PS3 is Weathering the Storm, says Jack Tretton

For all the negatives Sony's had to endure since the launch of the PlayStation 3, Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton sees a lot of positives and encouraging signs for the business. Speaking to Fast Company, he made the analogy that Sony has been tied to the mast of a ship at the center of a storm, and its resolve is being tested. 

"Hopefully last year is as bad as it gets. I think all indicators are that 2009 is going better than 2008. In 2008, we had a 38% increase in sales and we hit our 10-million-units-worldwide goal for PS3 sales. We had $6.4 billion in revenue in U.S. alone on the PlayStation brand, and a 116% increase in software sales. At the worst possible time, if you're hitting numbers and delivering success... my hope is that as our production efficiencies improve and more great games come to market, the horizon has got to be better for 2009 and 2010," he stated.

Tretton continued, "It's like being out there in a storm--it does cause you to question your conviction, and tie yourself to the mast and weather the storm. We have hit a very challenging period of trying to sell future technology, a high-end device, but is on the high-end retail pricing spectrum, at a time when people's disposable income is limited. But I think the fact we were successful in that says people are getting the message, that you get tremendous value when you buy a PlayStation product. Yes there are cheaper machines out there, but not ones that deliver the degree of value for the money that ours does."

In the rest of the interview, Tretton once again addressed the usual Sony talking points, particularly the 10-year plan. 

"We tend to look at things in 10-year increments when a lot of people tend to look at in five, and then they boil it down to three as the make-or-break time. And I think if you have that narrow of a view you take much less risk. We want the platform to be successful, we want to be profitable. But it is getting harder to measure that. And when you get down to a game like The Last Guardian, you can't just look at the number of units it sold versus it's development cost; it's what did you do to drive our message of diversity," he commented.

"You have to look at things over a long-term period. It's extremely difficult to do in our industry, and even more difficult to do in this economy. In our industry it's all about now, 'When are you going to drop you price? When's the new system coming out? What's the new game?' You have to take a step back and not get caught up in that. But it gets more and more difficult in this economy because people don't have the patience to say, 'You're not profitable today, or that game didn't make money today, but it's kind of setting up for three or five years down the road.' In this economy people go, 'There may not be any tomorrow, so it's all about today.' So I think that attitude is being tested now more than it ever has."