IGN:s Ryan McCaffrey träffar tidigare PlayStation-chefen Jack Tretton i ett mycket intressant samtal om hur det var att kliva in hos Sony när PlayStation slog igenom, vad som gjorde PlayStation 2 så oerhört framgångsrik och inte minst hur det var att lansera PlayStation 3 till det facila priset av 599 dollar.
PS3 är intressant eftersom den bröt ett decennium av fullständig dominans från Sonys sida. Genom att begå en rad misstag bjöd Sony in både Nintendo och Microsoft i leken.
Tretton hade just blivit CEO några månader före lanseringen, vilket han beskriver så här:
That period of PlayStation 2 to PlayStation 3 was the most intense period of my career, at least at Sony. Tremendous success with PlayStation 2, I think at one point 60+, 70+ per cent marketshare on a worldwide basis, just the most successful platform in history. How do you follow that up?
The easy thing to do would’ve been to have done a PlayStation 2,5 […] but PlayStation 3 was really stepping out of the box. Ultimately it delivered a lot of great technology that is appreciated today, but at the time because of the Cell processor and all the proprietary technology it was difficult to develop for, it was difficult to manufacture, it was extremely expensive to manufacture.
So at the price it came out at everybody knew that wasn’t a consumer friendly price, and amazingly that was losing a lot of money for Sony even at that price. It was quite possibly the most difficult launch scenario you could ever imagine. Knowing that [Xbox] 360 was already out, that you were much more expensive that you wanted to be, that you had much less inventory than you wanted to have at launch and that it was going to be a learning curve in terms of software development, in terms of manufacturing efficiencies… just a lot of real challenges there.
And that was about within 30 to 60 days of me being appointed CEO so it’s being made captain of the Titanic just before it hit the iceberg. It was not the ideal time to take over.
Onekligen. Se hela intervjun nedan.