Jack Tretton, the CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, had made headlines earlier this month when he said that the launch of Sony’s new portable gaming console, the NGP, could be delayed due to the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan. While Sony later dismissed that assertion, the executive has once again made a controversial statement in the media when he voiced some scathing comments about the competition to his company. During an interview, Tretton made some blunt assessments of the DS line of consoles produced by Nintendo, which he refers to as the Game Boy experience. He was heard saying that Sony viewed the Game Boy experience as a great babysitting tool which is something which only pertains to young children and people above a certain age group will not want to play with them.
He also had some choice words to say about the Wii and Xbox 360 gaming consoles manufactured by Nintendo and Microsoft respectively, saying that they were starting to become irrelevant with passing time citing the lack of hard disks and inaccurate motion gaming as the big problems with them.
He then went on to praise the platforms created by his company. He said that the PlayStation 3 was the most cutting edge console as far as technology involved is concerned and also that this is the way gaming consoles should be made if they want it to be sustainable for a long time. According to him, the PS3 was just hitting its stride and this was only made possible because the technology it used when it was launched four years ago was very much ahead of its time. He also talked about the 3D technology, saying that it was difficult for people to conceptually grasp it unless they are provided with some relevant content to experience it first hand.
Rian Quenlin
In all honesty, it doesn’t really matter to me how many polygons a console can render. The difference between the PS2 and the PS3 is minimal when online play is discounted. Now, the DS added an extra screen, wireless multiplayer, and a touch screen. The wii brought motion controls to the console game as well.
Yes, the PS3 and 360 are extremely powerful pieces of hardware, but they add very little innovation, so he’s full of it. Except on the hard disk note, that’s a very impressive change to gaming. No loading times? Yes please!