Jack Tretton reveals bullish numbers for Sony
An interview with GameDaily BIZ reveals optimism for SCEA Executive VP Jack Tretton. While many find it easy to criticize Sony's moves as of late, there's no denying that press attitudes and reality may differ greatly. For example, according internal sell-through data, the PSP is a much faster success than the original PS1: 18 months after launch of each system, the PSP sold 5.30 million units in America compared to the PS1's 3.48 million.
"We really feel we carved out new territory [with the PS1] and then we built upon that with the PS2. The parallel that we draw to the PSP is that it is exactly the same to portable gaming to what the PlayStation was to console gaming, that we are carving this new road out and we are selling again to 20-something consumers that were not fans of portable entertainment, were not playing Game Boys because the technology and the software offerings just weren't appealing to them... And now because of the technology in PSP and the game offerings it appeals to them and that same consumer we carved out with the PlayStation is now being carved out with the PSP at an even much greater rate than we did with the original PlayStation"
The executive rightly questions whether or not Nintendo is truly "expanding" the market. He suggests that most DS owners have owned a Game Boy Advance in the past. The PSP can appeal to a wider demographic, considering how gamers are getting older and demand more mature games and multimedia functions out of their handhelds. He questions that older gamers would want Brain Age over a PSP: "I would tell you for a fact that there are much more people in their 50s and 60s playing PlayStation platforms in terms of console, than there are playing Nintendo platforms."
[Via Joystiq]
