It's a party for the executive forces at Playstation, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the very first console in the series. For the BBC, Hermen Hulst spoke candidly about his vision of artificial intelligence in the development of new games, while his predecessor as president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Shawn Layden, paid a quick visit to Eurogamer . Obviously, Hulst looked to the future in his interview (and for good reason, he's the one who takes care of business now). Shawn Layden, for his part, looked in the rearview mirror, this anniversary bringing back good and bad memories.
And if we are to believe his words, the most painful experience was that linked to the release of the PS3. Layden looks back on this period with a certain bitterness, but also a saving introspection (even if it would have helped more at the time): “ We had the PS1, the PS2…and now we're building a supercomputer! “, remembers Layden. Before continuing: “ And we're going to install Linux there! And we're going to do all these kinds of things! We flew too close to the sun and were lucky and pleased to have survived the experience, but it taught us a lot ».
The PS3 experience and its much less stellar sales than those of the PS2 (to date, almost 90 million copies sold compared to the 160 million of the PS2) then pushed Sony to question itself: “ moving to the PS4, we learned things like: buy it, don't build it, if you can. You can manage costs better. You can chat with suppliers, get better deals instead of building your own product “. Lowering ambitions therefore, with the gaming experience as the highest principle: “ Just make it the best gaming machine ever […] I think that's what really made the difference. When the PS4 came out, it pitted us against what Xbox was trying to do. They wanted to create more of a multimedia experience, and we just wanted to create an awesome gaming machine “. With hindsight, the comparison of sales of the PS4 with the Xbox One seems to prove him right (117 million in 2022, compared to 58 million for the Xbox One in June 2023).
