Just read the interview from Cnet:
The PlayStation 4 has become one of the biggest-selling consoles in history. How do you match that with your next-gen console?
This transition is probably gonna be more interesting than any other we've seen in the past. We obviously have one recently announced new entrant into the gaming space [Google] and the possibility of more to come.
So the landscape is changing fast. If we simply kinda lean back on the world that we've known for the past 25 years, we're at grave risk of having events around us overtake us. So we have to show an open-mindedness and a desire to do things to an extent that we haven't had to in the past.
One manifestation of that is the memorandum of understanding signed with Microsoft. Which is a kind of wide ranging MOU that covers a number of areas of collaboration between Sony and Microsoft. One of the main ones is cloud gaming.
The world's changing very fast and in a very interesting way.
We have a cloud gaming service right now, and we've added on it for a number of years. I think maybe we've been a bit guilty of not talking about it enough. Now we're in 19 countries, we have 170 publishers on board, 780 games in the States. We've actually achieved a lot, and probably a lot more than people realize. And our intent is to build on those learnings and really look to try to take PlayStation Now to the next level later this year and then in the years to come.
When you talk about having the events of the world overtake you, are you talking about a console-less world? What's in your mind when you say that?
Who knows what the world looks like in five years' time? When you've got these big, very large companies coming into your space, I think simply viewing the world in the terms you viewed it in the past 25 years, with the competition you've had over the past 25 years, is probably not a very sensible approach to take.
We, through our actions and recent announcements, believe that there is a great market for next generation console. But it's not binary. It's not like, in three weeks' time or three years' time, the console world stops, and a console-less world -- however that may look -- will suddenly take over.
Any transition will be steady and gradual. I've built PlayStation businesses all around the world. I can tell you about the infrastructure in some of the parts of the world where we have very, very large businesses, and they will not be conducive to, you know, an entirely streaming model for years and years and years.
When we get to the console-less world, I'm going to be playing with brands, right? I'll decide I'm in the PlayStation brand world, and that's how I'll play my games. And it'll be roughly the same games, with the exception of exclusives, that I can get in the Xbox world or the Stadia world. Is that far off from the way you see it?
It's a little bit of a simplification but you're not far off. It goes back to these three points, our enduring strengths -- exclusive games, the brand and the community we have, who we're very humbled by the trust of the level of engagement they have with us.
As long as we treat them properly and with the love and respect they deserve -- and that probably sounds trite coming from a businessman, but we actually believe in this stuff -- that will serve us very well.
Is this the last console? Everyone always talks about it, and there's this sense that it is, but I'm curious what you think.
What I think is: I actually don't know. I've been around a while, and I sat there in 2012 and listened to all sorts of smart people tell me about mobile and that the PlayStation 4 was going to be the most terrible failure ever.
The logic was actually hard to fault. But we believed in that product then, we believe in this next generation product now. Who knows how it might evolve? Hybrid models between console and some sort of cloud model? Possibly that. I just don't know. And if I did know, I wouldn't tell you.
The PlayStation 4 has become one of the biggest-selling consoles in history. How do you match that with your next-gen console?
This transition is probably gonna be more interesting than any other we've seen in the past. We obviously have one recently announced new entrant into the gaming space [Google] and the possibility of more to come.
So the landscape is changing fast. If we simply kinda lean back on the world that we've known for the past 25 years, we're at grave risk of having events around us overtake us. So we have to show an open-mindedness and a desire to do things to an extent that we haven't had to in the past.
One manifestation of that is the memorandum of understanding signed with Microsoft. Which is a kind of wide ranging MOU that covers a number of areas of collaboration between Sony and Microsoft. One of the main ones is cloud gaming.
The world's changing very fast and in a very interesting way.
We have a cloud gaming service right now, and we've added on it for a number of years. I think maybe we've been a bit guilty of not talking about it enough. Now we're in 19 countries, we have 170 publishers on board, 780 games in the States. We've actually achieved a lot, and probably a lot more than people realize. And our intent is to build on those learnings and really look to try to take PlayStation Now to the next level later this year and then in the years to come.
When you talk about having the events of the world overtake you, are you talking about a console-less world? What's in your mind when you say that?
Who knows what the world looks like in five years' time? When you've got these big, very large companies coming into your space, I think simply viewing the world in the terms you viewed it in the past 25 years, with the competition you've had over the past 25 years, is probably not a very sensible approach to take.
We, through our actions and recent announcements, believe that there is a great market for next generation console. But it's not binary. It's not like, in three weeks' time or three years' time, the console world stops, and a console-less world -- however that may look -- will suddenly take over.
Any transition will be steady and gradual. I've built PlayStation businesses all around the world. I can tell you about the infrastructure in some of the parts of the world where we have very, very large businesses, and they will not be conducive to, you know, an entirely streaming model for years and years and years.
When we get to the console-less world, I'm going to be playing with brands, right? I'll decide I'm in the PlayStation brand world, and that's how I'll play my games. And it'll be roughly the same games, with the exception of exclusives, that I can get in the Xbox world or the Stadia world. Is that far off from the way you see it?
It's a little bit of a simplification but you're not far off. It goes back to these three points, our enduring strengths -- exclusive games, the brand and the community we have, who we're very humbled by the trust of the level of engagement they have with us.
As long as we treat them properly and with the love and respect they deserve -- and that probably sounds trite coming from a businessman, but we actually believe in this stuff -- that will serve us very well.
Is this the last console? Everyone always talks about it, and there's this sense that it is, but I'm curious what you think.
What I think is: I actually don't know. I've been around a while, and I sat there in 2012 and listened to all sorts of smart people tell me about mobile and that the PlayStation 4 was going to be the most terrible failure ever.
The logic was actually hard to fault. But we believed in that product then, we believe in this next generation product now. Who knows how it might evolve? Hybrid models between console and some sort of cloud model? Possibly that. I just don't know. And if I did know, I wouldn't tell you.
