14 DAY TRIAL // In an interview with GI.biz Sony's UK Managing Director Ray Maguire said something that led people to believe that Sony is doing Americans a favor, by letting loose on the price for their PS3. Maguire also makes comparisons between UK and USA to prove his point: "If you take what's considered to be the most expensive and the least expensive - consider the US with its massive land and cheap people. Then you look at the UK - a little island where rent and rates are at an absolute premium, and the cost of people is a lot more."
OK, that kind of statement could easily be misunderstood. Some may even call Sony's UK Managing Director a person who discriminates other people. Sadly for those who wait for spokesmen to say the wrong thing, Maguire explained his thought more thoroughly: "Nowadays, with how the media works, not only does information fly around at the speed of light, so does mis-information. With blogs on the increase, people's thought processes are transferred from one place to another and picked up by people who might be lazy when it comes to finding out whether something is true or not." Yet, he still didn't make things right concerning his words about America.
Right now, you must be in a total blur and that's why 1UP decided to make some investigations and show people exactly what Sony's Director of UK studios meant. After speaking with Sony America, the site found out that Maguire was actually trying to say that the cost of living and labor were different in the two countries, as the minimum wage in the UK is about US $10 per hour, while in US it's US $5.15 per hour. So what 1UP concluded was that Maguire called Americans cheap, indirectly. They said it more as a joke of course, but as the man says, blogs are on the increase, so Sony's Managing Director of UK studios should be more careful with his words.