New Phil Harrison interview: "The future is now"
February 12, 2007 - Being chief of Sony Studios Worldwide can't be easy right now. Not when the media and the blog-happy Internet are slinging rocks at the recently-launched PS3. Phil Harrison seems unconcerned by the continuous criticism of Sony's new system. "With all due respect to the naysayer in the media," Harrison told us in an extended conversation at DICE 2007, "I couldn't care less."
As Harrison is quick to point out, the "PlayStation 3 launch has been, objectively by any measure, more successful than PlayStation 1, PlayStation 2 or other competing system out previously. We're incredibly happy with how things are going."
Deserved or not, it can't be denied that there is a general public negative sentiment towards the PS3. Escaping the cycle of negativity won't be easy, but Sony is preparing to introduce some new functionality that could challenge Microsoft's online dominance. At DICE, Harrison demoed SingStar on PS3. The slick interface and promise of expanded community tools raised potential for the PS3 as a whole. With SingStar, gamers can upload videos for other users to view and rate. Other YouTube- and MySpace-inspired applications are also expected.
"The reason I showed SingStar was because it illustrated a lot of the trends that I imagine are going to be important to the industry going forward," Harrison told IGN. "You know, integrating community, integrating user-created content and integrating gameplay all into one product."
Sony's plan is to build these tools into a game and then expand them to become part of PS3's broader offering. If successful, it would give Sony one thing Microsoft has been sluggish to adopt: User-generated content. "Our challenge is to integrate that into across the entire system, across the entire platform," Harrison said. "We've got some initiatives underway that will accelerate that process."
Though SingStar is not expected for some time, Sony is going to begin its community initiative very soon. "I think you'll see that [community] innovation in the next five weeks," Harrison said. That would likely mean a grand unveiling of new functionality during Harrison's keynote speech at GDC on March 7.
The mystery features scheduled for a March release are just the beginning of changes for the PS3. Harrison sees the console as an evolving machine with a relationship that begins the moment you make the purchase, but doesn't end for many years. Harrison believes the future of gaming lies in a "network-centric business model." Within the next five years, Harrison expects we'll "start seeing imbedded into the game and platform itself a lot of the hooks that are required to create powerful communities of connected players who are as important to the game experience as game designers... When we release a game, that's a start of a process where we will continue to evolve, enhance and improve. Games in theory could never be finished."
Harrison likens the future of game development to that seen with PC MMOs. Episodic content, expansions and microtransactions are, in Harrison's opinion, going to cross over to all game genres.
It has been rumored that Killzone 2 will be shown at GDC and that a demo is going to be released to counteract Microsoft's Halo 3 multiplayer beta this spring. Harrison would not comment on the Killzone speculation, but dismissed the idea that Sony had to focus its planning to counteract Halo 3. "I have a great deal of respect for Halo, I think it's a great piece of software, but it's one title," Harrison said. "I think that it's very dangerous to build an entire brand personality or platform around a single title. At PlayStation what we have done successfully... is to create tremendously varied entertainment opportunities on our platforms that cover a lot of different bases, a lot of different game styles and as a result grow the market for a lot of different users. We've been very successful doing that. We'll continue to do that. And we would be very careless if we were to focus on one specific title."
Looking beyond GDC, Harrison is positive about the changes made to E3. No longer a spectacle for tens of thousands of onlookers, E3 has been stripped down. The July tradeshow is expected to cater to a few thousand media and has been relocated from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica. "May was a really difficult time to create games to show to the public, to show to media, to show to the world," according to Harrison. "It changed the way we scheduled games and made it quite difficult to demonstrate their full potential. Moving [E3] to July... was a smart move."
ISt scheinbar doch genug Kohle vorhanden bei den Inselaffen
Wer hätts gedacht! Da macht man ein Spässchen und schon kommen ein paar "Ritter des Rechts" ich lach mich schlapp!
