PlayStation 3 and the 10-Year Console Cycle

Jack Tretton, President of SCEA, recently spoke with Fast Company’s Kevin Ohannessian, discussing PlayStation 3 as well as Sony’s 10-year console cycle. Most of the interview is the usual Sony rigamarole: Tretton defended PlayStation 3’s pricing with talk of longevity, and championed the PS3’s multi-faceted design as a DVD player, Blu-ray player, and gaming platform for both disc-based and digital content.

For the most part, the interview is rather boring.

But Jack Tretton did manage to say something that had me nodding my head in approval. In fact, what he said is the kind of slip of honesty that compels me to believe in a company. When Ohannessian asked Tretton about measuring the effectiveness of a game, Tretton responded:

“[I]t 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.”

Thank you, Jack Tretton, for basically saying The Last Guardian is a work of art that cannot be quantified by units shipped and sales numbers. Having Fumito Ueda and Team Ico innovate on your console, and your console alone, really is a major bullet point. They deserve such acknowledgment. What’s more, promoting this sort of innovation on your console is what will inevitably drive me to purchase one. Price point be damned!