Kaz Hirai Interview Transcript

Read the full text of our video interview.

In a new video interview published yesterday on Kikizo, the boss of PlayStation's American arm said that the loss of rumble feedback in the 'Sixaxis' controller for PlayStation 3 was a strategic choice, refusing to be drawn on the issue of an ongoing lawsuit from Immersion Corporation, which courts say owns the rights to rumble in controllers.

Read the full text of the video interview below, or watch the feature here. Or you can check here for the full news rundown.

Kikizo: It seems there have been internal changes in attitude across Sony Computer Entertainment since E3. What would be your comments on that?

Hirai: I think that we've always had a strategy by making sure that when we make announcements, when we talk about our product, we do so because there's something concrete to talk about, there's something great to show and we can show progress in the games that we show, for example between E3 and Tokyo Game Show. We don't want to make announcements that really have no meaning. And since E3, what we've been focussed on really is a strategy to make sure that we have great software that's continued to be developed, and now we're able to show the fruits of our labour to everyone that's gathered at the Tokyo Game Show and here at the PlayStation Lounge.

Kikizo: What are you most pleased about the presence Sony had at TGS?

Hirai: I think the most important thing for us is for us to be able to appeal, for the first time really, to the consumers that are coming to the Tokyo Game Show, for them to really take the controllers into their own hands and experience PlayStation 3 really for the first time. The media has had chances and opportunities in the past, now it's all about the consumers at the Tokyo Game Show, and the consumer reaction is going to be very important for us as well, obviously.

Kikizo: Specifically talking about the hardware itself that is on the show floor, you have final debug units so it's essentially the first time we've been able to play on the actual finished PS3 hardware rather than dev kits, right?

Hirai: That's correct, we had, well actually some of the units at E3, some of the demonstrations were running on very early prototypes of the PlayStation 3; the games that you're playing here tonight at the PlayStation Lounge as well as at the Tokyo Game Show are running on the Test units.

Kikizo: So can you give us an update: is PlayStation the most profitable part of the Sony business in general - to what extent - and is it going to continue?

Hirai: Well I think it depends on how you look at it, which fiscal year you're talking about, or whether you're talking about a five year cycle for example, and you know, we're very profitable and making huge contributions in some years; other years, since we're in the R&D phase for example and we need to make a lot of investments, you're not going to see the same level of profitability that you would see when we're in a year where we're really getting the benefits of the seeds that we've planted. But I'd like to think that given the overall length and span that we've been in business, that we're making huge contributions to the overall Sony bottom line.

Kikizo: Obviously we're seeing a cool line-up here of firstparty software, and we're seeing some excellent thirdparty things. But also, some IP is starting to go away to rival formats now. How important do you think franchises like GTA are, and is it going to be a burden having that launch on multiple platforms?

Hirai: I think the most important thing at the end of the day, is what kind of compelling entertainment content you can bring into the hands of the consumer, because as we all know - it's a cliché but it's a truism - content is king. The most important thing for us - and exclusive content is important - but more importantly, being able to provide a platform for the content creators to really get excited about, so that they can take full advantage of what we bring to them in terms of a technological palette, and I'd like to think that the PlayStation 3 really brings so much more in terms of the raw processing power, so much more in terms of what we have with storage capacity with the Blu-ray drive. I think those things are inherently going allow the content creators to have a PlayStation 3 version - perhaps of the same franchise - but when you compare the PlayStation 3 version to any other version of the same game, it's a completely different entertainment experience, and that in and of itself really is an exclusive entertainment experience for the consumers, when they're enjoying a game on PS3 as compared to any other console.

Kikizo: In Sony's defence perhaps, Microsoft has been keen to talk about your Blu-ray drive as a movies-only format whereas obviously all games are going to come on this Blu-ray disc, which is not only higher capacity but also more streaming-conducive as well, which is a big feature. Just moving onto another feature though, which is the controller. Obviously we have this great new functionality built into every controller, but let's talk about the loss of rumble. Sony has been saying since E3 that this is due to the motion-sensitive technology, but a lot of people would argue that actually it's because of the whole situation with Immersion. In light of what we were talking about earlier with Sony's sort of less arrogant attitude nowadays, why can't Sony just sort of reach a settlement and get rumble back into these controllers?

Hirai: The issue when we're talking about trying to have motion sensing as well as a vibration feature, is trying to isolate the vibration feature from the motion sensors. Is it technically feasible? Absolutely. But the other problem, or the balancing act that you need to do, is to be able to present the controller to the consumer at an affordable price. We have one controller in the box, but many consumers will want to go out and get an extra controller. And if we have to come up with technology - which you can technically do - to isolate the vibration from the sensing, if that means that the controllers are going to be so expensive, then we're doing the consumer a huge disservice by coming up with a controller that is not very affordable. So it's a balancing act that we need to do. And we felt that ultimately, the vibration feature, which is a feedback feature, as compared to the motion sensing which is an input functionality, when you compare the two, we decided that the input device or methodology is a lot more important that feedback, and that has been a strategic decision that we've made.

Kikizo: Going back to the movies side of things, Blu-ray and HD-DVD is obviously undecided, but hypothetically if Blu-ray were to fail as a movie format, where would that leave PS3 from a multimedia point of view?

Hirai: I think that the most important thing from where I stand is really establishing PlayStation 3 as a next-generation interactive entertainment format that happens to use a storage medium called Blu-ray. So the more installed base we can create, the more acceptance we can create in the consumers of the PlayStation 3, is my objective with the launch. Now, as a great by-product of that - and a fantastic by-product in fact - it also plays Blu-ray which means that more Blu-ray players are also in the hands of the consumer. But my mission is to really to establish PS3 and not necessarily to establish Blu-ray. Now the two go hand-in-hand, because PS3 happens to use Blu-ray, but my priorities are somewhat different from perhaps other parts of Sony, who are tasked with establishing Blu-ray as a format, and not necessarily PlayStation 3. And that's the beauty of a format like Blu-ray, that has two faces: one as a game format, and another as a movie storage format.

Kikizo: So just to wrap up then, obviously everyone wants to get their hands on PS3 for launch, but we're only talking about half a million units between America and Japan. It's going be pretty hard to get one on day one, but is that going to get easier as we move towards the Holiday season?

Hirai: We're going to try everything we can to get as many units into the hands of the consumers as possible for launch, and obviously heading into the Holiday season as well, and we're going to make sure that we ramp up the production; that's one of the reasons that we strategically decided also to delay the European launch, so that we could concentrate and focus more on the Japanese market and also on the North American market. But I think really the most important thing for us, not only the launch period, is being able to bring compelling software that really keeps the platform vibrant and fresh for the long term - so that six or seven years from now, we have strong platform that the consumers can really embrace and enjoy for a long time to come.

Check out the full, exclusive video interview here.

Adam Doree
Director, Kikizo