Ray Maguire gives his thoughts on Sony's strategy

by Nick Doerr { Nov 13th 2007 at 11:35PM }

SCEE's managing director Ray Maguire has stayed out of the spotlight compared to his cohorts Kaz Hirai, Peter Dille, Phil Harrison, and probably some other names we don't remember. He sat down for an in-depth interview with Edge, but we're here to shorten it up for you, though we strongly encourage you to read the whole thing. A bulleted list of the main points follows!

Some babble on backwards compatibility being removed, which we've all heard and the matter's been beaten to death with a blunt cudgel. A new item appears in the rationale for the move -- the Cell chip. Ray says: "... how do we allocate things within the Cell chip? And there is a big cost involved with doing the software emulation. So it's a cost issue, and – as we always do – we want to bring the price of the hardware down."
The decision to drop the 20GB PS3 from the European launch was a smart move, Maguire said, since they still had the biggest launch ever with just the 60GB. The reasoning? Europe is one of the "most successful territories in the world in terms of people's propensity to [play videogames]" and so early adopters got what is still believed to be the best package -- the 60GB PS3.
The console library has come under scrutiny ever since launch and Maguire concedes this fact. However, he says, "it's an area that's starting to change." He goes on to say how games are starting to run different on the PS3 in a good way, thanks to the standard hard drive (we'll go into this idea more when we review Bladestorm early next week).

There's plenty more discussion about Remote Play and third-party support in the coming months, but we don't want to spoil everything for you! It's a great read and showcases how the PS3 might try to change things around in 2008 with an ambitious library of titles lined up (some will probably get pushed back to 2009, in which case we'll feign surprise and counter with "well, it's still fiscal 2008" and snub our noses like proud fanboys). Still, if we don't buy the stuff, it won't matter what Sony does.

Tags: ray-maguire, scee

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

apease @ Nov 14th 2007 12:21AM

"How do we allocate things within the Cell chip?" Lol. This is why you don't let the executives pretend to understand tech, they should just repeat what the techs told them. It's okay, we know PS2 emulation is hard. Just ask the people working on the open-source PS2 emulator. :)

TripleBlue @ Nov 14th 2007 12:28AM

B/C - it's understandable for me why it was removed,but i also hope it's just temporary.I hope sony will put those chips back again once they've managed to reduce cell's costs and are out of the reds.

Consolcwby @ Nov 14th 2007 12:59AM

@apease: You should've read the entire paragraph:

But, given that the technology driving the backwards compatibility in the previous Euro PS3 was, as Maguire says, software-based, how can Sony justify withdrawing this support? “The Cell chip keeps on moving,” he begins. “Obviously, because that’s a large cost in terms of the manufacturing of the PlayStation 3, as we keep on putting R&D and more advances in the Cell chip – to make it smaller, to make it lighter, to reduce the power consumption – some of the decisions that we have to make include: how do we allocate things within the Cell chip? And there is a big cost involved with doing the software emulation. So it’s a cost issue, and – as we always do – we want to bring the price of the hardware down.”

He's not talking tech - he's talking resources and money. Of course, his point seems to be moot now that Sony sold the chip division to Toshiba, so maybe there's a chance cell-based BC might continue... but I doubt it.

apease @ Nov 14th 2007 1:43AM

@Consolcwby: I'd read the full paragraph before. It actually makes sense if you replace "Cell chip" with "PS3 motherboard".

Shrinking the Cell and having it use less power has absolutely no impact whatsoever on what it can do. He's talking about taking the GS chip out of the motherboard.

organic_shadow @ Nov 14th 2007 10:16AM

Sounds to me like they aren't completely writing off software emulation altogether. They want to focus on cutting costs for now, and later on when they have some cash to spend on software emulation they will tackle that on it's own.

Besides, right now most PS3 owners are going to own PS2's already anyway, so the software emulation can come later down the road when those PS2's are starting to get old and crusty.

Dru @ Nov 14th 2007 10:26AM

No offense PS3Fanboy, but this article is kind of old at this point and been discussed on a few other blogs already.

I definitely understand the standpoint of lowering the production costs of PS3s, but cannot understand (my own ignorance) how much "software" can cost to emulate older games. I feel that this was a conscious choice to push the 80GB version that has B/C. Why would the 80GB even exist if the 40GB had B/C? Who would buy it? It would be more advantageous to buy the 40GB and spend the extra $100 on a bigger hard drive or games/controllers if it had B/C software.

I believe this was a decision totally based on ensuring the 80GB had a chance.