Harrison: 'PS3 problems will pale into zero'
Sony's worldwide studios boss Phil Harrison has gone on the record about his views of the PlayStation 3, concluding that the inclusion of Blu-ray may be stretching Sony too far.
In an interview with semi-official blog ThreeSpeech.com, Big Phil revealed what we've all been thinking: that Sony may have bitten off more than it can chew with the Blu-ray format. He stated "we have overreached in production of the blu-ray component - I can't deny that. But that's the price you pay for adopting brand new, leading-edge technologies that will be future proof. We will resolve those issues - we are already catching up. We will continue to catch up on the production, and as you know, we haven't changed our full-year forecast of six million units, so we're only talking about a ramp-up issue."
Harrison also addressed the last-minute inclusion of HDMI on the 20GB version of the PS3. He admitted that "the reason for the change was in reaction to a market trend, which is that much more displays are being sold with HDMI, earlier, than had been previously forecast."
He even had an answer for those of you wondering how such a change to the machine specifications can be made so close to launch time. "The criticial question," he says, "is not 'when do you start manufacturing', but 'when do you start assembly'. The HDMI port - whether it's enabled or not on the machine is an assembly issue, not a manufacturing issue. The parts have been procured, clearly, in anticipation of this announcement. It's not like we're going to make a decision of that magnitude and then call up our suppliers and say, 'oh, can we have a few more HDMI ports?' Clearly this had been well planned."
This trouble with machine production has been a constant source of Sony-bashing, with Harrison admitting that "there's no denying that we've had some very public challenges. Today, it looks like a very difficult situation - but in the weeks, months and years to come, this will pale into zero."
Bold words from Mr. Harrison, but time will tell whether Sony's bold new console will rise out of the quagmire of criticism that it has found itself in recently.
