14 DAY TRIAL // Jack Tretton, who is the chief executive officer of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, has defended the PlayStation 3 and attacked both rival home consoles, saying that in the long term the Sony-made device will be more attractive for gamers and will sell the best of the current generation of hardware.
Speaking about the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and about the Nintendo Wii, the CEO stated, “They’re starting to run out of Steam now in terms of continuing to be relevant in 2011 and beyond”, adding that, “I mean, you’ve gotta be kidding me. Why would I buy a gaming system without a hard drive in it? How does this thing scale?”
He also took a swing at the Kinect motion tracking system that Microsoft introduced in late 2010, saying, “Motion gaming is cute, but if I can only wave my arms six inches, how does this really feel like I’m doing true accurate motion gaming?”
Sony has recently said that the PlayStation 3 has an even bigger “active user base” than the rival Xbox 360.
The cold hard numbers of the NPD Group made monthly sales figures for the North American market show the Microsoft platform selling better for the last few months, although the PS3 is said to be doing better on the European market.
The Sony console managed to get a significant boost in late 2009 when the company introduced the Slim version and cut the price but since then both the Xbox 360 and the Wii got price cuts.
The Kinect is also doing better than the Move, with Microsoft saying that it has managed to sell more than 10 million motion tracking add-ons, a higher number that it initially projected.
This year Sony hopes to attract gamers with a number of exclusive games, like SOCOM 4 and Uncharted 3.