Nueva Entrevista a Phil Harrison

GI: I have a question about the interface, that you displayed today…

Phil Harrison: Did you like it?

GI: I do like it. I got used to it with the PSP.

Harrison: Yep. Good.

GI: Are you planning on allowing streaming of audio or video from PCs or any other devices to be played through the PS3?

Harrison: Locally over a network?

GI: Yes, locally.

Harrison: You mean if you’ve got movies or music content somewhere else in the home? Not day one. Day one functionality is if you’ve got a USB hard drive full of music, you can copy that across to your PS3 hard drive.

GI: Like an MP3 device?

Harrison: Yes.

GI: With the PlayStation Store are you going to sell movies and music to be downloaded to your PlayStation 3?

Harrison: Yes.

GI: Not right away, but in the future?

Harrison: It’s not a technical issue, it’s more of a business issue. That will clearly be a part of the store offering in the very near future. You saw the store is built for thousands and thousands of pieces of content covering all kinds of digital content.

GI: Sony is entering the casual game space, and you’ve shown a few original games, and downloadable PS1 games. Are PS2 games planned as well?

Harrison: Initially PlayStation 1 game images can be downloaded and enjoyed on your PSP. We’ll have an upgrade to the PSP firmware in November which gives you that functionality. In the new year you’ll be able to do that with PlayStation 3. I think it’ll be a little ways off until we do that with PlayStation 2. The image size of the discs is a little bit larger. But obviously we’ve got backwards compatibility day one out of the box.

GI: What about the casual games that you can download like flOw. Will you be able to play those on your PSP as well?

Harrison: Some games – not flOw – because that is dedicated to the six axis controller [ed: We played flOw using both the analog sticks and tilt functionality of the Sixaxis controller at TGS 2006]. Some games we’re developing can be played on the PSP or PlayStation 3.

GI: Are you going to go after the classic arcade game space as well?

Harrison: We don’t need to. We’ve got them all on PlayStation 1. That’s a glib response, I know. We have 13, 000 titles, and not all of them obviously will be available.

GI: What about more of the basic games like card games, parlor games, things of that nature?

Harrison: Definitely casual games, parlor games, family games. All of that is coming. We wanted to show our direction today focused around November 17th. Plus we’ve got a lot of content to come.

GI: Heavenly Sword, any update on that title?

Harrison: It will be out next year.

GI: Any reason why it’s not here?

Harrison: We focused on what would be available on November 17th. The title is coming along fantastically. It’s not a day one launch title. But it still rocks.

GI: The PlayStation 3 console is region free for games?

Harrison: Yes.

GI: Is that just PlayStation 3 games or will that be for PlayStation 2 games as well?

Harrison: Disc based games still have the region coding on the disc, so we have to respect that.

GI: So Japanese PS2 games will not work on US PlayStation 3s?

Harrison: Not at the moment, no.

GI: When do you think we’ll see the next-gen Eye Toy?

Harrison: Early next year.

GI: November is going to be a big month for video gamers with everything you guys have coming out with the PS3, the Wii will be released, Xbox 360 is on their second-gen games – what do you think your biggest challenge is heading into this holiday season?

Harrison: Hardware supply.

GI: How much of a disadvantage do you think having sub-500,000 is going to put Sony?

Harrison: Disadvantage is not the right word. It is clearly a short term challenge – we’ll overcome it. For the perspective of five years it’ll be a tiny blip on the sales chart. It’s disappointing for those who won’t be able to buy their PS3s on day one, but we’ll catch up.