SCEA president promises content that will "showcase what the PS3 can do"

Chicago (IL) - Jack Tretton, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), has answered some of the criticism that has hit Sony’s latest game console. He justified the high price tag by the PS3’s advanced technology and said that the firm will work "tirelessly" to "proof "[the console’s] value".

Given the amount of criticism that was published about the PS3, Sony has remained fairly quiet and has provided very few answers. What we know about the PS3 is that, so far, it is lagging its competitors in terms of market penetration and appears to be losing ground going forward. According to the latest information, the company sold about 5.5 million units until March 31 of this year, well behind the numbers of the (substantially cheaper) Nintendo Wii, which sold more than 7.6 million units, if webelieve the numbers published by NexGen wars.

Taking advantage of a newly created company blog, Jack Tretton now justified some of Sony’s strategic moves, indicating that there won’t be any significant changes to the PS3 strategy anytime soon. Pricing of the console ($600 for the 60 GB model) remains an issue for gamers, but the executive believes it was the right decision to put high-end hardware into the system : "We could have easily produced PlayStation 2.5 at a slightly increased price over the older model, and driven some nice profits and marginal innovation for a few years but that’s not how we got where we are today. You have to gamble and make major investments in the present that will pay dividends in the future," he wrote.

Capable hardware, he believes, is key to content that will help Sony to differentiate itself from its competitors : "To push the boundaries of gaming beyond where they currently lie takes a great deal of risk. I think all the hardware manufacturers are doing that in some way."

However, success comes with available content and games. To a certain degree, Tretton conceded that Sony hasn’t quite delivered on the PS3s promise yet : "We have to bring the games to market that will showcase what the PS3 can do and ultimately entertain you like no other games have. We need to provide proof of what the PS3 can do for you and work tirelessly to improve the value and justify your investment. At the end of the day, it’s always been about the games."
 
By year end, Tretton said, there will be more than 100 games available for the PS3, including 15 titles from Sony’s own development studios. Similar to the way Nintendo and Microsoft are pushing their online stores, Tretton pointed to the Playstation Store as a content source as well : "Right now, we are working on a slew of games and game packs that will be offered through the Playstation Store in the coming months, including Warhawk."