PS3: WHAT'S THE DEAL?
Inside Sony's strategy for making you want to be one of the first to own a piece of next-generation.
Originally printed in Official PlayStation Magazine, OPM #106
by OPM Staff 7.20.2006
November 17 is the day. You know the price. You've seen the games--most of them anyway. You know what it can do. You've finally seen the controller. The only remaining question: Are you buying it? There's no question that the PlayStation 3 will help usher in the next generation of videogames with its ridiculously powerful processing capabilities and multimedia functions. Not to mention that the PlayStation 3's online capabilities are up to par with what people expect from a gaming console. Normally, all of this would result in pandemonium for the PlayStation fan base, with PlayStation 2 owners clamoring to get their hands on the new system. The mainstream public would be abuzz with the forthcoming onslaught of media coming from all directions, but that's not quite the case, at least not yet. Most are waiting to see exactly what it is that they're paying for, regardless of which version of the PlayStation 3 they're interested in. Others are waiting to see just how exactly it all works together and if the experience will be worth the price of admission. But there's a whole different way to look at the PlayStation 3, and to prompt you to do that, we only have to ask one question: How much did you pay for that new digital camera?
WHAT'S OLD IS NEW AGAIN
The Controller
A Shocking Evolution
What once looked like a reject from the Chiquita Banana factory is now familiar again. Indeed, the PlayStation 3 controller is essentially a DualShock-style controller, complete with two analog sticks and all of the same buttons. However, now it has an additional button in the center that can be used to power the console off and access the system menu, much like the 360 controllers have. The PS3 controller is also lighter than before--even lighter than the PlayStation 2's DualShock 2 controller. But of course, the most important new feature of the PS3 controller is its motion-sensing capability, which detects six degrees of motion (X, Y, and Z planes as well as pitch, yaw, and roll).
Did Sony Steal The Idea?
A Long Time Coming
The controller seems like it's a pretty blatant rip-off of Nintendo's Wii controller, or at least like a reactionary move to it. But the idea, apparently, has been in the works for quite some time. "It was so secret that people thought we came up with it [right before E3]," Kaz Hirai explains. "But this thing has been in [Ken] Kutaragi's mind for the longest time. Do you remember the original PlayStation controller, the one without the analog sticks? We started there, and then we added the two sticks for the analog controller. Then we added the vibration feature and called it the DualShock controller, and then we came up with the DualShock 2, which had pressure-sensitive buttons."
Hirai continues, "Every time we added some functionality, it was to make the controller be more intuitive, to make it feel like a part of your body, and to make it more realistic in terms of how it interacts with the game. Now we've added the motion sensors, so it's the natural progression of wanting to improve the controller so that it becomes a natural extension of your body. If you see how the controller has evolved, it seems natural, as opposed to 'Hey, look at this.' This didn't come as something that we wanted to do the day of the press conference."
Does It Work?
You Bet It Does
Surprisingly, the controller worked absolutely great with the only game, Incognito's Warhawk, that supports its functionality at the moment. It's also pretty sensitive, with every slight movement affecting the direction of the ship. It's also worth pointing out that it feels pretty natural as well (despite the fact that you initially feel like a complete spaz). But what does Incognito think? "We've been working on the technology for a while, but we weren't sure when it was going to show up in the controller," says Dylan Jobe, producer at Incognito. "We were internally hypothesizing that Sony was going to do something big, so it has to be this. We worked on our physics system to make sure it would be a seamless transition, and then Sony of Japan finally allowed us to be introduced to [the actual controller]. When we finally got our hands on it, there was only about a week and a half [until E3]. It was a really good marriage with Warhawk."
Jobe adds, "Part of the reason why I think people believe you need to make exaggerated movements while using the controller comes from me flailing around onstage [during the E3 press conference]. It's an incredibly precise device, and what we'll end up doing is allowing you to control the sensitivity and acceleration, because some people want really precise controls and others want flailing. We found that the data coming off the sensor gave us more precision than the analog sticks alone, and when we first heard about it, we thought we [were going to have to do a lot of research]. But when we got it, we found that it's completely stand-alone in that it calibrates itself and doesn't have to register with anything. It just automatically works."
A TALE OF TWO SKU's!
SONY CEA President And CEO Kaz Hirai Explains Why You'll Be Seeing Two PlayStation 3s Later This Year
OPM: Can you tell us what the logic is behind the $600 price point?
KAZ HIRAI: There are two configurations. Take a look at what we put into the box, whether it's the Cell processor or the fact that it will play Blu-ray. The fact that it's ready to tackle the HD world in terms of output. The fact that it's ready to go online out of the box. The fact that it's backward compatible with PlayStation and PlayStation 2 hardware. The fact that we have the heritage of providing the depth and breadth of games that are second to none. We always talk about having a 10-year cycle, so this isn't a system that we're going to ask consumers to ditch in three years, four years, or five years. If you put all of that in context, it makes for a great consumer value for everyone.
OPM: Why is one SKU $500 when the differences are the lack of HDMI and the memory slots?
KH: What we wanted to avoid is coming out with a PlayStation 3 that's configured to be bare-bones, because that starts affecting gameplay, and we didn't want to do that. Some of the other platform holders have gone down that path with one unit that doesn't even have a hard drive, and that affects gameplay. Obviously, a hard drive isn't just for downloading stuff--you can cache stuff and get faster loading times as well. Without going into the dangerous area of affecting gameplay, we looked at the functionality and asked: If we're still able to provide the same gameplay, what are some of the features that users can upgrade later on, that they won't need or want from day one? That's where we said the [slots for] removable flash cards, the wireless [online connection], and the HDMI, because most sets don't have HDMI and you can still get 1080p using other connection options, so there's no problem there. That's why we went down that path. I guess we could've said here's a wired controller, but now that we have a motionsensor controller, that would be just wrong.
OPM: Still, that equates to $100?
KH: We don't want the price difference to be $300 or $200, because that's a pretty big gap. It's backing into the price based on what we can offer consumers. We're not just stripping out features. But we're saying that there are consumers that may not even be interested in connecting wirelessly. They may not even have a hot spot in their home. They don't care. We wanted to make sure that at any stage in the life cycle we're giving consumers the option and not forcing stuff on them that they don't even need. I guess it's new in this business, but that's the way it's been done in the PC business forever, with [multiple configurations]. I think the days of having one PlayStation at $299...those days are gone.
OPM: How are you going to convince consumers that $600 is the new magic price point?
KH: The basic approach we'll take is similar to the approach we took with the PlayStation Portable. That it does a lot of fun things, but we don't want to dilute the message. You'll confuse the consumer even more if you go out there and say if it's a multimedia platform. The first thing we need to say is that the PS3 is the best console out there for interactive games. This is the console to have. Behind that, look at all of the other things it can do. That's the way to approach it, and that's what we did with the PSP. Because having gone out there and said this is a great movie player, and by the way it also plays games, we have to ask ourselves: Who are we marketing this to? We have to make sure that we appeal to people who are interested in playing games...I'm not going to say core gamers, but people who want the cutting edge.
OPM: What about people who just want a PlayStation but don't know the technology behind it? Why would they want to pay $600? Is it time to focus on the other abilities?
KH: I'm not saying we're not going to talk about it. We're going to say this is a fantastic gaming machine, and by the way it does all of this other stuff. It's not like you can't ask me about Blu-ray. I point to how we marketed the PlayStation Portable, where we talked about the games primarily but at every opportunity we had we talked about the movies and photos, too. You have to take it in steps. As the demographic becomes wider, you can't shower them with all of this, because they won't get any of it and won't be interested. The type of consumer--you have to differentiate between a first-time gamer who has heard about a PS3 and wants to look at it, and the owners of the PS1 and PS2.
If it's a first-time gamer looking at the price tag, they'll probably say that it's a pretty heavy investment, even if they know what it can do. But if they're not sure if they're ready to jump in, I'd point them right at the PlayStation 2. It's not a console that's going away any time soon. Look how much effort we put into making sure it got the deserved prominence in our booth, and it's backwards compatible with the PS3 so the software investment doesn't go by the wayside. Then they can feel comfortable going with the PS3 three or four years from now.
The people [who] own a PlayStation 2 know that it's a natural progression. [The PS3] does so much more, in addition to playing HD games. The message to them is a bit clearer because they've already been a part of the PlayStation family, so they're already interested in reading about the features and what it can do beyond the PlayStation 2 they bought back in 2001.
DEVELOPER REACTIONS
Is The PS3 The One To Beat?
Hiroshi Kataoka
Producer at Sega (Virtua Fighter 5), on being able to bring an arcade classic home
"From a purely technical standpoint, the arcade Lindbergh hardware uses the Nvidia graphics chip, so it was a fairly easy choice. Graphically, there's always pressure to be on the cutting edge, but we also want to be on the cutting edge of gameplay."
Atsushi Inaba
President of Clover Studio (Okami, Viewtiful Joe), on creating next-gen worlds, and on the controller
"One of the most difficult things about fantasy games is that they require a lot of imagination on the part of developers. Since the nextgeneration consoles are so new, I think that the imaginative power of developers has yet to kick in. In the future, once they come to grips with the hardware and don't necessarily have to worry about how to use the hardware but are simply creating worlds within the hardware, then we'll see more and more creative and original-style games. So if you look at a game like Metal Gear Solid 4, the characters have an incredible sense of being and history to them. They're almost like living people. Even though the game has very realistic graphics, you still have the idea that this game has a world for the player to exist in. A lot of games look very realistic, and as people come to understand the hardware, the more it will open up the creative possibilities of hardware.
"The Wii controller was something that was known, and people were already starting to imagine of what you could do with that controller. The PlayStation conference--seeing that controller and not knowing about it beforehand was just a shock and made me rethink what I thought about the PlayStation 3 and what's possible on the PlayStation 3. It was a jolt to the system. I got the chance to try Warhawk, but my own personal opinion of it is that it's just a tech test showing what can be done with the PlayStation 3 controller. It's not really connected to what's going to make it fun or interesting.
"The most intriguing part of the PlayStation 3, to me, is the power. Sony seems to have built a racing machine with Blu-ray, Cell, and all of these things that are incredibly powerful. But even though it's powerful, there are games that will work well with the machine and games that won't. And going forward, that's something we have to think about-- what game works best for each system."
Hideo Kojima
Head of Kojima Productions (Metal Gear Solid 4), on taking you to the movies
"To refresh your memory, last year I said the PlayStation 3 was a big meal that you have once a year, the 360 was a special meal that you have on weekends, and the Revolution--as it was called at the time-- was your everyday meal. Last year, it was the same family changing meals according to the situation; that was my line on it. Now, the PlayStation 3 is like a movie theater for people who want to see this movie on the big screen with THX and 5.1 audio, even if they have to pay a high price. The Xbox 360 is DVD. It could be a rental DVD or you could buy a DVD. Basically, you don't know what movie you want to see, so you go to the store and see if you can pick up a good one. The Wii is like a TV for when you're home and you don't know what you want to watch but you [want to] have that variety. So I think the three platforms are really distinctive and they mostly don't overlap each other--people who love movies watch TV all the time. We have to be very quick [with what we're doing in terms of games]. We can't wait long to turn on the TV, and also, the programs have to be in all varieties so everyone is satisfied, as opposed to the movie theaters, where everything has to be high spec. People want high emotions. You want to be touched by watching it on the big screen. For DVD, or the 360, you need to have a lot of variety so when people stop by they'll pick up your product. Maybe in the future, you'll see three DVDs for $10."
Dylan Jobe
Producer at Incognito (Warhawk), on Sony's online service
"Sony's not going to charge you. That allows us some freedom. If, hypothetically, Sony was incredibly rigid and you had to pay for everything, then we wouldn't be able to allow gamers to host their own servers or have these more complicated network structures. Sony gives us a lot of freedom in that regard. In Warhawk, you can use a PS3 as a dedicated server. You'll see stats, the map, and all of that, so you can be an administrator."
Dale Jackson
Executive producer at EA Tiburon, on the ease of development
"The PlayStation 3 is a powerful system with a lot of potential. As with all new hardware platforms, we are working hard to fully understand it and tap into that potential. To get the most out of the PlayStation 2, we had to do some very specialized coding, and now the PlayStation 3 will also require very specific code to utilize the graphics hardware and multiple processors. However, with the power of the system and the recently announced motion-sensitive controllers, [the PlayStation 3] will open a lot of design opportunities that, in the past, we could only dream of."
Yannis Mallat
CEO at Ubisoft Montreal (Assassin's Creed) on gameplay
"Everyone at Ubisoft Montreal is really excited about the PS3. The PS1 and the PS2 have revealed true long-term staying power, and we're already amazed with the results we're currently achieving on the PS3--especially with games like Assassin's Creed--almost one year before launch. There is no doubt in our minds that the PS3 will deliver a true next-gen gaming experience in its first year."
Shingo Takatsuka
Producer at Konami (Winning Eleven 2007), on next-gen soccer and multiplayer possibilities
"Each person on our development team will try to improve all the aspects of Winning Eleven for the next generation. It all comes down to development of animation and AI. Obviously, with the next generation, consumers will expect more over-the-top emotions and graphics. But the thing is, what we do with Winning Eleven is focus on realistic gameplay, and our game system has to be solid and every aspect well balanced.
"We're trying to create a multiplayer system for online. You will be able to take individual positions--11-on-11 is the ideal match, [but we can't get there quite yet]. Before we do that, we'd like to provide 4-on-4 or 8-on-8."
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