Andrew House talks PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR and PlayStation Now, and even praises his counterpart at Microsoft
Andrew House, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, sees the success of PlayStation 4 as proof that dedicated games machines still have a place Photograph: Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert
Steve Boxer
Wednesday 16 December 2015 05.35 EST Last modified on Wednesday 16 December 2015 05.37 EST
Two years ago, industry pundits were declaring the inevitable death of the specialist games console. Before the launch of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, it looked like consumers had moved on from expensive specialist games hardware, toward smartphones, tablets and other formats.
But Andrew House, who as president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment is the ultimate boss of Sony’s PlayStation division, always had faith. And now he has the sale figures too. In November, PlayStation 4 passed the 30m global sales milestone, two months earlier in its lifecycle than the PlayStation 2, which ended up selling more than 155m units, making it officially the best-selling console in history.
House is clearly feeling somewhat vindicated.
“With this generation, we launched against a background of considerable media scepticism about the role of consoles overall,” he says, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian. “People were saying that consoles were dead, and that mobiles and tablets were the only gaming platforms around. But what I see in the developer and publisher community is a sense of returned confidence. That translates into something great for the gamer, because if developers are feeling confident that there’s a fan-base that wants their content, then they will tend to take more creative risks. They will feel more comfortable about launching brand-new IP, which I think is the life-blood of the industry.”
We caught up with House at Paris Games Week in late October, where Sony unveiled an array of PS4 games scheduled to arrive in 2016 and beyond, including Detroit and WiLD, new efforts from superstar developers David Cage and Michel Ancel, plus Gran Turismo Sport; the hotly anticipated No Man’s Sky was also pinned down to a June 2016 launch date. Then on Tuesday, Sony announced that the first game from Meta Gear creator Hideo Kojima since his departure from Konami, would be a PlayStation 4 exclusive.
2016’s packed release schedule should pacify PlayStation 4 owners after a surprisingly barren Christmas 2015 period for PS4 exclusives. “Usually it’s in the second or third year of a lifecycle that you see developers really getting into their stride around a new platform,” he says. His contention is that the likes of No Man’s Sky and Media Molecule’s bizarre game-creation sandbox Dreams show that Sony is still willing to publish more edgy games than its rivals. “When we started out in the business, the founders of the organisation had a very strong focus on taking creative risks, and believed that bringing something new to games was what we should be all about,” he says.
“You look back at some of the early Artdink games that came out, like Aquanaut’s Holiday and PaRappa The Rapper; the latter wasn’t a huge seller, but we all still talk about it. It’s great to see that spirit still in the organisation: it’s certainly something I encourage.”
That could be the essence of House – he speaks slickly, and has an air of impishness that sets him apart from the sort of corporate stuffed shirt you would normally expect to find in the upper echelons of this industry. He avoids the temptation to plumb Apprentice-style depths of aggression when talking about his competitors, for example, even though the PlayStation 4 is locked in a fierce battle against Microsoft’s Xbox One. “It’s reached a point of what I would describe as really healthy competition – and I use the word ‘healthy’ very deliberately,” he says.
“I think since Phil Spencer took on leadership of [Microsoft’s Xbox division], he has been very honest about their approach. He’s been, in a very gentlemanly way, complimentary about us in the past. But if you look at something like Augmented Reality for them or virtual reality for us, we’re both trying to build a category overall. At the end of the day, there is a shared goal of great experiences for gamers.”
2016: the VR tipping point?
One key feature of the coming year will be the arrival of virtual reality as a mainstream consumer technology. 2016 will be the year in which Oculus launches its Rift headset – and Sony launches its PlayStation VR. Given that the Rift will require a high-specification PC, whereas PlayStation VR works with a PlayStation 4, it’s likely that many people’s first experience of virtual reality will be via Sony’s machine.
Sony still hasn’t announced when exactly PlayStation VR will arrive or how much it will cost. House, however, is keen to talk about what the experience will be like. “In its early iteration, the principal audience will probably be enthusiast gamers looking for something brand-new,” he says. “I tend to see the first phase as providing short-form but very intense experiences – I use the analogy of a theme park ride. It’s something you’ll do for 10 or 15 minutes and go, ‘Whoa, that was fantastic.’ Even those short-form experiences, which don’t necessarily have massive development costs, can be very magical and exciting. So there’s an opportunity for indie developers to be more prominent in the VR life-cycle than they are on console.”
One can visualise VR going beyond games, into areas like music and sports, and it has many marketing possibilities, such as virtual tours around new buildings or tourist attractions. As a conglomerate, Sony boasts music and film wings, so will we see those sorts of things on PlayStation VR? “That’s something we’re definitely investigating,” says House. “But it will probably come in a second phase of VR development for use, because our first focus is on games. And when it comes to high production-value, 360-degree, camera-generated live action experiences, there’s still, in my view, a lot of work to be done on the back-end production, before they get to a point where you’d say they’re ready for primetime. But that’s an area where I think Sony can bring a lot to bear from other divisions within the corporation.”
PlayStation Now and backwards compatibility
House is clearly pleased with the PlayStation 4 design decisions that he and system designer Mark Cerny (a veteran game developer) took, which mean that, unlike the over-complicated PlayStation 3, it has been making money for Sony since day one. “I tried to get us talking about the PlayStation business, to get it to be much more focused again on the gamer and the end-consumer,” he explains. “That’s not just our marketing message: it informed a lot of the decisions we made around the development of PlayStation 4. I saw Mark Cerny as the advocate for the developer and that constituency, and I saw myself as needing to be the advocate for the consumer whenever I could.”
But one such decision created a lot of flak: the removal of backwards compatibility – and that opprobrium has intensified since Microsoft unexpectedly brought Xbox 360 compatibility to the Xbox One. However, Sony recently announced limited PS2 compatibility, and has attempted to address the problem more widely with its streaming service PlayStation Now.
The latter requires a paid subscription – a somewhat controversial decision. But has it been a success in Sony’s eyes? “In the US it took a little bit longer than we’d anticipated, but since E3, it has really started to gain traction,” claims House. “There are a couple of factors in that. In the beta phase – and we took a little bit of flak for this – we looked at what different rental prices should be. What we heard very loud and clear was that people want a very robust subscription service; ‘I want the Netflix of games,’ was what a lot of the users said. So we worked hard on getting the right value proposition for that, but more importantly, building out a great content selection. There are well over 200 games available on it now, and that has created a tipping point in the US.”
“We’re obviously doing this in a staggered way, so we’re launching in what I’d call commercial beta in the UK. We’ve got work that we need to do in the UK, again in building up the right content selection. For Sony, PlayStation Now is very much about a long-term play. I’ve always believed that with the sense of convenience and immediacy that people get from streaming, whether it’s in music or video, that same attraction will be there in games eventually. Increasingly in service businesses, it’s a case of launching the service, listening to what your consumers are telling you and then iterating on that and making it better.”
In the UK, which traditional gets a raw deal on pricing models within the games industry, coming up with the right figure early is going to be key to success. The company should probably also think about higher value six-month and annual subscriptions, going beyond the three-month maximum period available in the US. Time will tell whether we Brits warm to it.
Overall, House is understandably content with how PlayStation 4 has done in its first two years of life, especially with passing the 30m sales milestone. In his view, it’s good for the games industry as a whole. “We remain well ahead of the PlayStation 2 at the same point in its life-cycle,” he says. “That, to me, is almost more important than market share and rivalry with Microsoft. The question is whether you’re growing the category overall, and whether it is vibrant.”
The Guardian
Told you the war is over. VR is almost upon us, as well. Look at that, a Playstation exec saying nice things about Xbox.
Of course it's good for the industry. Anybody who roots for someone to fail is like @charizard1605 said a toxic fanboy. Love, like, prefer what you will, but wanting less in the industry or bad results is purely pathetic in spirit.
I agree with House in that the competition is healthy. Hopefully with the NX, Nintendo will be really engaging and ramping up the competition.
I think it's great for the industry, not only does it show that consoles are stronger than ever, but it put MS in its place. My only worry is that they will grow too strong and either make the same big headed mistake MS made, or worse, drive the competition out, which would have the exact opposite effect.
definitely, I'd much rather see Sony in the spot it's in than MS. We're getting a greater variety of games coming out this gen as well especially from the Japanese front. last gen always felt a bit barren for me in that area so I'm glad to see some turnaround.
@ReadingRainbow4: what when sony has most of these Japanese games as a exlusive how Is that good for the industry plz explain.. tired seeing this great Japanese games getting announced all behold it's exlusive
@ReadingRainbow4: what when sony has most of these Japanese games as a exlusive how Is that good for the industry plz explain.. tired seeing this great Japanese games getting announced all behold it's exlusive
Well Sony is a Japanese company at it's core and MS just has terrible foreign relations. It just is what it is.
definitely, I'd much rather see Sony in the spot it's in than MS. We're getting a greater variety of games coming out this gen as well especially from the Japanese front. last gen always felt a bit barren for me in that area so I'm glad to see some turnaround.
By "Japanese front" are you referring to weaboo games? I do not understand the obsession some gamers have with Japan and it's opinions. I for one am not from Japan, nor do I care about their opinions and lifestyle. Sometimes I wonder if these border line pedo lovers really believe the east is the way it is portrayed in weaboo games.
@intotheminx: What an ignorant and stupid statement. Must suck being so closed-minded when it come to games. WTF are "weaboo" games? Good games are good games regardless of where they come from unless you're trying to say that only western devs are capable of making old games, which is pure bullshit.
Calling all Japanese games weaboo games for pedos is as stupid as saying all western games are full of steroid addicted violent meatheads with daddy issues issues that are power fantasies for dudebros with low IQs..
@intotheminx: What an ignorant and stupid statement. Must suck being so closed-minded when it come to games. WTF are "weaboo" games? Good games are good games regardless of where they come from unless you're trying to say that only western devs are capable of making old games, which is pure bullshit.
Calling all Japanese games weaboo games for pedos is as stupid as saying all western games are full of steroid addicted meatheads with daddy issues issues that are power fantasies for low IQ dudebros.
The best part of dating an American girl is that you don't have to deal with the dad.
@Shewgenja: :( I wouldn't know, I've never seriously dated an American girl. All the girls I've seriously dated were from immigrant families with slightly different culture from American ones. Maybe I should start seriously dating "TRUE" American girls.
definitely, I'd much rather see Sony in the spot it's in than MS. We're getting a greater variety of games coming out this gen as well especially from the Japanese front. last gen always felt a bit barren for me in that area so I'm glad to see some turnaround.
By "Japanese front" are you referring to weaboo games? I do not understand the obsession some gamers have with Japan and it's opinions. I for one am not from Japan, nor do I care about their opinions and lifestyle. Sometimes I wonder if these border line pedo lovers really believe the east is the way it is portrayed in weaboo games.
No, he means Sony has shown a superior history of Japanese support than Microsoft ever has. And that isn't even a close call. Nintendo have shown superior Japanese third party support than MS have this gen.
I think the best thing about this success is how it's bringing in people back to gaming, as well as introducing newcomers to gaming.
Statistics showed that many who bought an 8th gen console so far did not previously own a 7th gen console.
That's just terrific. Gaming is becoming more and more accessible, which means for me that niche games and communities can finally become self-sustaining.
Unreal Engine 4 and Sony have definitely pumped it with new life. Especially with mid-tier and Japanese devs. Dat global software support for their console. They have a reason to be slightly smug right now. Good news for PS4 and to some degree, PC.
Is a great thing. Thanks to that. Sony has enough power and fund to bring me all my flavor niche tittles to the West. (Tecmo Deceptions, Yakuza and such!)
I think the best thing about this success is how it's bringing in people back to gaming, as well as introducing newcomers to gaming.
Statistics showed that many who bought an 8th gen console so far did not previously own a 7th gen console.
That's just terrific. Gaming is becoming more and more accessible, which means for me that niche games and communities can finally become self-sustaining.
I miss the days when games like Katamari Damacy would come out of nowhere and just take over life just because.
@intotheminx: What an ignorant and stupid statement. Must suck being so closed-minded when it come to games. WTF are "weaboo" games? Good games are good games regardless of where they come from unless you're trying to say that only western devs are capable of making old games, which is pure bullshit.
Calling all Japanese games weaboo games for pedos is as stupid as saying all western games are full of steroid addicted violent meatheads with daddy issues issues that are power fantasies for dudebros with low IQs..
Thats the general consensus around here. "Check out all our exclusives." Then they proceed to post games with 12 year old girls with big eyes that sound stupid. Also, it would be nice of you to point out where I said, "all japanese games are weeaboo." I don't believe that. Just asked another forum member a question. Nier isn't too weeaboo.
Not really, Sony's success had been achieved without really introducing anything new except ways to gouge consumers with streaming BC and even local BC is awful in how they're pissing on loyal PS3 digital supporters of PS classics. I get they can't do PS3 BC for technical reasons but no excuse for the rest. If anything, their dominance has only brought back their pre-PS3 debacle arrogance.
Truth is each game company is the same and needs constant competition and consumer feedback to keep them humble.
IMO, the biggest harm to the industry comes from mob praise of shit that doesn't earn it.
You do realize that PS4 VR will send graphics back to the 7th generation right? And PC has had backwards compatibility for...and PS4 still can't play...Yah..
Though I do like the affirmation from a Sony employee that it's good PlayStation is seeing success what's he supposed to do claim that success is a bad thing?....Now if only the rest of the company followed suit.
No wait the best part is the sheens talking shit about Microsoft, ignoring that Sony copied nearly everything from the Xbox 360.
They are still pitching that Backward Capabilities, huh?
It's like hey, did you know the PC can do that for years now....still better than the PS4. Like it's pathetic seeing how they try to pitch it
Agreed. Backwards Compatibility is a given on PC. Anybody wanting to play PS2 games should consider playing them on PC instead of re-buying them on the PS4 at much better specs
And I am sick of the excuse that Sony needs competition or they would become a monopoly and ruin gaming. That is a LIE. Sony dominated with PS1/PS2. We got 100's of AAA games all on 1 system. That was amazing.
Here is a fact, when Sony dominates, the other companies have to try harder and release awesome games(N64/Gamecube/Xbox). When Sony is losing the other consoles suck(360/wii...both dead within 2-3 years). Meanwhile Sony releases hit after hit from PS1-PS4. Sony has NEVER rested on their laurels. They have always made new franchises in a variety of genres. They always support their old consoles when transitioning to newer consoles. Nintendo/Microsoft don't. They blow their load within the first 2-3 years and drop all support or just make 50 halo/forza games every year.
And I am sick of the excuse that Sony needs competition or they would become a monopoly and ruin gaming. That is a LIE. Sony dominated with PS1/PS2. We got 100's of AAA games all on 1 system. That was amazing.
Here is a fact, when Sony dominates, the other companies have to try harder and release awesome games(N64/Gamecube/Xbox). When Sony is losing the other consoles suck(360/wii...both dead within 2-3 years). Meanwhile Sony releases hit after hit from PS1-PS4. Sony has NEVER rested on their laurels. They have always made new franchises in a variety of genres. They always support their old consoles when transitioning to newer consoles. Nintendo/Microsoft don't. They blow their load within the first 2-3 years and drop all support or just make 50 halo/forza games every year.
Stop going Mad Cow, but interesting thought provoking post.
And I am sick of the excuse that Sony needs competition or they would become a monopoly and ruin gaming. That is a LIE. Sony dominated with PS1/PS2. We got 100's of AAA games all on 1 system. That was amazing.
Here is a fact, when Sony dominates, the other companies have to try harder and release awesome games(N64/Gamecube/Xbox). When Sony is losing the other consoles suck(360/wii...both dead within 2-3 years). Meanwhile Sony releases hit after hit from PS1-PS4. Sony has NEVER rested on their laurels. They have always made new franchises in a variety of genres. They always support their old consoles when transitioning to newer consoles. Nintendo/Microsoft don't. They blow their load within the first 2-3 years and drop all support or just make 50 halo/forza games every year.
I couldn't agree more wit this post. Sony definitely supports their systems the longest out of the big 3. The other manufacturers definitely try their hardest when Sony is on top.
Consoles have a place because people still have Huge TV's in their house, and probably will for a long time.
Tablets, phones, and laptops are fun to play games, watch movies, and browse the internet on the go, but at home people want a bigger better experience. A game console gives us games that phones, and tablets could never do. And now you can watch movies and TV through your game console.
But what about smart TVs? Have you ever used one? The UI is HORRIBLE!
Heck if playstation Vue was nation wide I'd subscribe and the ps4 would be my home entertainment hub. Movies, music, Games, and live TV all in one box.
Game consoles are amazing multi media machines that are easy to use. That's why people love them and continue to buy them.
definitely, I'd much rather see Sony in the spot it's in than MS. We're getting a greater variety of games coming out this gen as well especially from the Japanese front. last gen always felt a bit barren for me in that area so I'm glad to see some turnaround.
@intotheminx: What an ignorant and stupid statement. Must suck being so closed-minded when it come to games. WTF are "weaboo" games? Good games are good games regardless of where they come from unless you're trying to say that only western devs are capable of making old games, which is pure bullshit.
Calling all Japanese games weaboo games for pedos is as stupid as saying all western games are full of steroid addicted violent meatheads with daddy issues issues that are power fantasies for dudebros with low IQs..
I agree with him, apart from the Pedo lovers part, Japan is largely irrelevant in the gaming industry now, very few of there games are even recognized compared to the games churned out by western developers like Call of duty, assassins creed, Halo. etc. etc.
the truth is that western games dominate the games industry now, things have changed.
I used to worship the japanese when it came to gaming but the truth is that western developers put out a greater quantity of high quality games these days.
Saying that i play the games i want to play, i really don't care about anyone elses opinion on gaming except my own.
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