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June 29th, 2012, 02:03 Posted By: wraggster
Sony chief executive Kaz Hirai has marked the PlayStation business as one of three key divisions that can help Sony move forwards.
 SCE Group CEO Andrew HouseThe challenge is intense. In May Sony revealed a record annual loss of £3.6 billion, marking its fourth successive year in the red and outlining the almighty challenge the entertainment empire faces in turning fortunes around.Andrew House, who has fast-tracked up the ranks at Sony and now runs its global games division, believes the PlayStation firm can provide buoyancy to Sony's business. In the interview with CVG below he explains why.
When we spoke late last year we discussed Sony's difficult year and since then we've seen the aftermath in terms of restructuring to some Sony divisions outside PlayStation. Do you feel you're through the worst of it?
There's obviously a heightened sense of concern and urgency in the company, given the overall financial situation. I think amongst the management team, there is a feeling that a new team is in place. It's working extremely well together. I think Kaz [Hirai, former PlayStation executive and now Sony CEO] has been very clear about communicating that sense of urgency, and gone are the days when individual divisions' concerns would somehow overreach the major challenges of the organisation overall.
So on the positive side, there's a tremendous sense of teamwork and a sense of shared objective, which is to turn around the situation we have right now. And I think we benefit from some very strong clarity from Kaz, both internally and externally, and with the same message to both. "One Sony" is the mantra: it's about pulling together the resources of the company in the best way possible, and with no fiefdoms and no infighting to be tolerated. There's a sense that Kaz is a change-agent: he has absolutely set out his mantra that Sony will change and he will change Sony.
Where does this leave Sony Computer Entertainment?
We benefit from the fact that we are a profitable part of the company and are making a strong contribution to the financial situation. We feel very strongly that the area of networked and interactive entertainment is one of very strong potential growth.
That was reinforced when, as part of his very first strategy briefing, Kaz was very clear about three core areas of the business which he felt were critical to growing Sony's presence overall. We're fortunate enough to be one of those core businesses. That comes with pressure, obviously, in terms of being able to deliver, but we're in a spot where we are making a profitable contribution, and there are opportunities for us to invest in the future.
 Sony's 2012 E3 press conference was widely regarded as the best of the three platform holdersHow do you feel things went for you at E3? There were plenty of exclusive PS3 games, and the Wonderbook came out of nowhere - getting JK Rowling on board for that was a coup.We were very pleased with the showing that we were able to put together. There are a few things that I would point to - not just exclusives -- but the opportunity to deliver three potential new IPs in the sixth year of a platform's cycle is a huge testament to [PlayStation Worldwide Studios director] Shuhei Yoshida.
I think it's also a testament to the longevity of the platform itself. So seeing Beyond from David Cage and Quantic Dream, seeing the Last of Us from Naughty Dog, and then the one that I chose to announce personally, Wonderbook, coming from the London Studios was a pretty good showing for a platform at this point of its lifecycle. I'm very enthusiastic about Wonderbook, and it was in part why I wanted to make the announcement.
For me, there's something a little bit magical about it in terms of - as I said on stage - taking one of the oldest information interfaces that we know, which is the book, and then somehow, through the magic of brand-new technology and AR, bringing it to life. I'm a big reader, and I was a big reader as a kid, and I think there's something child-like about fulfilling that dream of bringing books to life.
We were very, very fortunate that JK Rowling herself shared our enthusiasm for the potential of Wonderbook, and that enthusiasm grew to the degree that she has been creating new content for the first launch of Book of Spells, which is absolutely fantastic.
There are a couple of other business-related points I'd like to make about Wonderbook. We think it's a very interesting model, because we're launching with Book of Spells - we thought it was very important to come out with something associated with an extremely strong franchise and a great story-teller - but the beauty of the platform and the way it's set up is that it provides a pretty easy development environment for lots of other forms of content to be generated pretty cost-effectively.
If I look at the value proposition from a parent's point of view, hopefully we've got a large amount of people now who have a PS3 and PlayStation Eye. The book itself is a single purchase - one of the early lines was "One book, 1,000 experiences". And then there's the opportunity to refresh that content: I think we'll be able to deliver a fair amount of variety in a quick period of time, and hopefully at price-points that the average parent won't baulk at.
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