Sony’s Jack Tretton on FF13 and home

[PKerr]

Don't look for home any time soon.
Once again Sony's tag line
"Just Wait".

"
Our man Kamiboy has written his feelings on the issue (which we’re editing for publication tomorrow) but tonight Sony’s Jack Tretton has spoken out on FFXIII going to Microsoft’s 360. According to Gamasutra, speaking at a round table Tretton suggested Microsoft had spent most of their money “trying to curry favor with third parties”.
Seemingly, he wasn’t aware of the bombshell and was as shocked as the rest of us. “I guess disappointed is clearly an appropriate term, or surprised,” he said, adding that “we’ve built up our base and that’s where we’ve chosen to spend our dollars” referring to internal first party development as Sony’s path this generation.
Whether he was implying that the move to multiplatform for Square Enix was more of a Microsoft-subsidised decision than one guided purely by sales reasons we’re not prepared to speculate on.
Speaking on Home, Tretton said that Sony showed “a lot of naiveté” when the company began work on the ambitious title, and the showing to the public was “premature”. He openly went on to say that the development of Home had been hampered by a lack of understanding of what exactly the company was developing. “We had to figure out that this wasn’t just a piece of software, and not just a service,” he said, “something that needed a specific team, including hardware expertise.”
He added that he would not release Home until it was completely ready."



http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2008/07/16/tretton-on-ffxiii/

 

[Jim Steele]

speaking at a round table Tretton suggested Microsoft had spent most of their money “trying to curry favor with third parties”.

Really? Microsoft are spending money on expanding their game library?

Hey, I guess that is an alien concept for Sony, who seem to have spent the last two years pouring millions into vapourware and "potential".

Whether he was implying that the move to multiplatform for Square Enix was more of a Microsoft-subsidised decision than one guided purely by sales reasons we’re not prepared to speculate on.

Probably a bit of both. They obviously want as many people as possible to buy their game, but I'm willing to bet Microsoft did some schmoozing.

And you know what? I couldn't care less.

 

[rType]

Speaking on Home, Tretton said that Sony showed “a lot of naiveté” when the company began work on the ambitious title, and the showing to the public was “premature”. He openly went on to say that the development of Home had been hampered by a lack of understanding of what exactly the company was developing. “We had to figure out that this wasn’t just a piece of software, and not just a service,” he said, “something that needed a specific team, including hardware expertise.”

Refreshingly honest. Regardless of the endless delays, Home is still more interesting than anything else that's going on in the console world. Hopefully they'll drop the idea of navigation via virtual PSP though, that's just tacky.

 

[PKerr]

/\ /\ Refreshingly honest.
Agreed.
Reading the full article you see it even more.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19447

Interesting tid bits

"Tretton On Microsoft

Asked if he was aware of Microsoft's message and what Sony's reaction might be, Tretton joked, "Aware to the point that I feel like I knew everything before they even got up there... We certainly knew all of the fundamental messages."

"I think that every company thinks that they invented the wheel" he said, "but I think that my first reaction is that we must be doing a lot of things right because I see a lot of things that remind me of what we're doing."

Asked if he was disappointed to see Final Fantasy officially make its move to Microsoft's console, he added, "I guess disappointed is clearly an appropriate term. Surprised or consider it to be something that's avoidable? Probably not so much."

"One thing that's crystal clear that I hope you understand," he continued, "from the beginning when we got into the business, people said, '[Sony has] no software development heritage' and we knew that. We invested heavily in internal development and as far back as '95 we reached out and did some licensed publishing."

"In my opinion," said Tretton, "the decision that we made is that we were going to invest in internal development, the majority of our resources and over half of our employee base all over the world. We've built up our base and that's where we've chosen to spend our dollars."

"I think Microsoft has spent the majority of their money on trying to curry favor with third parties," he said. "I think software companies look and say, 'There's no check big enough for us to do exclusive development.' I think it's going to be harder and harder to have third-party exclusives as we move forward," instead offering that, "Exclusives to me mean Resistance 2, LittleBigPlanet, and MotorStorm." "

Tretton On Home

On its forthcoming 3D avatar space Home, Tretton offered, that, despite long delays in its release, Sony was now 'on track' with the initiative.

"I think we built a little bit of a grandiose picture of what Home can and will be," he admitted, "we painted ourselves into a corner of not only when it will be available and what it will be. I think that's one of the fundamental disconnects of a company to take something from the creative minds and turn it over to the pragmatic business minds."

But, on its progress, Tretton did say, "I think it's in no man's land. Home is not a software title. It needed a lot of hardware engineering support. It didn't get built up beyond what you'd expect from a software title until very recently."

"There was a lot of learning recently and a little naivete about how we'd build it," he admitted. "It took us awhile to figure out what it was and how you'd build it. I'd rather ship it two years from now and have it be filled with a lot of great stuff than open it up as a ghost town, so I think we've got to do a good job of populating it. The shell is there, but we have to get all the good destinations." "


Home maybe 2 years away?
So we'll see it on the PS4?...Maybe?

 

[PKerr]

Wow, I guess the PS3 is totally done with backward compatibility??

http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/07/16/tretton-would-have-liked-backwards-compatibility-in-ps3/


"SCEA CEO Jack Tretton said in a roundtable with journalists at E3 today that he would have liked to have had backwards compatibility in PlayStation 3, but the company has made its decision and is sticking with it.
He explained that Sony did “not take a greater hit on production cost without losing PlayStation’s heritage” and that backwards compatibility “wasn’t all that expensive.”
“But we’re selling PS2 software to PS2 customers, and selling PS3 software to PS3 consumers,” he added.
“I would like to have had it in there, but Sony’s collective strategy determined we could afford to lose it. We’ve now gone down that road: we’re not going back.” "

 

[firehawk12]

Looks like the 80s are going to be as rare as the 60s were last year.

 

[bigdaddy]

Sony.... The only company more clueless than Nintendo.

 

[Tomato]

Sony.... The only company more clueless than Nintendo.

Please explain?

 

[unimatrix7]

Re: Sony’s Jack Tretton on FF13 and home

Home maybe 2 years away?
So we'll see it on the PS4?...Maybe?

Do you ever get tired of being so completely wrong about everything?

The Home open, public beta is scheduled for the end of 2008. The beta will be, according to this interview with SCEA PSN directors Eric Lempel and Susan Panico, a fully-featured, working product:

Referring to comments made last month by fellow PSN director Susan Panico, in which she said that Home’s “rollout will be similar to Gmail" and that it will function as an "open, working beta", Lempel said that the online initiative, even in its initial public form, will not be some half-finished article but rather it will be representative of what the virtual world will ultimately offer.

“If you think about Gmail and Susan’s reference, Gmail when it launched in beta was a fully functional email service. I personally was using it and it offered everything you’d expect, but was in beta just to say that there’s more to come and maybe it’s not fully polished.

Tretton may have declined to pin down a solid release date, but nothing contradicts what was said in this interview from early July.

 

[PKerr]

Home will be region locked


"We were given a pretty in-depth walkthrough of the current state of Home, including a couple of game spaces (images of those later), during which we asked the bloke as many questions as we could think of. Top of our list? Making sure that we would be able to meet up with our friends all across the planet in the various public spaces. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Home's public spaces are going to be region-specific.

If you want to meet up with your pals from abroad, then you'll be able to invite them into your apartment, but warping into the game space to bowl or play chess is not possible. This is allegedly to make sure that each region receives an "experience most suited to their tastes" as well as, no doubt, to keep advertisers happy. The last thing they want is Europeans seeing an advert directed at Americans."

http://www.ps3fanboy.com/2008/07/16/home-will-be-region-locked/

Reading the comments after the article, there sure are a lot off pissed off Sony fans.

 

[Sephiroth]

sony sure does like alienating it's customers

 

[dragunzng]

Sounds about right, it's been fairly obvious that Sony's concentrated more on first party development this generation than on courting exclusive third parties.

Home is still an exciting concept, but as PKerr suggested, I doubt it will reach it's full potential on PS3, just as Live didn't reach its full potential on the original Xbox. I don't think Sony understood going in just how much of a massive undertaking Home would be. Shame about the region locking, but it's at least you can still just create an account for the region you wish to visit.

That said, I think Sony's pretty much got their act together this year, and the momentum is probably (just barely) on their side. If they can build on their '08 lineup going into '09 (something MS failed to do after their great '07 lineup, then things should be fine.

One of the things I'm constantly pleased with is Sony's efforts with PSN, particularly the games on the platform which just seem so much more sophisticated that most of the stuff on the Arcade and WiiWare.

EDIT: Unimatrix7, I wouldn't bother trying to argue.