MercuryNews: A Chat With Phil Harrison

["Nerve-Damage"]

MercuryNews: A Chat With Phil Harrison

DT: Microsoft has been saying that you guys are four years behind them in online play. Do you feel that what you have here is better than what they have on the XBox 360?

PH: I'm not going to couch it in competitive terms. I'm going to say what we have delivered, which is the most integrated online platform, the best consumer experience for getting access to additional content whether it is paid for or free, having an open and free browser allowing you to gain access to all your favorite web sites and community features and content benefits that come from that. I think there is incredible innovation in that. Built into the platform itself are communications features: the friends' lists, the buddy features, which are leveraged across all of the games which are free of charge. I don't see what is missing from the offering. I do also observe that just like with the PSP, the PS 3 will be a growing and evolving platform. We'll continue to add benefits over the months and years to come.

DT: What is your feeling on exclusives this time? Will you have as many?

PH: I think exclusives do matter but not in the way they have in the past. What we're looking for in delivering the PlayStation 3 is a differentiated experience, one that takes advantage of the new capabilities of the platorm, like hard disk drive, Cell, RSX, PlayStation Network. These become the exclusive functions in their own right. Our own worldwide studios have the development capability of Nintendo and Microsoft combined. That gives us an edge over the coming months and years. It's up to us to use that edge as effectively as we can. We know that third parties are pushing forward with other technical functions of the machine incredibly well within their development teams.

*cough* bull**it *cough*

DT: I guess some people could quibble about whether these titles are demonstrably better than the Xbox 360 titles, since some of them have a resolution of 720P. What is your comment about what people should expect on how to tell the difference, how much better they will look?

PH: Resistance: Fall of Man is demonstrably better than anything else you can get a hold of. It has 40-player multiplayer free of charge. It has all the community features and content extension features you can expect. We demonstrated Motor Storm. It's not a launch title and will be available after the first of the year. But we'll have a demo available on day one. You saw that today. That is an absolutely incredible, visceral, brutal experience. That is really suggesting what the capabilities of the PlayStation 3 are all about. We need to have sufficient numbers of content that become the PlayStation 3 demonstrators. The PlayStation 3 evangelists in software. We have that.

I’m a big PS3 supporter...

That being said….

Gears of War still edges out Resistance: FOM…especially in the graphics department (IMO).

 

[btdvox]

Yeah but Gears of war has been in process for how long? And xbox has been out for a whole year. I think you should be comparing Xbox 360 Launch to PS3 launch thats how would compare this.

 

[Bad_Boy]

DT: Do you have anything you would consider market expanding in development?
PH: What we showed at this event is clearly focused around Nov. 17. You'll see some announcements shortly that sign post the future. Ask me that again after my keynote speech at the Game Developers Conference (in March).

Looks like the next big event is GDC.

I'm really interested in what kind of content (names specifically) we can expect on the day of launch. We already know there will be various types of content (music, movies, games, demos), but it would be nice to know specifically which.

 

["Nerve-Damage"]

Yeah but Gears of war has been in process for how long? And xbox has been out for a whole year. I think you should be comparing Xbox 360 Launch to PS3 launch thats how would compare this.

No…I was going solely off his ridiculous comment.

PH: Resistance: Fall of Man is demonstrably better than anything else you can get a hold of.

 

[Titanio]

I think he was clearly taking a broader perspective in his answer even if the interviewer directed the question towards the graphics side.

Regardless, that kind of overall debate obviously not something that can be settled now, since neither game is out. But he can make a good case for Resistance on paper based on some of its features vs what is offered elsewhere, at least in its genre.

 

[nonamer]

I’m a big PS3 supporter...

That being said….

Gears of War still edges out Resistance: FOM…especially in the graphics department (IMO).

You can't "get a hold of" GeOW.

 

["Nerve-Damage"]

You can't "get a hold of" GeOW.

I own two Xbox 360!!

 

[Nesh]

*cough* bull**it *cough*

Whats the bullsh!t part? Is it the underlined sentence? I think you didnt give enough attention to the explanation. The sentence alone gives a false impression

What he is trying to say is that other things besides exclusive games matter more than previously for the platform and these are what they will add that extra value and differentiate the PS3. Also from what I could understand from his reference to Sony's own studios he ment that the exclusives mean much when they have the approprate development talent and content which he claims they have otherwise exclusive games alone dont do much of a difference about the value of the product.

 

[Hardknock]

Yeah but Gears of war has been in process for how long? And xbox has been out for a whole year. I think you should be comparing Xbox 360 Launch to PS3 launch thats how would compare this.

How would that work when developers have had dev kits for each system for roughly the same time?

 

[pegisys]

Yeah but Gears of war has been in process for how long? And xbox has been out for a whole year. I think you should be comparing Xbox 360 Launch to PS3 launch thats how would compare this.

it's been in the process pretty much the same amount of time as resistance, they were both shown for the first time at e3 in 2005, and both were in really early stages

 

[Bad_Boy]

How would that work when developers have had dev kits for each system for roughly the same time?

I'm not 100% sure, but I think he means the development of GOW itself. Which is based off the UE3, which has been in development before devs got 360/ps3 kits.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that, again I'm not 100% sure if thats what he meant.

 

[nonamer]

I own two Xbox 360!!

It's not out yet.

 

["Nerve-Damage"]

It's not out yet.

I knew that...nor is RFOM

So whats your point?

 

[Hardknock]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think he means the development of GOW itself. Which is based off the UE3, which has been in development before devs got 360/ps3 kits.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that, again I'm not 100% sure if thats what he meant.

He also stated:

I think you should be comparing Xbox 360 Launch to PS3 launch thats how would compare this.

 

[London Geezer]

And yet again we go through this...

What else do you seriously expect him to say!?

He is one of the faces of Sony. His job is to promote what he's working on, and that includes talking crap half the time. Every single man in his position does the same.

It's amazing that you're seriously still to this day discussing over bloody PR on this forum, it's really ridiculous.

 

[weaksauce]

Speaking of resistance (man I-8 was cooler and the old style too), the scale is bigger than GeOW, and I don't think we've seen much of it since haven't they said there is going to be vehicle combat too?

 

[Bad_Boy]

Speaking of resistance (man I-8 was cooler and the old style too), the scale is bigger than GeOW, and I don't think we've seen much of it since haven't they said there is going to be vehicle combat too?

Yeah there will be 3 vehicles to use, they havent really given which ones but we do know that a jeep and the mech-spider will be driveable at one point, the 3rd is still unknown afaik.

 

[speng]

One major reason I didn't buy or even consider a Xbox 360 was paying for online service. I'm confident there are millions of people of the same mind.

I already pay my internet provider, and just to play games online like the PC should be free except for MMO subscriptions.

Resistance: FOM may be even larger scope than GeOW, with it's online component and gameplay. Better game only time will tell after both are released.

Speng.

 

[Cobra101]

MercuryNews: A Chat With Phil Harrison





*cough* bull**it *cough*





I’m a big PS3 supporter...

That being said….

Gears of War still edges out Resistance: FOM…especially in the graphics department (IMO).

But isn't it all about gameplay?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

While the fair thing would be to compare PS3 titles to early X360 ones, life is just ain't that way - these games will have to compete with what's available on the Xbox now. Customers won't be satisfied with an answer like 'but it's still better than our competitor's stuff from a year ago'.

Resistance seems to be a good game, but let's be honest it's nothing more then yet another FPS. At least I don't see any big gameplay/narrative/technical innovation here. Gears at least tries to define a new genre, and at the same time raise the bar for realtime 3D graphics. But in the end the customers will decide, not us...