PS3 Downloads Will Not Be Restricted

And Phil Harrison says there are around 40 games in development already.

Sony has made a lot of the power of its disc-based PlayStation 3 products, but with the launch of the console now weeks away (outside of Europe, at least), company executives are starting to talk more about the downloadable games.

The Xbox Live Arcade has been a hit for Microsoft, and Sony too is going to emphasise this sector of the market while at the same time showing off what the console is capable of, Sony's Phil Harrison said in an interview posted on the semi-official Sony blog ThreeSpeech.

"My strategy," he explains, "was to encourage developers to push the machine technically, creatively, artistically - to innovate in lots of different ways. But don't be restricted by ghettoising games into a particular genre, or a particular display mechanic, because what we've seen on other systems tend to be retro 2D games, and we're pushing the 3D capabilities of the PlayStation 3."

Harrison said that there are around 40 games being developed right now. This includes flOw, a Electroplankton-esque game shown off at the Tokyo Game Show this year, and Calling All Cars, a new game from God of War producer David Jaffe.

An important advantage Sony has over Microsoft here is that Sony's games will not be restricted in how big they're allowed to be.

"Every PS3 has a hard disc drive (which) means that we're not restricted by the size of the download, and that has a huge impact on the kind of game design that you can do."

Xbox Live Arcade games, meanwhile, are restricted to around 50 MB - the size that will fit on Microsoft's cheapest storage solution, the Xbox 360 memory unit.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo