"I'd love to flashback to 2006 and bring people forward to 2010 and say, 'Now what do you think about Blu-ray? About the technology?'" Tretton told Fast Company.

"We've just passed the third year of the PlayStation 3 and we're just hitting our stride. And I don't think anyone is saying, 'This is a five-year cycle; what's new on the horizon?'

"I can't even imagine what can be done technically beyond the PlayStation 3 in the near future.

"A question I often get is when we are going to see PlayStation 4. When somebody can craft the technology that exceeds what we're able to do on the PS3, but we are still just starting to harness it."

"We introduced motion gaming with the EyeToy for PlayStation 2. It was an incredible experience," he said.

"But it was somewhat limited in terms of the type of gaming experiences..."

"You have to tip your hat to Nintendo for introducing the motion gaming using their controllers, doing it in a more social fashion. I'm not an expert on Microsoft's technology, but we all know that it was not homegrown. It's certainly technology that we worked with before. We had the experience with the PS2 and EyeToy."

"We're able to take advantage of the camera, take advantage of the ability to identity yourself in 3D space, but then have controls in hand to do things like shooting and swinging an object, and much more accurately than ever done before," he said.

"You can have it as an element of a game, you can do it as a dedicated game, you can do it in a social gaming atmosphere. There is no game where you say, 'Our control isn't going to apply there.'"

• Disc 1: 5.9GB
• Disc 2: 5.8GB
• Disc 3: 6.6GB

Hi folks, this is just to let you know that the issues reported in this thread and elsewhere are being looked into. We're currently trying to establish any common factors for people who are experiencing game freezing so if you are having trouble please be as thorough as possible with regards to your PS3 setup - are you using a launch version of the console or a brand new slim, playing in standard or high definition (I'm not suggesting that these are potential causes, just making the point)... any information you can give may help to find where the issue lies.

One word of advice we've had already is to avoid switching off your PlayStation while the game is in black screen as this may be affecting your save game. There have been a few reports of incidents where game saves have taken longer than would normally be expected - and with a black screen present it may leave the assumption that the game has crashed. In these circumstances we recommend you wait at least 5 minutes before rebooting - while it's highly unlikely a save will take this long, it's better to be safe than sorry.

While incidents of problems with the game are very low we're working to ensure that everyone gets the Heavy Rain experience they expect. As soon as there is any further information we'll update further.

Thanks for the responses so for, I'll pass these on to the right people to help in establishing potential causes for these issues. Obviously I'll keep you up to date with all further information that comes along, and please do continue to post any findings you have and I'll make sure the team are informed.

One other thing to try, that I mention purely because I've seen it happen in another game, is to try removing any peripherals to have assigned to your PS3 - Blu-ray remotes, Buzz! controllers, guitar controllers etc - while it's unlikely that this is the cause I'm keen to rule out the obvious to begin with.

"We've had another team internally [other than those making Reach] for quite a while now - they've been working on the genesis of what will become our next big thing.

"It's a little premature to get into specifics, but you know I think we have a really good mix of old blood and new blood in the studio."