In an interview with Gamespot today, Kaz Hirai discussed the PS3 launch, the PSP, E3 and more.
After re-affirming that Sony is looking to November 17th for the PS3 launch in the US, North American Sony Computer Entertainment President, Kaz Hirai went on to discuss the PS3ās manufacturing status. āWe havenāt started manufacturing yet. Some of our ops guys were actually just in China, and also in Japan just reviewing the [production] lines and everything else. But they are, again, preparing as we speak to get the manufacturing going. Weāve not announced and we havenāt set really a specific date to say: āAs of this day weāre going to start manufacturing.'ā
Hirai went on to confirm that the PlayStation Network Platform (PNP) will be launching alongside the console to compete with Microsoftās Xbox Live. When asked for more details on the service, he said, āWeāre not ready to announce exactly the service features of the online service just yet. But, I think I talked about this at the E3 press conference as well, as far as weāre concernedāonline, offline, it doesnāt really matter. Itās basically another form of delivering entertainment. Some things are better done offline. Some things are better done online. Itās really not a differentiating factor to basically put all of our eggs in the online basket, because I donāt think it makes a whole lot of sense at this point in time. So itās basically just a matter of balancing the twoāthat has always been our strategy, as opposed to basically putting all of our eggs in the online basket.ā
The potential for a PSP price drop and re-design has been floating around the net for some time. Hirai stands by the system, stating that there will not be a price drop or a new version of the portable anytime soon. āI think we cleared 20 million units worldwide within the first what, about 18 months or so. And in the US, weāve already cleared 5.2 million. Again, itās only been in the market a year and five months, so weāre obviously very happy with the technology weāve packed into the current PSP, and we donāt have any plans to redesign the PSP at this point in time,ā he said.
Read the full Gamespot interview here.
Published: Aug 19, 2006 1:23 AM UTC