HARRISON: "PLAYSTATION IS THE DIFFERENCE"

What's the biggest difference between Sony's PlayStation Network Platform and Microsoft's Xbox Live and Nintendo's online initiatives? The fact that it's on PlayStation, according to Sony Computer Entertainment's president of Worldwide Studios, Phil Harrison.
Giving this "really soundbitey" answer - more like dropping an ego bombshell - in an interview with Next-Gen.biz during discussion on competition in the online space, Harrison bragged how Sony's penetration of the entertainment world provides its online guns with plenty of high explosive ammo. "We are a 100 million, 200 million unit company. We are the pre-eminent brand for interactive entertainment worldwide. We have a reach and a market share that dwarfs our competition," he stated.

However, Harrison admitted that the US is a tough battleground in the Sony versus Microsoft war, saying the latter company is "definitely a more vigorous competitor here than anywhere else in the world" - but added that "in some countries PlayStation is the videogame business."
"The fact that PlayStation is making this push is the biggest differentiating factor," Harrison continued during talk on PNP. "The second one is that the basic service is free. We're taking what we did on PlayStation 2 where online gaming is free, so why should we suddenly charge for it on PlayStation 3? Although, clearly, we are going to have premium offerings where you can pay to download content."

He added: "The other one is that - and I don't want to acknowledge too much one of our competitors - but by calling it Xbox Live Arcade it pretty much tells you what it does on the tin. Whereas we're going to be much more entertainment-based, much wider - music and movies and games and other forms of digital entertainment and so hopefully it will be more impactful to a mass market."

During the interview, Harrison also confirmed that that the business model for digital distribution over PlayStation 3 is now in place "in the big picture", as he termed it - "There are obviously some details and some contractual relationships, we have to dot Is and cross Ts" - and additionally touched on how technology could extend PS3's lifecycle:

"You've seen with PlayStation Portable how a hardware platform can grow through operating system upgrades and although we have not gone into specifics you can assume we'll follow a similar strategy for PlayStation 3.

"It's a static device from hardware point of view but it's a dynamic platform, from a software point of view. That is something we couldn't do on PS2 or PS1 so I think that will absolutely lengthen the lifecycle of the future assuming that the consumer finds those offerings compelling and I think they will," Harrison concluded.