Sure, Jack Tretton was all fun and
games (pun totally intended) at this year’s SCEA E3 Press Conference,
but being pissed in front of several hundred journalists wouldn’t
serve any good purpose. In a recent interview with CNBC, Tretton, the
CEO and president of SCEA, expressed major disappointment in the fact
that many of Sony’s big E3 announcements got leaked beforehand. The
PSP Go!, the PS3 Motion Controller, Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker
(the newest MGS for the PSP) and Gran Turismo (also for the PSP, and
it should be noted that it had already been announced at the 2004 E3)
were all leaked before the conference. The PS3 Slim, which is coming
out later this year, was not announced at E3, has also been leaked.
I’m surprised any of you guys showed
up, joked Tretton at the press conference, regarding to the fact
that the big secrets had been leaked out. During the CNBC interview,
however, Tretton took a different route regarding the leaks stating,
People dont respect confidentiality in this industry, its
tough enough to keep a secret within your own company, much less when
you speak to third parties. While it’s unknown who the leaker
inside SCEA is, he or she can be assured that Tretton wants to eat
their children. This is an industry that has trouble focusing on
today. We want to constantly talk about tomorrow, you have to prepare
for people to know things in advance. The frustrating thing is they
only know a part of the story and that opens up a lot of conjecture
and misinformation that ultimately waters down the reality when you
roll it out, he went on to say.
It’s 100% true. Talk of a new console
starts as soon as the next console gets released. I remember the
XBOX360 launch and while speaking with people camping out in the
lines, I spoke with several people who wanted to know what is next,
and more importantly, what will it be called (my vote is for XBOX 4,
and though I know it’s not the 4th system, the next
logical number above 360 is 4 -not 720- and it will most likely go up
against Sony’s PlayStation 4). The same conversation occurred during
the PS3 launch.
In an industry that’s all about
sequels, it’d be hard not to think of the future. More people look
forward to the next Modern Warfare, GTA, Madden, etc than they do the
next new fresh IP like Brink or The Conduit. While leaks of massive
proportions don’t really affect the software side of games as much as
the hardware side, both suffer immensely. Games like Gears of War 2
and Fallout 3 leaked over the internet over a month before they where
scheduled to be released. Most recently, Prototype, Red Faction
Guerilla, and Terminator Salvation all leaked about a week before
their retail release. It’s certainly not as devastating for a game to
release early as a system is (although the street date is enforced
much more on systems than games), it still affects the industry.
The leak of the PS3 slim, while
unacknowledged by Tretton (and for that matter anybody at SCEA)
during E3, while not as shocking as the PSP Go!, certainly troubles
SCEA. “I’d love to live in a world with fewer leaks and more
meat,” said John Koller, director of Hardware Marketing, when
asked DIRECTLY about the PS3 Slim to Ars Technica. While it certainly
doesn’t confirm anything it’s interesting that he didn’t flat out
deny the existence of such a machine, and referred it to a leak
as opposed to a rumor. It should also be noted that the same
person that leaked the now-confirmed PSP Go information is the same
person that leaked the PS3 Slim information.
Before E3, the informant said
that the PSP Go would be revealed at E3 but the PS3 slim would not.
Why? You might ask, the reason is fairly simple. Announcing a new PS3
sku would be suicide right now if you consider their goal to be
selling most of the current model PS3s before putting the slim on the
shelves. Who would buy an 80gb PS3 large when they know a slim
120gb PS3 will come out in August or September (dates pending) for
the same or lower price?
It was a different story with the PSP
Go, more importantly because they are not replacing the PSP-3000 with
the Go, but are selling both side by side. If the Go were to replace
the 3000, I’m sure we wouldn’t have heard anything until the current
amount of PSP-3000’s on the shelves were a bit drier than they are
now.
With more and more sources supporting
the existence of the PS3 slim (The BBC to be the most recent to jump
on the bandwagon with the statement The new PS3 model will be out
later this year, BBC News understands. It should also be noted
that the BBC is owned and operated by the UK government, who wouldn’t
really post such news on a rumor), it will certainly be interesting
to see how this leak affects sales. So what do you think?