source claimed it wasn’t really possible to distinguish it from CGI.

There’s a lot of stuff through there: must-read.

Speaking to MCV and Games Convention, SCEE president David Reeves said the firm is “comfortable” with PSP as it stands and doesn’t believe the handheld’s success is being overshadowed by DS.

“I don’t think we’re necessarily in the shadow of DS – they have different types of games and we have a different positioning for PSP which is not just about gaming, but Go Explore and everything else that comes with it,” he said.

Reeves added: “I think you can also see the smile on our faces when we talk about what we’re offering at this price and the games that are available. We’re very, very happy and comfortable with our PSP business.”

Tons more through there.

David Reeves is the man who keeps on giving. At least he does in this case, because both VG247 and GI had the same interview slot with the SCEE president at Games Convention, all of our questions from which are newsified here.

He did, however, say other things. And the biggest thing he said was that he believed the era of publisher console exclusivity was essentially over.

“I think we have to accept that exclusivity is not a thing of the past, but it is probably with publishers,” he said. “We might do a few things, where we feel that we need a push here or a push there.”

Reeves added: “We have to accept more and more that platform holders themselves cannot have exclusives unless they’re given millions and millions of dollars not to develop a particular game for one particular platform.

“But for developers, and you could take someone like Quantic Dream for example – a great game, it takes a lot of time to develop, they need a little bit of funding, external development. In exchange, it’s exclusive – that works. So exclusivity possibly with developers is more likely that exclusivity with publishers.”

You can read the full transcript of the interview here.

David Reeves is a nice chap. He’s also president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, so when he says things it’s best to take note. We caught up with Reeves at Games Convention in Leipzig last week after an impressive press conference at the show, and, as ever, he had plenty to say on everything. We’ve broken it down into easily digestible stories for you below. Because we’re nice like that.

• Reeves shrugs off FFXIII on 360 saying, “It’s still exclusive in Japan”
• Reeves on Home: “I can look you in the eyes and tell you everything is on track”
• Reeves: “Sometimes it’s an advantage to be last in Europe”
• Reeves: There will be no PS3 price cut this year
• Reeves: We’re a bit behind on video downloads, but we will get there
• Reeves: “I am supremely confident” that PS3 leads 360 in PAL territories – audio
• Reeves: Focus groups said music videos were key to PS3
• Reeves: You can play PS3 games while listening to streaming Vidzone movies
• Reeves: Euro PS3 music video downloads “might be a Sony service”

Speaking to VG247 at Games Convention in Germany last week, SCEE president David Reeves highlighted the difficulties in bringing the Movie Store service to European PS3s, but assured that SCEE “will get there” and launch the functionality on the Continent.

“On the video side, you will appreciate that when a movie comes out in Europe, if it’s a Fox movie, it’s not always Fox in Europe or Australia,” he said. “So we can’t take content from the USA and say, ‘I’ll talk to Fox headquarters in Europe,’ because they don’t have it, and that’s happened with several movies.

“We have to talk to a thousand different people to get the rights… And it does take a little bit of time to get that sorted out for Europe, and we’ve got all the languages and all the different cultures. We’re a bit behind, but we will get there.”

The US Movie Store was announced and launch at E3.

SCEE super-boss David Reeves has told VG247 that PS3 is still ahead of 360 in Europe, and that he’s amazingly sure of the fact.

“We are indeed,” said the exec when asked if Sony was sure PS3 was still in front. “In PAL territories we are ahead of Xbox 360. We’re absolutely confident.”

“I have no idea,” Reeves added on the matter of Microsoft’s dispute of the claim.

“I am supremely confident of that statement. Sony would not let me say that if they hadn’t seen all the numbers… They would not let us say that. And we are absolutely, 100 percent confident of it.”

Don’t take our word for it. He means it. Listen to the audio below.

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Speaking to VG247 at Games Convention in Leipzig last week, SCEE boss David Reeves said that the reason Vidzone – a streaming service for music videos – is to be added to the European PS3 early next year is that focus tests consistently through it up as important.

“It’s what prompted it,” said Reeves when asked if customers had been asking for a music video service.

In the focus groups that we’ve done – and it wasn’t just in the UK – music came number two, video came number three and photos number four, and that was very consistent.”

Vidzone launches at the beginning of 2009, with a download service to contain similar content planned for launch towards the end of next year.