Dave Karraker isn't the only Sony executive to face the mic in the past day. Our sister site,
Engadget, went face to face against
Peter Dille, about PLAYSTATION 3 and PSP. Just like Karraker, Dille says that the PSP does not compete directly with the DS:
We're not focused on competing with the DS head to head against the consumer they're going after. If we were, you'd see a very different top-down strategy. You'd see a very different technology that would deliver to games geared towards kids. Which is for the most part what they're doing. And so when people talk about how we're doing vis-a-vis the Nintendo DS, again, it's not the whole story. We're selling a device to guys our age, who are using it to play games, to play movies, to access video on the net, music, etc. And it's a very different product than Nintendo DS... You can look at the software that they sell. All their licensed kid stuff. So, what we're doing with the PlayStation Portable is really establishing a new marketplace, and establishing, frankly, a new beachhead. And that takes time. Having said that, it's the fastest selling platform we've launched to date. We're up to 20 million units worldwide, and that's off to a great start. So, we just need to sort of set people's expectations based on what we're trying to do, not compete against a kid machine.
Ouch. Calling the Nintendo DS exclusively a kid's machine sounds like
something a fanboy would do. Didn't Mr. Dille get the memo? The
DS is for old people too! Regardless, he makes a very good point about how the DS and PSP
are targetting different consumers: they
are different devices, and there's no need to directly compare the two. It's similar to how Nintendo keeps saying
the Wii doesn't compete with PLAYSTATION 3: they focus on different markets, and do very different things.
Other highlights of the interview include Dille apologizing about how they didn't focus the UMD's library correctly (but they still plan on trying to expand the UMD market. Uh...). Check out the rest of the interview at
Engadget to see Dille avoid some crucial PS3 info, and fail to apologize for Kutargai's insanity.
Our reader Matt T. sent in a very hot tip. It appears that the online manual for PSP version 3.0 is up and running. Thankfully, it doesn't have any features removed. However, it confirms our fears that a PS3 is necessary to download games to the PSP. Here's the proof:
