Kaz Kuts To The Kwick
Sony prez Kaz Hirai got himself eight kinds of interviewed at CES this week, speaking of course about Blu-ray and PS3, as well as some defensive PR work shoring up Sony’s rather tarnished image as the leader in gaming horsepower:
“I have heard many people say our competitors’ systems are just as powerful as the PS3. That simply is not true… No other next generation entertainment system pushes the envelope on advanced technology like PS3.”
Kaz tied Blu-ray technology into his PS3 defensive argument, which does after all hold some water (he said “pushes the envelope,” not “pushes the envelope and succeeds;” that part is still unfinished business):
“I have heard people say that a high-capacity game delivery vehicle like Blu-ray isn’t necessary in a next generation computer entertainment system. You just can’t expect that 9GBs of storage capacity found on today’s DVDs are going to have enough space to hold tomorrow’s games.”
That’s probably true. Assuming that tomorrow’s games take full advantage of high-resolution graphics and advanced GPU technology, use the best possible sound, and continue to maintain or increase the basic acceptable level of complexity and gameplay, we’ll need more space. Whether or not that’s a system-seller is debatable, but Kaz went one step further than the usual Sony vaguery and used the 16GB on-disc size of Resistance: Fall of Man as an example:
“That game simply wouldn’t be possible on any other system without using multiple discs.”
Again, we’ve all enjoyed games with multiple discs. Hell, I’d still play King’s Quest if the discs could fit in my PC, but Kaz’s point is valid. An enormous game on one disc is a lot less problematic than an enormous game on many discs. Still not a system-seller, but germane nonetheless.
In addition to defending difficulties in production of the blue laser diode for the PS3, which Kaz didn’t think “anyone could have forseen,” he also launched a salvo or three at Nintendo – when asked about Sony’s Japanese competition, he implied that the Wii was a “mild upgrade:”
“A worldwide launch for any console is quite ambitious. In fact, it has never been done before. I suppose if we had simply done a mild upgrade to the PS2 and not pushed the envelope so hard, it would have been easier on ourselves. However, if we did that every time, we wouldn’t be Sony.”
You gotta hand it to him, the man’s got balls. To stand up in an environment as Sony-critical as CES must have been this year and manage to take pride in your strivings, unrealized though they may be, is gutsy. But to snipe the Wii? There must be angry locals with torches and pitchforks rioting outside his castle gates already…
CES 2007: Kaz Talks PS3 and Blu-ray [IGN]
[Via: 2old2play]
tiny dancer
Posted to on 11 January 2007
· Comments (6)
Other stuff like this: blu-ray, ces, kaz hirai, ps3, sony
The Wii is a mild upgrade… Have you ever checked out the specs?
Checked ‘em, wrote about ‘em, even wrote about ‘em some more.
What’s relevant isn’t that the Wii could be considered a “mild upgrade,” but that despite its specs, it hasn’t been received that way.
Pointing to the Wii’s specs seems, from a practical standpoint, a gambit in a battle that’s already been won. The Wii has proven, at least initially, that something more than specs sells consoles.
Of course Kaz’s whole point is Sony Pride, and so naturally he’s going to point out what he thinks are the superiorities of his system…regardless of how relevant that may or may not be to individual consumers.
Yes, something other than specs can sell consoles, but from a technical standpoint it is still a “mild upgrade” and is very relevant to what Hirai was saying about launch difficulties of the PS3.
The Wii had almost zero launch problems, thanks to the minimal upgrades to its hardware making it easier and faster to produce than the PS3 which incorporated newer and more complex technology.
Absolutely. The relevance of tech specs will increase over time as the PS3 irons out its launch issues and improves its services, while the Wii will continue to perform, but might have seen the lion’s share of its glory at its stellar launch.
I’m interested to see what this conversation looks like in 6, 12, 18 months. Or three years.
That brings in the question of durability, too: will the Wii, with its revolutionary gameplay mechanics but ho-hum specs, last as long as the belabored but clearly technically advanced PS3? I think that games will answer that question better than either tech specs or innovative interfaces…
We’d need to be psychic to know, of course, but it’s a worthwhile question. Is it possible the Wii can transcend tech specs and become a classic? The Dreamcast isn’t a perfect example, but it does show how popular appeal can keep a system “alive” even when it’s dead and buried…
i think someone has given sony execs an enema with a sandblaster judging by the amount of s**t they are coming out with.
the reason that resistance is so big is nothing to do with its semi-hd graphics (720p) but to do with blue-ray itself. blueray is slow at loading and expensive to produce in comparison to dvd therefore not only do you need to include multiple copies of the same data to reduce seek times during gameplay but in the case of resistance it also contains all the western localised languages reducing the need to press multiple language versions but again increasing required disc capacity not just to store the languages once but multiple times on the disc.
put simply if you removed the multiple languages and duplicated files from the 16-17gb blueray disc of resistance you could fit the entire game onto ONE SINGLE SIDED dvd since the total filesize is only around 4gb and on dvd you wouldnt need all the multiple copies of the same data.
another example would be gt-hd, it’s a smallish download and loads just fine off the hard drive but on a blueray disc it would require multiple copies of so many files that it would end up around 10gb in size as it stands and probably around 25gb as a completed game.
I’m not too concerned about the Wii’s luster fading from its slow CPU/GPU because the slowest system last generation was the one that got 70% of the market and had one of the most beautiful games of all time (Okami) on it.
But Sony and Nintendo will keep on with this “We’re in the same market, wait, no we’re not” dance until one of them either abandons their strategy (Sony’s pursuit of superiority on paper; Nintendo’s focus on novelty) or gets out of the videogame business.