Giggle..like a little school girl after reading this

[joeorc]

December 16, 2007
PS3's Tretton Praises Blu-ray
Comments: 6

Fascinating, hard-hitting interview with Jack Tretton, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America in Foster City, by San Jose Mercury News. Here are a few key points from the extensive interview that you should read in its entirety when you have time:

* On whether he believes Sony made a mistake in going with Blu-ray instead of HD DVD, given costs and market share of HD DVD:

"...everything I’ve seen has Blu-ray outselling HD-DVD handily. And I think the other thing that’s lost on people getting into an HD-DVD-Blu-ray battle, is that Blu-ray is a great format for movie playback, but for the PlayStation 3, I think the most important thing is the Blu-ray drive for gaming and the ability to have 50-gigs of storage on a PlayStation 3 game as compared to 9 from our competition at max.
...When we first came out with the CD format as compared to cartridge, ...people said, “that’s amazing, it’s never going to get any better than that.” And then DVD came out, and initially people said, “Why do you really need DVD? CD has plenty of storage capability,” and five years later, 95 percent of the content was on DVD. I think you’ll see the same thing with Blu-ray. And people say, “Oh, 9 gigs is enough. You just put two, three, four discs in a box.” That obviously isn’t going to fly long term.

* On PlayStation sales projections for this year:

We expect to sell 33 million pieces of hardware across the three platforms. And that breaks out to 12 million PS 2s, 11 million PS 3s, and 10 million PlayStation Portables, and then we don’t break out software, but our forecast is 250 million units of software across those three platforms.

* On dropping to #3 in next-gen gaming consoles representing a "disastrous" year for Sony:

...if we have 67 percent growth over last year in our revenue, and if 45% of all software sold is on our three platforms, I’ll take that kind of disaster all year long.

* On getting "wiped out in Japan... , losing share in Europe... ... behind in North America,... behind worldwide right now with the PlayStation 3":

... we outsold the Wii last month in Japan, and I think the traction for the PlayStation 3 is extremely good in all three worldwide markets.

* On perception that Sony has history of backing failed formats from Betamax to mini-disc to "the player that’s in the PSP":

Yeah, and we’ve had some history of having some success as well... 160 CE companies backing Blu-ray [editor's note: now more than 170], seven of the eight major studios backing Blu-ray [editor's note: now 7 out of 10 studios if you include MGM, New Line, Lionsgate and DreamWorks; or 4 of the other 6 "major studios"]; you’ve got Blu-ray content outselling HD-DVD two-to-one, and by an even greater margin worldwide. You’ve got a machine in the PlayStation 3 that’s got over 2 million units in North America that plays Blu-ray movies, and those to me are all positive signs. Now if you want to rattle off the HD-DVD statistics that are more superior to those and are more advantageous, I’m more than happy to listen.

[Editor's Note: the interviewers did not respond with HD DVD statistics that are more superior or advantageous.]

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