Ray Maguire: Yes: that’s with the fours USB ports, the memory card slots and backwards-compatibility.
SPOnG: Is the 40Gb PS3 backwards-compatible with PlayStation One games?
Ray Maguire: Yes. When we launched, we said we would focus on forward production than backwards-compatibility, but there was more of a need for backwards-compatibility six months ago. So, from here on in, there are no plans for backwards-compatibility in PlayStation products.
SPOnG: Was this price-cut eased by the recent Sony Japan IPO?
Ray Maguire: I can’t really comment on that, because I don’t know about the internal workings of what they did with that finance.
SPOnG: So it’s purely a UK initiative?
Ray Maguire: This is a PAL territories initiative, so it’s European, although I have to say our 60Gb offering is UK-only.
SPOnG: Obviously that puts you in much better shape for the Christmas market. Have you revised your targets regarding how many PS3s you want to sell?
Ray Maguire: Clearly there will be an uplift in sales as more people gain entry to the PlayStation 3. There’s no uplift in our forecast, as we forecast this many months ago, and it’s been three months in production, so you can see how far ahead we have to plan to bring these things to market. But the most exciting thing here is that people now have a choice of how to get into the marketplace: I think £299 is a great price-point for the world’s most powerful high-def gaming machine and Blu-ray movie player.
SPOnG: Recently, the PS3 and Xbox 360 have been pretty neck and neck, until Halo 3 came out, and the Xbox 360 had a sales spike. Are you looking to outsell the Xbox 360 for the rest of the year?
Ray Maguire: Obviously, there was a big price differential between us and our competition, and that has now been eroded. With that, and looking at price elasticity, one would expect us to start outperforming them, yes.
SPOnG: What are the heaviest-hitting first-party titles you’re lining up for Christmas?
Ray Maguire: For me, the most exciting are Ratchet & Clank and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. One because these products are starting to become more cinematic and story-based. And then as far as Ratchet is concerned, I think the environments are just absolutely glorious, and start to show what you can do when you tap some of the Cell chip’s power. Because we only have to focus on the PS3, I think we can be a little bit more pure in how we produce our games. I think you’ll see another example of that in Killzone next year and in GT5. I think that transition starts now.
We had a great start with MotorStorm and Resistance: Fall of Man, but then it seemed that we went back a bit, as we were looking at people who had already developed on other platforms. Now, I think we start to stand up again, with some of our first-party games and some of the third-parties who are starting to make the change to focusing on PlayStation 3. Giving an installed base over Christmas will help that investment – will help those people commit the amount of money that’s required for PlayStation 3 development.