Sony had a big week at Gamescom in Germany this week, not only revealing a number of new games for players to enjoy, but also reaffirming the PlayStation 4’s success by touting its sales of ten million units worldwide – a number that Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president Jim Ryan is particularly proud of.
However, the system’s sales go beyond just adding unit numbers for Sony. They actually help strengthen the industry in general, according to Ryan. “Having momentum and having that initial success – and it is just initial, there’s a long way to go yet – it puts us in good heart for the future,” he said. “Some of the stuff we touched on yesterday, talking about the future, whether that’s PlayStation Now, whether that’s Morpheus, PlayStation TV in the nearer term – all of these things require investment.
“It’s much easier to make decisions like that from a position of relative success, relative strength, rather than a world where PlayStation 4 was struggling, where our momentum wasn’t great,” he continued. “The money man would be thinking, ‘hmmm, do we really want to put more into this ‘ Those conversations, which are very important for us and very important for the shape of the whole industry, they become easier. That can only be a good thing.”
The road to getting PlayStation 4 to success wasn’t always easy, but Ryan believes that Sony followed a great business model to move it onward. “We’ve always said that PlayStation 4 would be a socially connected console, but that’s dead easy to say and talk is cheap,” he said.
“If you want to position it that way you’ve got to deliver in terms of the feature set. And at a very high level, taking that approach and being true to the promise – which we haven’t always done – that must prevail over cannibalization of sales. Ultimately, that is a narrow tactical consideration,” he concluded.
Sony should have no trouble cleaning up over this forthcoming holiday season, especially with better stocking of the system for interested parties.
Source: GamesIndustry International
