Tag Archives: Phil Harrison

Former Sony Worldwide Studios head Phil Harrison had a lot to say at Develop this week, giving hardware cycles and crunch time the flick, and highlighting free to play as the future of the industry.

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Media Molecule co-founder Alex Evans said during a panel at Develop this morning that at one time, Sony wanted the firm’s LittleBigPlanet to launch as a free-to-play title.

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Develop organisers have announced that the opening keynote of the event, a chat with LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule and ex-SCE WWS head Phil Harrison, will be the main headliner later this month. Harrison, who first brought the company to Sony’s attention, will interview co-founders Alex Evans, Mark Healey and Kareem Ettouney for a session called “Living Inside a Molecule” on July 20.

Develop takes place in Brighton between July 19-21.

Phil Harrison, former head of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, has predicted the death of physical media and said if Apple continues as it is, it “will be the games industry”.

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Gaikai has announced the appointments of Phil Harrison and Robin Kaminsky to its advisory board.

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Former Atari and Sony head Phil Harrison has invested in a Finnish developed browser based co-op RPG called Gunshine.

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Sony’s former head of Worldwide Studios, Phil Harrison, believes Sony has a tough road ahead if its to expect PS3 to match PS2′s record-breaking sales.

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Atari’s announced its founder Nolan Bushnell has rejoined the company on its board of directors.

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Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and the Shadow Minister for Culture have each been announced to speak at the London Games Conference on October 27 at BAFTA.

According to the press release, the conference “will tackle the biggest issues facing publishers and developers today: How to strengthen relationships with their playing customers and how to sell products to them in the years ahead through digital distribution.”

“I’m delighted to be speaking to the London Games Conference,” said Shadow Minister for Culture, Ed Vaizey. “The games sector is one of the most successful creative industries in the UK, but it has been forgotten by Government. While Canada and France aggressively compete to attract games talent, all UK politicians talk about is video games violence.

“Yet this sector should be a dream for a politician – it recruits people qualified in difficult subjects, like maths and computer science; it’s regional, with clusters all over the country; and it’s successful and world-beating. Government backing for the games sector should be a no-brainer.”

Andy Payne, chair of ELSPA, Phil Harrison, Edge editor Tony Mott and Intent MD Stuart Dinsey are all expected to chair panels during the conference.

Full press release through the break.

Thanks, GoNintendo.

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Phil Harrison’s role as president of Infogrames is done and dusted, Atari said in a statement this morning.

“Because of a shift of business operations to the US, Phil Harrison will move from the role of President to that of non-executive Director of the Group,” said the firm.

“As all Board members, he will continue to assist, support and guide the Company’s strategy.”

We’re saying nothing. More on Kotaku.

It’s so on. VG247 has learned this morning that Will Wright, Warren Spector, Neil Young, Rob Pardo and Phil Harrison are all confirmed for Dave Perry’s Luminaries Lunch at GDC next month.

The chat takes place on March 25 at 1.00pm PST.

The inaugural event at last year’s GDC bore witness to some spectacular quotes from Harrison, who openly criticised Sony’s approach to gaming as a whole. He quit the firm days later.

The addition of Wright and Blzzard boss Pardo to the line-up for 2009′s panel will only add weight to what was dubbed “GDC’s best session” last year by some.

Discussion will be about the future of the industry, new concepts in technology, recent non-gaming related developments and entertainment trends.

It’s invite-only, Ringo. We’ll be there, obviously, which means you will be to. See how that works?

God of War 2 director Cory Barlog has admitted in a 1UP interview that Phil Harrison questioned the wisdom of putting God of War 2 on PS2 instead of PS3, a tactic endorsed by now head of worldwide studios at Sony, Shuhei Yoshida.

The full quote:

Shuhei was handling a lot of the projects through all the studios in America. He was pushing for PS2, and I was kind of on the fence. PS2 for me was like, “We can make a really great game; we don’t have to catch up with the technology and start from scratch.” We could focus on just making a great game, hence the reason that it was bigger and just had more content, and we could focus on refining everything that we had.

But Phil had brought it up, “Why aren’t we doing this on PS3?” I was actually in a presentation for the game I think a year into it, or maybe eight months into it, and Shuhei and Phil and bunch of other Japanese executives were there. We did the whole dog and pony, and then the first thing Phil said was, “Very good, thank you. I just have to ask this, since it seems like the obvious question. Why are we not doing this on PS3?” And I was like, “Uhh.” I kind of looked over at Shu and was like, “You want to take this?” He was a big proponent of it, but in the end I think a lot of people were like, “It’s a smart move to do it on PS2.”

You must read these 1UP features. One’s being put live every day this week, running up the the God of War III reveal on Friday.

Phil Harrison’s told MCV he wants to prove Bobby Kotick was wrong to dump Terminal Reality’s Ghostbusters when Activision merged with Blizzard.

“What Bobby, perhaps unhelpfully said, was that those games were franchises which wouldn’t make $100m of revenue and generate sequels,” said the Atari boss.

“If that’s his benchmark, then fine – and we’d love to aspire to the same benchmarks. But you know what? I would love to turn Ghostbusters into a $100m franchise, just to prove him wrong.”

Atari picked up the action game in November.

Atari boss – nee Sony Worldwide Studios head – Phil Harrison’s told Eurogamer that PSP’s still the place the be.

“There is no doubt that PSP is a very vibrant platform from a hardware perspective and I think Sony has recently made some good moves into opening up online distribution for software on PSP, so I’m looking to explore that,” he said.

“We have published on PSP and I’m sure we will continue to publish on PSP; we didn’t have any announcements to make today,” he added.

Atari’s published a decent amount for PSP, although there’s been nothing of note in recent months.

Big Atari releases for the platform include Mercury, Hot Pixel and Dragon Ball Z titles.

Speaking to Eurogamer at Atari Live in London this week, company boss former Sony studios head Phil Harrison said he thought his former firm had succeeded in its aims with Home.

The development team had “brilliantly realised their ambitions,” he said, and predicted that Sony “will have a very successful platform”.

Harrison also tipped his hat to NXE.

“I was quite impressed actually with some of the things that [Microsoft has] done,” he said.

“[Microsoft are] just scratching the surface of what the whole industry recognises is that customisation, socialisation and community platforms are going to be just as important as the games themselves.”

We weren’t there – Mrs Pat’s the most pregnant woman in the world – but now we can all see Phil Harrison and David Gardner deliver the Atari Live keynote from London this week right here.

There’s a video of the entire thing, kicking off with a showreel of upcoming product and Gardner telling the crowd he and Phil have come back to the business for the love of the Atari brand. Brings a tear to the eye.

Watch it. These guys are two of the best in the trade. There’s the announcement of the new Mizuguchi products, the announcement of picking up Ready 2 Rumble and Demigod, the Ghostbusters date and all the rest of it.

Speaking to Edge at Atari Live in London this week, company boss Phil Harrison has predicted that the upcoming generation will never use a disc. For anything.

“There’s a generation of kids being born today and probably already alive who I’m pretty confident will never buy a physical media product,” he said.

“They will never buy a DVD, they will never buy a CD, and they will never buy a game in a box.”

Harrison’s boss, David Gardner, has already said that 90 percent of Atari’s products will be online “within five years”.

Talking at yesterday’s Atari Live event in London, Atari CEO David Gardner explained that secondhand sales have been damaging for the gaming industry.

“Secondhand game sales represent consumer choice and desire,” he said. “Obviously, it has economically been extremely painful for the industry… the publishers don’t benefit.

“But as games change and they become more and more network centric, the disc in the box becomes only one part of the experience. As that experience grows then it becomes not such a problem,” he added.

President Phil Harrison reckons that more online content will be an effective combatant of the secondhand trade: “”There’s no doubt that second hand games sales has a macro-economic impact on the industry and a lot of people get miserable about it,” he said.

“But it’s no coincidence that the most valuable games, the one’s that have the most lifetime as a game experience, are the one’s that don’t get resold, that don’t get traded.

“The games that have the embedded community, the embedded commerce, the extended, expandable experiences, are the one’s that you would never want to trade, the one’s you want to keep hold of. And that’s perfectly in line with our future strategy so we’re not that concerned about it,” he added.

Thanks, GI.

By Mike Bowden

Just in case there was any doubt about CD Projekt’s The Witcher coming to consoles, Atari press released the 360 and PS3 versions this afternoon.

Both are out next autumn.

“The creative vision and dedication to the quality of the player experience that CD Projekt RED bring to the Witcher games is extraordinary, and it’s great to be working with them to bring the Witcher universe to console gamers,” said Phil Harrison.

“Taking this brilliantly realised world to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 gamers for the first time is a breakthrough in the development of this important franchise.”

Full thing after the break.

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Whilst talking about Unity middleware platfrom in Copenhagen, Atari exec Phil Harrison has said that the reason many games fail is due to going from “concept to production in one jump.”

“Here is my EUR 10 million gift to this room — all of the mistakes I have made in software development have been based around one problem and one problem alone, which is accelerating through this pipeline without successfully and properly satisfying the requirements of each of the stages – and typically it involves going from concept to production in one jump,” said Harrison.

“That’s pretty much the definition of why projects fail — because you don’t know what you’re building, you don’t know how you’re going to build it, you don’t know who you’re building it for, but you’ve got 60 people working on it and they’ve all running in different directions — that’s how most games fail.”

Thanks, Kotaku.