Transitions between one gen and the other have always been very delicate moments that have had an impact on shaping the view of platform holders for years in video games. This is how Sony will hand the passage to PlayStation 5.
Transitions between one generation and the other have always been very delicate moments that have had an impact on shaping the view of platform holders for years in video games.
It’s because of a harsh debut that Microsoft completely lost the momentum gained in the Xbox 360 generation with Xbox One, after years spent in the lead when it came to gaming because of an aggressive policy in the effort to acquire historic third party support and deploy a variety of diverse exclusives.
During those years, the transition between one gen to another was a topic where Sony had a huge issue with. PlayStation 2 was a tremendous success and the Japanese company tried and built an future proof platform engineered on its own.
This, together with a delayed launch and an expensive price tag, led the PlayStation 3 to be quite a disaster in its early years of life, and one which shook the very foundation of the company (PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi left the division, too).
Talking with Eurogamer at Develop in Brighton, Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios’ Shuhei Yoshida recalled those days and promised that PlayStation won’t fall into those mistakes again when it’ll come the moment of a new generation.
“Ken [Kutaragi] was such a brilliant engineer – the team that worked for Ken was so motivated, he was a great motivator. Maybe he was using video games as a stepping stone to realise his vision and dreams – he wanted to become the next Intel or something. He always approached developing game systems, up to PS3 – they work on a system just by themselves,” Yoshida said.
“And we weren’t given access until it was done. He had trust with the developers – whatever he made, the top developers would be able to work on them and understand them. He didn’t see the need to involve game developers in the design of the system – that’s how the PS3 was made. And you know how successful it was.”
“It’s human nature,” added Yoshida. “People make mistakes. I don’t know why. We’re all human – we’re not perfect. PS4 is doing so well, but we don’t forget why we’re here now.”
PlayStation 5 is expected to release around 2020, so there’s still plenty of time to think about how to launch the console right – at a good price tag, with a great marketing and a strong first-party lineup, the things that made PS4 so successful.
