Sony
With E3 right around the corner and tons of gaming news about to hit fan setting the stage for an exciting summer and holiday season The Examiner had the opportunity to speak with Scott Rohde, Vice President of Sony Worldwide Studios America. Scott sheds light on the Blu-ray disc format used by PlayStation 3, the advantages and what makes it such a unique format. Why should gamers care about Blu-ray, we’re about to find out.
Q: When looking at Blu-ray, what has been the biggest approach to developers from Sony standpoint as far as the extra space? We’ve seen Killzone 2, a first-party title and Metal Gear Solid 4, which has still not come out on any other console, that the storage space is so huge, but what has been the main approach and selling point to developers?
Scott: You’ve actually already hit on it. Our line is that bigger is better so we can have as much of anything we want on that disc as possible and as you know that’s a huge luxury for developers so there are plenty of different examples. Anything from tons of cinematic to higher quality of cinematic we can even go uncompressed if we want to ensure better quality, huge animation sets. Name it and we’ve done it including audio.
Let me give you some specific examples that you might not think about, MLB the Show. This is a title that started to push the limits of the single-layer Blu-ray disc almost right away. You wouldn’t think so; there are only 30-40 stadiums, a bunch of players and a baseball game. Why would that be pushing the limits? What they’ve done with that title is there is so much audio in that title and every audio is directly tailored to an individual cinematic at times so if you were to put all the cut scenes back-to-back and watched them in a row for 40+ hours. They only do that because they have the luxury with the space and what that gives us is an experience that is continually different 6 months to a year after you’ve played the game for the first time and that a huge luxury to the gamers. So I don’t have to listen to Madden say the same lines over and over again? Sounds like you’ve had experience with that.
I’m a huge fan of Madden and sports games in general and one of the things we have on the MLB team; it does go to show that the Blu-ray that the space involved is so important. We’ve got a guy who has a small team who literally does nothing but worry about the presentation and the long term experience of the game and his overall goal is to make sure you have as little repeated (audio) as possible over the course of the baseball season, that’s a lot of time. There are gamers out there who play this game for thousands of hours during every season. You see it all over the messages boards they’re giving us accolades, ‘wow, the experience is different’ 500 hours in and they just heard something they’ve never heard before and that’s exactly what we set out to do so that’s exciting.
Q: Has there been one area the developers have raved about as far as what they’re using that extra space for from audio files to bonus content; one particular thing that’s been called out by developers?
Scott: That’s the beauty of it; one thing developers are always clamoring for is space. I was just talking about this earlier today it’s not too often where … it’s usually the creative folks and design folks who are out designing the technology, they’ve always got too much technology then you have to figure out what to scale back on to fit it on the media. Not the case with Blu-ray. Every single developer has a different thing to hit on, for example back to MLB not every team would want to have 40+ hours of cut scenes, you just don’t need it but in a sports title where you want the experience to be different it makes sense. Another developer, Heavy Rain for example they’ve got some absurd numbers of motion capture animations somewhere north of 30 thousand and that’s a ton of animation that you start to run into restrictions on previous media and the Blu-ray erases that.
Q: For the average gamer what would be the appeal of going with PlayStation 3 over Xbox 360 even taking into account the future of the Blu-ray format?
Scott: Let me give you a bit of history to answer that question. Even back to the PlayStation 2 days and for sure with the beginning of the PlayStation 3 our strategy here at Sony has always been to put the bulk of our investment into a really diverse exclusive first-party lineup. This does not hit directly on the Blu-ray question but we’ve got a lot of titles here, inFAMOUS for example is just coming out upcoming Uncharted 2, Heavy Rain, God of War III coming up, these are titles that take full advantage of the storage media that the Blu-ray offers and what we’ve done is created this huge portfolio of titles that is only out on the PlayStation 3 and we believe that the Blu-ray has allowed us to do this and now that we are three years into the PlayStation 3’s lifecycle that library of titles you can only have on the PlayStation 3 is growing and it’s huge, something we’re very proud of and it’s not just from first-party, it’s from titles like Metal Gear Solid 4 which you can only play on the PlayStation 3.
Q: So looking at the summer and holiday seasons what are some of those titles only available on Blu-ray?
Scott: Uncharted 2 is going to be the big epic experience, I’m sure you’ve played through Uncharted, Uncharted 2 is incredibly better than Uncharted 1 and I think that happens because of the Blu-ray. You’re going to hear that first hand when you talk to the guys at Naughty Dog they’ll give you all sorts of detail, they use every inch of that Blu-ray disc so I’m pretty excited for that title. Also continuing along the lines of Ratchet & Clank that title has a ton of animation, a ton of great story and cut scenes that’s been tradition with that franchise, something the Blu-ray allows us to do. And of course as we lean forward to God of War III, it’s going to be absolutely epic and amazing and you’ll see a lot more of that coming up at E3
Q: Can gamers expect any move to game content between the Blu-ray game and movie formats? For example the upcoming Transformers and Harry Potter movies. This could be in the form of unlockable content, bonus material for example.
Scott: That’s a great question. It’s something we’re always exploring and will continue to explore. Sony has an advantage there being linked because Sony is such a large company with its arms in movies and electronics I think that we’ve got a lot of insight into where that’s headed. The short way I’m going to answer that is you’ll absolutely see all sorts of creative hybrids coming in the future. You’ll see those down the road, specifics aren’t ironed out yet but you’ll definitely see those. That’s a very nice teaser. I’d also like to turn the tables and answer that question in a slightly different way, perhaps not in the way you were intending to dig for but when you talk about what other companies do with titles like Transformers and Harry Potter those get back to the importance of our first party lineup and our investment in those exclusive first-party titles. A title like inFAMOUS is a really good example here. I’m not sure you would have seen that title build in a lot of other places because the tendency might have been if you were thinking about doing a super hero game where there’s all sorts of self discovery and the character is discovering his powers are you unfold the story, a lot of places may have said hey, lets go with a tried and true movie license so it’s a sure fire thing for us and what Sony does it we’re willing to take the risk and invest a lot of dollars into creating our own original unique experiences that you can’t have anywhere else as opposed to a title you can experience on any platform. This is something we’re very proud of and will continue to do to innovate that area.
Q: Taking a step back to a different level, looking at the PlayStation Network and an issue I’ve encountered with the 20GB PlayStation 3 and storage space, this is a two-part question. First are there plans to utilize a Blu-ray burner to backup your hard drive or save games you’ve downloaded in a GameFly format. The second part is why with so much space on the Blu-ray, why is there a need to download so much to the hard drive?
Scott: First I’m not sure if there are any plans at this time for a consumer oriented Blu-ray burner. It’s still a new technology, Blu-ray in general and I think it’s a ways off before you start to see a consumer friendly priced Blu-ray burner in house but it’s an interesting idea for backups for sure especially when you think that not too long ago if you went to the store, purchased a new PC with a 40GB hard drive you were pretty jazzed about that and now to think that on a single game content disc, your talking about dual-layer Blu-ray, 50GB right there, it’s pretty amazing how much the technology has jumped in such a short amount of time.
So to answer the second question on the PSN I think it’s very, very important to keep the game relevant and to keep it live. So of course you could just keep the game in development for five years and put every piece of imaginable content onto Blu-ray but that’s not what the consumers want, consumer’s wants things now and as soon as you ship it no matters what’s on the disc they want more. I’m going to bring up a specific PSN game to talk about that and it’s a game that has this strategy in mind from day 1 and it’s a game called Pain. That game was designed from day 1 with that in mind, ship a game that would typically take 3-4 years to develop and ship it in the first year, have an active part with the community, have the community tell us what they wanted to see added to that game and just have the game evolve over time based on the desires of the consumer. It’s been very successful for us and the community is very happy and on the forums, even in the past few days, there’s a lot of love coming to us just on this fact. They love the fact there’s an open dialogue with the developer and they love that the game evolves and they don’t know what to expect now, two months from now or a year from now. They love that it’s the game that just keeps giving. There’s a space for Blu-ray games that get all your content onto a disc and calling it a day but there’s also a space for adding to that. LittleBigPlanet is a perfect example. We just continued to add new ideas and those ideas were not on the design docket when we shipped but now a year later new ideas are coming and some of those come from consumers. People like to keep adding to their experience but I think it’s a good thing both ways.
Q: Do you ever just sit back and say ‘yeah, we had this right’ with all the criticism the PlayStation 3 received when Blu-ray was first announced, that it was a format which would never catch on?
Scott: Well, you know I’d like to think we’re a little more humble than that (laughing) but I think you bring an interesting topic which is talking about the master strategy for Sony and again we have to always remember that Sony is a huge company, not just a games company. It was an absolutely planned part of our strategy to use the PlayStation 3 as sort of a Trojan horse to get a Blu-ray player into millions and millions of homes and I think that strategy has obviously paid off knocking HD-DVD out of the game altogether and letting Blu-ray rise to the forefront. That strategy worked perfectly for us.
Q: The PlayStation 2 was my first DVD player, the first DVD player for many consumers, and I was just hooked on DVD and now it’s the same thing again but with Blu-ray. Then you look at Microsoft with their decision to make their HD-DVD player a $150+ add-on on top of the console price.
Scott: When anyone would talk about that we’d always point and say hey, look you know the PlayStation 3 is such an incredible value, it’s all there from day 1 in the box. That’s something we’ll continue to push and we’re very proud of, the fact the PlayStation 3 is an all-in-one solution. You get it into your house, you’ve got a top line movie player, you know how much a stand alone Blu-ray player cost, so you’re getting that plus your getting the most advanced game system available out there almost as a free bonus to your Blu-ray player. We stand by our decision to deliver the PlayStation 3 in that method.
Q: One more question. You have a gamer, on the fence about which console to buy. What is your selling point for them to choose PlayStation 3 over Xbox 360?
Scott: I just hit on some of that. We’re very proud to offer an all-in-one machine in the box but you’re also talking to the head of Worldwide Studios so of course I’m going to hit on our first-party exclusive software lineup. It’s something we’re very proud of, it’s not the focus of our competitors to have a huge suite of first-party titles and it’s something we invest very heavily in so when you start talking about the list when looking back to last year with games like Killzone 2 and LittleBigPlanet and everything that we have announced and will announce in the near future including MAG, Uncharted 2, Ratchet & Clank 2, Heavy Rain, God of War III … it’s a really long list and it continues to grow and trust me when (PR) has the clamps on me cause I’d like to tell you about ten other titles in development, it’s part of our plan, a big part of our plan and will continue to be. I personally believe that anyone sitting on the fence will have to realize that there’s an overwhelming number of first-party exclusives that you can’t get anywhere else, they have to buy a PlayStation 3.
Thanks to Scott, Sony and Porter Novelli for this opportunity and next up a chat with Naughty Dog Co-President Evan Wells and Co-President Christophe Balestra on their dealings with the Blu-ray format and the upcoming Uncharted 2.
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