"For any product to gain an installed base it needs two things - a great product, and a good price," he said. "We've clearly got the best product you can get, so there's a big tick in that box. The price - it's a premium product, so therefore it costs a premium price, and that does give us issues in terms of the expected sell-through that analysts and the media want, but actually when you look at it in isolation: close to a million units in a year which is really tough, at a premium price, actually shows that's a great number.

"If you look at the RRP that we've had out there for 2 million units, and compare it to PlayStation One and PlayStation 2, it's amazing that we've got to this kind of level. Actually, I'm really pleased with that - it does show that the premium product was the right strategy to have.

"It also shows that we have potentially more longevity in PlayStation 3 than we had in the previous PlayStations, simply because if the price goes down we've still got a massive market place to sell in to. Really that's testament to the risk that was taken - do you have a fully-loaded feature-set, or do you just go for price?

"If you just go for price at the moment it must mean, by looking at the stats, that the cycle will be shorter for those which are not so forward-facing, compared to PlayStation 3 which has clearly got many years to run."