via Computer and Video Games


Speaking in an interview with Net-Gen, Sony's world wide studios boss Phil Harrison has spoken about the success of Wii and how it's taken many by surprise, including himself.

When asked if he was surprised by its success, Harrison replied, "Yeah, I don't remember reading anybody's analysis that called this route two years ago or even a year ago to 18 months ago, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. We work in an entertainment business, basically, and entertainment has elements of fashion, and it has elements of the latest cool thing.

"If that stimulates interest in the videogame business and causes more people to play games, causes more people to go into retail stores and buy games, causes retailers to dedicate more shelf space to the category, and causes game developers and publishers to have a better macroeconomic foundation for their business, that's a win-win for everybody, best of all for the end consumer. It's a virtuous cycle."

When asked if he could equally recognise the success that Microsoft has had, Harrison said, "It would be churlish to try and suggest that you would wish ill on any company, because as I said, if the business has got a lot of momentum and it's aggressively acquiring new users, new forms of creativity are being accepted in the marketplace and the kind of games that we can make as creators gets wider, that's a great thing from a game designer point of view, from a game creating organization.

"That's incredibly empowering because it means that people's minds are more open to new challenges. In the 16-bit and the 8-bit era on 8-bit Nintendo and 16-bit Genesis and Nintendo, it was all about 2D platformers, some sports and that was it. And that's a pretty boring place to be."

Read the full interview from TGS here.