As you might remember, PS3 went through some tough moments throughout its entire history.
The console managed to have a good success overall, by the end of the generation, even though its first couple years on the market were highly disappointing.
In a recent keynote, Shawn Layden, chairman at Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, returned back to those days to share what went wrong internally.
“Many of you know that PlayStation 2 was an industry triumph. It remains one of the best-selling consoles of all time. But coming off the heels of that was PlayStation 3, a stark moment of hubris in the nearly 25 years of PlayStation history,” Layden said.
That’s not something we don’t know about, of course, but it’s nice to hear that coming from the mouth of a Sony exec.
“As we sometimes call it, PS3 was our Icarus moment… For our business, the fall was sharp. We hadn’t listened to our customers.
We created a devilish development environment. We reacted too slowly, and our network was under-developed. And worst of all, if you remember, was the price point.”
Layden was also good in defining the things that allowed PlayStation to make such a huge comeback with PS4.
“We doubled our efforts to develop incredible games and strengthen our partnerships for the next generation,” he revealed.
“We listened to developers and gamers. We listened to Mark Cerny. We created PS4, a console for developers as much as it was for fans”.
Thanks to these efforts, PlayStation 4 has managed to ship around 94 million units in around five years.
Source: GamesIndustry International
