IndustryGamers - Informing the Games Industry

Interview: Sony Not Playing 'Catch Up' with Xbox Live Anymore

Posted July 7, 2009 by James Brightman

IG: Microsoft unveiled an Xbox 360 games-on-demand service for Xbox Live, which will let users actually download full 360 games over their network. I know Sony has done a little bit of that with bigger PS3 games for download, but is their a plan in place to bring full PS3 games-on-demand to PSN?

EL: Not right now; it's not something we have planned, just because the size of the games is massive. With Blu-ray we can put up to 50 gigs on a dual-layer disc, while [Xbox 360] is still on a 9-gig media. So technically it's possible, but I think the issue would be, “Do you want to download 40 gigs and keep that on your hard drive?” I think there's great opportunity there in the future, and it's something we'll always look at, but for the time being it's not a direction we're going in. 

IG: Obviously Xbox Live has had a big start on PSN, but how do you feel the two services stack up today? What do you believe are some of the things you need to work on to get on parity with Xbox Live?

EL: That would be a much different question two years ago and I'd have a much different answer, but at this stage of the game when I really look at PSN and the entire offering I think we're in great shape. I don't think there's a lot of “catch up” [with XBL] anymore. In some cases, I think we've got more, and we've got some other things they don't have. In terms of strengths, of course we're still free, and we're giving you a lot for free. It's not just free online gaming, but we've got PlayStation Home, which is a massive community and application that's totally free to use. Our video download service is also a little bit different from theirs in that we sell movies in addition to renting movies, so consumers who want to keep that digital media or pull it off their hard drive and store on an external device, [we offer that]. I think there's a lot we're doing that in some cases they're not doing, and I don't see a lot of things they're doing that we're not. 

From my perspective, we have our own strategy and we've always been building our roadmap and saying here's what comes next; I think you've seen PSN has evolved tremendously since we've launched. In 2008 we redid the store and brought the store to PSP, we launched the trophy system, the in-game XMB feature which was much needed, along with other UI enhancements and other smaller features. So we'll continue to do that and I don't see anything now that makes me say, “Oh we must be able to do X,” because I think we're doing a lot really well ourselves.

IG: One thing that I noticed from Microsoft and Nintendo was a bigger focus on social networking like Facebook, which is going to be integrated into XBL and is going to work with DSi for photo uploads. Is Sony looking to partner with Facebook or Twitter as well?

EL: We're always looking at new partners and for things to do. Right now you can access Facebook from the browser on the PS3, so that's something the other guys couldn't do – so we were kind of ahead of the game there. 

IG: I still think getting Netflix integrated into the XMB as part of PSN would be great. And Microsoft also announced their own separate 1080p streaming video on XBL. There's still no HD streaming on the PS3 – is there any plan for streaming video on PS3?

EL: There's no streaming plan right now. From our perspective, when we set out to build a video delivery service we wanted to do a few things. One was to give the consumer full choice – which again goes back to the fact that we don't charge a subscription to access our service and we don't charge any fee to access a movie service. [For Netflix on XBL] you're paying two companies to get that piece to work, which might not be appealing for everyone. The other thing we were looking at doing was providing a high quality experience. I haven't seen their 1080p streaming, but with us when we do these downloads it's a high quality file. With a lot of the streaming I've seen elsewhere it's not that great, and it's a little grainy and doesn't really match with the PS3 in the living room on the nice big TV. It's also about selection. We wanted to make sure we had a nice selection of new releases... you can't get the brand new DVD or BD releases on a streaming service early. So right now we're happy with where we are. We've added some new partners; we have all the majors and we're going after some more niche and interesting genres for our users.

IG: Regarding the new motion technology from Sony, from a PSN perspective how do you see the network leveraging that?

EL: From the PSN perspective, I would see a lot of great PSN content for that device. It looks like a great device that can do really deep and intense games or components of games that also use a controller, or just kind of mini-games or other applications for fun... PSN would be great for that. We can sell something at a low price that takes advantage of it and could probably provide hours of fun for the user. So I'm excited to see new content coming our way once the device is introduced.

James Brightman has been covering the games industry since 2003 and has been an avid gamer ever since the days of Atari and Intellivision. He was previously the EIC of GameDaily Biz.