The Sony boss on learning from PSP and taking on the iPad.
[by Edge Staff]
Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Computer Entertainment’s Worldwide Studios, is a veteran of the company he joined in 1986. He was also one of the people behind the PlayStation project that began in 1993 with later roles in thirdparty licensing and the initiation of SCE’s internal product development team. At a slick London hands-on event we sat down with Yoshida to find out what NGP brings to handheld gaming, and why portable isn’t always preferable.
What lessons were learned from the PSP? What didn’t PSP achieve that NGP can?
Throughout the development process of NGP, obviously we looked at what worked with PSP and what didn’t. We were almost too happy with PSP’s core capabilities; CPU, GPU and the 4-inch display. At that time it was the largest display you could find on a portable [gaming] device, with very beautiful graphics capabilities. We were too happy having PS2 quality-games on the Go, and we didn’t go much further. We had Wi-Fi capabilities with PSP which was very fast, and some experiences like Monster Hunter were created using Wi-Fi, but other than that it was very hard for developers to create a unique experience on PSP that you couldn’t get on a console like PS2.
After PS3 came out, people got used to looking at PS3-quality graphics. So just having nice graphics is not enough; people prefer playing on a large screen at home. That was the biggest lesson we learned in designing NGP – of course we advanced the CPU and GPU again, and developed the 5-inch OLED, but I’m sure in a couple of years people will get used to seeing it, so if we stop there we’ll make the same mistake we did on PSP. So what we made sure was to bring enough new hooks on NGP so that we can continue to create unique gaming experiences that you cannot get on consoless. Touch capability on both front and back, AR, sensors, social connectivity: these features will challenge NGP developers’ ability to create longer than PSP [did].
Touchscreens are something mobile phones have made great use of in the past few years – did you consider a phone component to NGP?
Yeah, at the very beginning of NGP development we looked at options – what did we want in terms of voice capabilities? What we decided was, yes, we want 3G but having [cellular] voice will limit us in terms of designing the gaming experience. For example the 5-inch OLED screen – you wouldn’t have a 5-inch screen on a smart- or cell- phone, it wouldn’t fit in your pocket. But 3G allows you to connect to the gaming community all the time.
We really love the features of social network games like on Facebook – always connected and easy to challenge friends and see what they’re doing. We wanted to bring those social network features to our gaming. So we decided let’s have 3G but no [cellular] voice – we don’t need it. For game communication like voice-chat we don’t need cellular voice, we can always go over IP. So [we’re] retaining that capability of voice communication through games and having 3G as an option – because it’s going to be too expensive for some consumers to pay for communications in addition to the content.
You acknowledge a 5-inch OLED wouldn’t fit in your pocket – is portability less important to Sony for a handheld gaming system?
That’s another thing we debated heavily internally. Some of us wanted smaller, some larger – it’s a trade-off. With PSP Go, we focussed too much on making the hardware smaller and thinner so that it could fit in your pocket. That made all the UIs cramped, we had to make the buttons thinner – it didn’t feel as good. Also, you wouldn’t want to pay a premium price for a smaller screen. So we went for a large screen with NGP because – looking at how people are adapting to smartphones – in a couple of years everybody will have one, and everybody will have the opportunity to play downloaded application games. So we have to create enough strong reasons for people to look at NGP in addition to the smartphone they already have.
Don’t you see smartphones as competition, then?
Is 3DS competition?
Not necessarily. We had DS when there was PSP, it overlaps a little bit but not directly in terms of audience and kind of content we provide. In regards to competition with smartphones – we are not trying to compete with smartphones, we can’t. So the question is, considering people have phones anyway, why would they want another device? Looking at the adoption of the iPad and other tablets, if there are enough reasons, people dowant another device. People might carry NGP with them or use it at home – that’s ok. NGP – like PSP was – is your second screen. The portability is very good; not for putting in your pocket, but it can fit in your bag easily as it’s smaller and lighter than an iPad.
Did the PSN hacking problems affect your online plan for NGP?
No it hasn’t changed it at all. It came as a surprise and shock to us but we’re not directly in the operation of PSN. But not just PlayStation, you’re aware the whole Sony consumer electronics strategy is based around the network services, as a connecting tissue across different devices. That’s how Kaz [Hirai] is now in charge of all the Sony electronics business groups, in addition to PlayStation group. So if anything this incident with PSN made us invest more in the infrastructure and management of network services so that we can achieve the goal of providing robust online services that connect across different devices.
PSP was pitched as a multimedia device when it was introduced, NGP seems to be more about the games – is that the case?
What we have not been talking about are the other capabilities of NGP. We are developing the media and network capabilities. We are working with some online service providers to bring their services onto NGP and that’s what we consider people will expect: to have multiple capabilities on one device. We talked about the comparison with smartphones – they already do these things as well. Our goal is to set up NGP as the must-have device, so we have to focus communications on what’s unique to NGP rather than functionality you can do on both NGP and smartphones. But because NGP has the 5-inch OLED screen, the video capability is great; some web-browsing and social networking is easier. As we move towards launch we’ll be talking about these capabilities as well.
How does NGP fit in to and/or spearhead the Play Create Share software development ethos?
Play Create Share inspired lots of our developers. [We’re] not necessarily pushing down from the top that ‘you must do Play Create Share’, but people find new ways to provide consumers with creativity. With NGP’s touchscreen it’s so natural to draw something on the screen so the creation on NGP will be great in itself, as well as if we are able to provide some way to connect NGP to PS3.
What’s your stance on stereoscopic 3D?
Our studio worked very closely with hardware groups to design NGP, so we looked at every single component in terms of choices of display. We could have had 3D stereoscopic display instead of a 5-inch OLED – there’s pros and cons – and obviously we decided to go with the latter. But we knew that those [3D] display technologies would advance every day, every month. And especially the naked-eye stereoscopic technologies – it’s such an early technology, that’s going to advance very quickly and people will see it adapted in tablets and smartphones. Our decision was based on what it we’re trying to create in terms of robust gaming experience, without the additional cost of goods to provide the naked-eye stereoscopic 3D. So never-say-never for the future, but for the launch of NGP our choices were based on what we believe the best choice was for us.
So a future iteration of NGP with stereoscopic 3D?
Never-say-never! 3D is a big effort on the console side, we work with the Bravia team. The technique to use stereoscopic 3D by console developers is getting better and better. So as the content providers get familiar with 3D, I hope more people see the value in that… for consoles [laughs].
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