Braben showers PS3 with love

November 14th, 2006, 21:49 Posted By: wraggster

David Braben, who also created classics like Zarch and Virus and more recently new Theme Park-style PS2 outing Thrillville, believes that Sony has got some key decisions absolutely right, despite widespread criticism of the company's approach to the PS3 launch.

Braben, who's also working on the next-gen political thriller The Outsider told CVG, "I'm very wary ...at the moment there's a fashion to knock Sony and I think it's a big mistake. The fact that they have succeeded very well twice, they're one of the few companies to have gone outside core gamers. Don't write them off."

The Elite creator compared the current situation to the days of Sega's ill-fated Dreamcast saying, "The Dreamcast was a great machine but it was really killed by the press and the industry before it got out. It was a perception thing."

However Braben believes that Sony's decision to forgo a closed Microsoft Xbox Live service could prove a big win for the embattled company and could also be a key component of the PS3's success.

"I think the important thing with PS3 is it could do very very well. It's got the web browser and people are saying, 'yeah big deal' but it's the philosophy behind it, the fact that you can go to any site ...for example you know Phil Harrison demoing YouTube on the machine.

"That shows a very different [approach]. It's not a narrow gateway, highly controlled by one person. A game can drive you to a specific site for that game, with tons of stuff to download for it for example. I think that is very very positive."

Braben - echoing Ken Kutaragi's own assertions - also argued that outside of the hardcore gamers, the wider public might perceive the PS3 not so much as an expensive gaming machine, but rather a cheap personal computer or a hybrid of the two.

"When you put it together with the fact that it supports a keyboard and things like that, people may start to regard it more as a cheap PC than an expensive console. Or a new thing that's somewhere in between."

Finally Braben had words of love for the PS3's next gen DVD, concluding, "Blu-ray? People are writing [it] off way too early. I think that's extremely exciting, I want one. "

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