Microsoft on Playstation Home: “Not a game-centric approach”

Just a couple of days ago, the unveiling of the spanking-new Playstation Home and LittleBigPlanet by Sony at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2007 has caused a myriad of reactions among the public – but let’s not forget that there are also reactions coming from the camps of both Nintendo and Microsoft. As we’ve previously reported, Nintendo referred to the online service as the “Mii-too approach”, but now, we finally get to hear what Microsoft has got to say about it.

According to Microsoft general manager Chris Satchell, he believes that even though PlayStation Home makes use of some concepts which are similar to what the Xbox 360 uses (such as in the case of game achievements), he acknowledges that Sony is “pushing in a different direction” and that Sony’s “sort of fundamentally got two different approaches going on here”.

Satchell has also shown fondness for Sony’s LittleBigPlanet which he considers to be “a very cool game” with “a cool user-generated content feature”. However, he also notes that he “can’t see a big portfolio of games at the moment that do this. I don’t think there’s a whole load to catch up.”

The Microsoft bigwig has a rather valid gripe about Sony’s new online service, though. According to him, as fun as Home and LittleBigPlanet may be, “It’s not a very game-centric approach.” He then explains that “It’s a cool world but it’s like a little game by itself. Our approach is the other way around; that games are the center and that’s the star of the show, that’s what people buy the console for.“

So there you go. Microsoft basically thinks that Sony may have something good going on in there, but that for it to succeed, it’s going to need a whole lot of work first. Well, one has to admit that the man has a point, right?

Just a couple of days ago, the unveiling of the spanking-new Playstation Home and LittleBigPlanet by Sony at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2007 has caused a myriad of reactions among the public – but let’s not forget that there are also reactions coming from the camps of both Nintendo and Microsoft. As we’ve previously reported, Nintendo referred to the online service as the “Mii-too approach”, but now, we finally get to hear what Microsoft has got to say about it.

According to Microsoft general manager Chris Satchell, he believes that even though PlayStation Home makes use of some concepts which are similar to what the Xbox 360 uses (such as in the case of game achievements), he acknowledges that Sony is “pushing in a different direction” and that Sony’s “sort of fundamentally got two different approaches going on here”.

Satchell has also shown fondness for Sony’s LittleBigPlanet which he considers to be “a very cool game” with “a cool user-generated content feature”. However, he also notes that he “can’t see a big portfolio of games at the moment that do this. I don’t think there’s a whole load to catch up.”

The Microsoft bigwig has a rather valid gripe about Sony’s new online service, though. According to him, as fun as Home and LittleBigPlanet may be, “It’s not a very game-centric approach.” He then explains that “It’s a cool world but it’s like a little game by itself. Our approach is the other way around; that games are the center and that’s the star of the show, that’s what people buy the console for.“

So there you go. Microsoft basically thinks that Sony may have something good going on in there, but that for it to succeed, it’s going to need a whole lot of work first. Well, one has to admit that the man has a point, right?