Jack Tretton and Sony

Next-Gen’s managed to catch an interview with SCEA‘s Jack Tretton. The lengthy talk covered everything from the Blu-ray to Sony‘s media reputation.

Since the article is, as we’ve said, a bit long, and we know you guys don’t really like it when details are lost during the relay, we’ll do something different this time around. We’re going to provide you guys with what we feel is the bottom line quote for each topic that was covered.

Read on because Mr. Tretton had a very interesting bunch of things to say about everything sony.

On the launch:

November 17 is just one day on the very, very long road that is the platform life cycle. We think in increments of ten years, not 24 hours. Look back at what the 500,000 PS2s we sold on launch day was to the 41 million we’ve sold since then. Six years later, it’s not a big thing.

The 400,000 units:

It’s certainly the goal. We’re talking about daily production, right up until November 16. We’re not stamping out widgets here. It’s not possible to just say ‘how many did we build yesterday? How many days are left?’ and just multiply accordingly.We’ve got very solid numbers on parts. It’s a matter of assembling those in time and getting them on a plane. I am very, very confident of the so-called launch window and getting the units out there, but I’m a firm believer in, until you do something, it’s just talk.

Read the full article to get the rest of Tretton’s takes on Blu-ray, Sony’s rep, and why he’s confident about Sony.

Next-Gen’s managed to catch an interview with SCEA‘s Jack Tretton. The lengthy talk covered everything from the Blu-ray to Sony‘s media reputation.

Since the article is, as we’ve said, a bit long, and we know you guys don’t really like it when details are lost during the relay, we’ll do something different this time around. We’re going to provide you guys with what we feel is the bottom line quote for each topic that was covered.

Read on because Mr. Tretton had a very interesting bunch of things to say about everything Sony.

On the launch:

November 17 is just one day on the very, very long road that is the platform life cycle. We think in increments of ten years, not 24 hours. Look back at what the 500,000 PS2s we sold on launch day was to the 41 million we’ve sold since then. Six years later, it’s not a big thing.

The 400,000 units:

It’s certainly the goal. We’re talking about daily production, right up until November 16. We’re not stamping out widgets here. It’s not possible to just say ‘how many did we build yesterday? How many days are left?’ and just multiply accordingly.We’ve got very solid numbers on parts. It’s a matter of assembling those in time and getting them on a plane. I am very, very confident of the so-called launch window and getting the units out there, but I’m a firm believer in, until you do something, it’s just talk.

On retail and managing the damand:

When we communicate that number [of units] we’ll deliver against it. We’re going to try to accommodate as many people as possible. We’re going to avoid creating false expectations. Retailers will know their quantities well in advance of opening their doors. They’ll say, ‘this is the quantity we have to work with, we’re going to distribute numbers, if you’ve got one of those numbers, you’re good to go. If you didn’t, I’m sorry, we’ll do the best we can to have subsequent supply.’

So you don’t have somebody who waits hours upon hours only to find out that they aren’t getting one.

The Blu-ray production delay:

…When you turn to the engineers and say ‘go build that for me,’ they ask ‘are you crazy?’ But they’ve managed to pull it off. We’ve got the blue laser diode’s yield now. Okay, it’s not necessarily where we’d like to be but it will get exponentially healthier as we go forward. The production capacity on November 6, is better than the production capacity on November 1 which was better than October 26. It gets better every day and as we get closer the numbers get bigger and better. It’s just a matter of physically getting them here.

On Sony’s profile:

Look, we understand that consumers won’t just line up blindly to buy our platform. We know that the competition won’t just lie down and die. But we feel pretty confident about our ability to execute. Right now we are in this frustrating period when it’s all speculation. I prefer to talk about the facts. I’m more comfortable talking about what is happening now, rather than what might happen in the future. Let’s get the battle on and see who the winner is and then talk about it.

Sony’s bad rep:

Bad news sells. All the success that we’ve had is not a sexy story, but any missteps that we’ve had is a story. Sony has gone from number four to number one in high definition television sets this year but people don’t want to write about that. They want to write about a battery recall. Sony is number one at the [cinema] box office, but people just want to write about the costs of the PlayStation 3 production delay.

His statement of confidence:

PlayStation 2 is outselling Xbox 360 for the year; we’re out-selling Xbox 360 month after month. The same machine that beat the Xbox in 2001 is beating the Xbox 360 in 2006. That’s amazing and that’s big news, but you don’t read a lot about that. I’ve been with this company twelve years and I don’t think it’s ever been better positioned.

Our goals aren’t necessarily about overtaking Xbox 360 or overtaking Wii. It’s our goal to maintain our leadership position. If all three platforms failed but we failed less than the other two I would not cheer ‘well at least we beat those guys!’ To me that would be disastrous. It’s not about doing better than the competition. It’s about doing better than we’ve done in the past even though the bar has been set very, very high.

When asked when will PlayStation 3 overtake the Xbox 360 in North America, he says that the honest answer is Sony can’t overtake Microsoft until Sony ships more units than they’ve sold. He does add that they will ultimately accomplish their goals. Sony is looking towards the long term. Ultimately, their goal for the PlayStation 3 is to have a machine that has the staying power for the next decade.

Will they succeed? Will their slow looking start work for them? What he said about the PS2 only selling 500,000 on day one, and has sold millions since is sort of compelling.

Via Next Generation