Phil Harrison talks about homebrew, PS3-exclusives, and PS3 price drop

Posted Apr 21, 2007 at 8:41PM by QJ Staff Listed in: Interviews Tags: firmware updates, Immersion Corporation, Phil Harrison, Sony
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Phil Harrison - Image 1Over at Slashdot, they have featured a short Q&A session with Sony Computer Entertainment honcho, Phil Harrison. In spite of his busy schedule, he managed to thoroughly answer the readers' inquiries...that says a lot about him, right? The questions range from the personal (how he got into the business), the interesting (the homebrew scene and the rumble feature for the SIXAXIS), and the deep (gaming philosophy).

Let's focus with the interesting bits, shall we? Anonymous Coward, maynard, and flitty asked him this question - "if someone manages to get homebrew games running on the PS3, will there be firmware updates?... How does this strategy differ your strategy with PSP homebrew?" To that, he says:

I fully support the notion of game development at home using powerful tools available to anyone...It's a vital, crucial aspect of the future growth of our industry and links well to the subtext of my earlier answers. When I started making games on the Commodore 64 in the 1980's...I might share this with a few friends but not for commercial gain at that time. But the process itself was invaluable in helping me learn to program, to design graphics, animations or sounds and was really the way I opened doors to get into the industry.


Now, those industry doors are largely closed by the nature of the video game systems themselves being closed. So, if we can make certain aspects of PS3 open to the independent game development community, we will do our industry a service by providing opportunities for the next generation of creative and technical talent. Now having said all that, we still have to protect the investment and intellectual property rights of the industry so we will always seek the best ways to secure and protect our devices from piracy and unauthorized hacking that damages the business.


Now Sciros posted a very good question - retaining PS3-exclusives. Are they worried that previously exclusive games are going multiplatform? Phil says that their main concern is "to make sure those games (the selection of meaningful PS3 exclusives) are absolutely the best they can be".

As for the first party controller with rumble question asked by SuperCharlie, Mr. Harrison said that it's a little to early to tell since they have just resolved their legal issues with Immersion. And of course, when talking about the PS3, the question about the price drop is unavoidable. To that, he answered with a simple "we have no plans to drop the price".

Check out the personal and deep bits of the Q&A by clicking on our Read link below.

 
 
 

Comments [refresh]

by Squake - 2007-04-21 15:25
» 1st

I GET MUNEY ER DAY ER DAY I DOES



lulz

by Squake - 2007-04-21 15:27
» Fine then...

Great article! :)

by Peetstaman - 2007-04-21 15:33
» haha

not really lol told us absolutely nothing. The bit about homebrew was interesting though

by boobs - 2007-04-21 15:37
» woot woot woot

Piracy's the only problem with homebrew. Other than that, yeah it'd be great to be allow users the freedom to get the most out of their purchase. That damn ps3's an expensive and can't even do as much as a homebrew enabled psp. That tells you something right there.

by Oh - 2007-04-21 15:40
» Dark did it again

Dark_AleX PS3 OE has been out!

by psphackman - 2007-04-21 16:25
» O?

So he does support homebrew

by fdsafdsa - 2007-04-21 16:32
» fdsafdsa

Lol @ Sony for thinking people will buy PS3 for blu-ray drive. Fail. I demand a new system, minus blu-ray, plus rumble controller, at xbox360 price. Please. I don't like gay Wii or gay 360. They both suck. PS3 has good series that shouldn't suffer from dumb people at Sony.

by Someone_PR - 2007-04-21 17:09
» hmmm

Ok... I'm with you for that I don't the wii but is for different audience than me... like the ds but anyway... the blue-ray in the ps3 isn't a mistake.. in fact... is the most selling blue ray player in the maket not because is the most chepear.. is the best one.. plus the gaming and everything else... why 360 elite isn't with the hd dvd? because he don't want a hd player attach it ti it and maybe that format will not win... anayway it will be worse if they lose the next gen war that the hd format war.... by the way.. anyway I have a 360 and a psp... I will buy a PS3.. maybe.. when metal gears come and tekken... and if they make the network better and the browser... and for homebrew... anyone knows they want it... the piracy is just the problem... people said is just a 1% of the psp owners but is a percent that the depelopers are not willing to lose anyway...

by Extinction - 2007-04-21 17:32
» Lol @ Sony for thinking people will buy PS3 for blu-ray drive.

I did

by CHUCKINGROCKSATSPACESHIPS - 2007-04-21 17:37
» What The F*** Was That About?

You can't make up your mind which is better?

by Dude!!! - 2007-04-21 19:03
» Dude!!!

Come on who will spend 7 to 8 hours downloading games for the ps3..... you got to be kidding me...



I seriously think that the price of the PS3 its right not just because of the blu-ray.. its because of everything inside the PS3... the 360 doesn't have wireless build in so thas another 80 to 100 dollars come on you need to think my friend.

by my name - 2007-04-21 19:42
» my subject

my comment:



I would

by nio - 2007-04-21 20:11
» I would

It also only takes me no more than 30 minutes to download a game from the PSN Store. Average is about 15 minutes.

by bah - 2007-04-21 20:15
» hehe yeh

But a wifi adapter are very cheap to produce now no?, MS made their choice only to use it as an external device, i dunno why they're so pricey only for a USB wifi adapter, maybe coz of the RAW materials they use?... i'm just guessing.



Yeah i also disappointed about the PS3's Playstation Shop it took me an hour to download 572MB Tekken 5 DR, it usualy takes about 20 minutes or so maybe due to too many people downloading other things from the same server?..



besides, the wifi on the PS3 is very handy via remote play for me to keep an eye on my downloads while im doing something else like watching TV. could use up the time doing something else than wait.



Homebrew is another thing, to put it in simple terms Phil mentoned that sony does support homebrew but only the legit side of it not for example Dark Alex's OE firmwares if you know what i mean ;) *DAX rulez!*



bluray is expensive, because of the recycled materials they used aren't cheap? i dunno, it's a good idea producing such a huge capacity future games will take full advantage fill them up with nice graphics etc. some games we see now that are out doesn't even fill up

slowly and surely more games will be looking more nicer than what we see now.



This is like PC gaming, games of today they use up alot of memory like C&C3 *10gb?* i remember C&C for DOS uses 1000s times less memory than that we can see games are using much more memory capacity than they usualy do, just to improve graphics, sound, videos, etc.



bah i talk too much!

by Zarfoz - 2007-04-21 20:16
» Oldish

Old news...

by Dr Egg - 2007-04-22 00:53
» :(

Link is broken

by Emotionless- - 2007-04-22 08:20
» well just wait

there already (its obvious) going to work on a rumble controller, blu-ray is good to me, id rather hav a HD quality thing built in than buy it at da store (like da 360 which is $200) unlike the 360's halfas5 system the ps3 is full, all we need to do is wait for the games and Home in september, then i think ull hav wat u want, because by than itll hav the online all fixed up

by M$Hater - 2007-04-22 12:28
» Price

The reason the PS3 is $200 more than an Xblows 270.



1. Internal Bluray Hi-def Disk Drive.



2. Leading edge CELL Processor - Built from the ground up. Completely new processor. Only used right now in the PS3. They have to recoup dev, marketing, sales, operating costs, until it goes into other commercial products. The price per chip is very expensive right now for the cell.



3. Built-in Wifi. Although seems inexpensive, it does contribute to the price difference.



4. Built-in media card reader. Another inexpensive item, but does contribute to a price rise, when it's not included it the other machine.



Take the above items, which are not included in the Xbox 360, and add them in, then see what the price of an Xbox 360 would be. Of course replacing the bluray with a HD-DVD. It would be comparable to a PS3, if not more.

by Selluloid - 2007-04-22 15:02
» yes thats right

PS3 may be expensive but its only because SONY put alot of hard work into making this possible. To let us play beyond the limits, but everyone seems to want go beyond the beyond. So yeah reason why its expensive its because its awesome .I personally perfer homebrew if its legal.

by Hellraiser - 2007-04-22 23:10
» sure

just not the useful kind of homebrew or the kind that keeps you from buying the pathetic PS3 games available.

by Retard fanboy hater - 2007-04-22 23:23
» Why the POS3 is not worth $200 more (consumers agree, just look at sales!)

1. $200 unnecessary blu ray support donation required that has no gaming advantage, just sony profit advantage.

2. Overhyped, underperforming "leading edge" CELL my ass. Does anybody know how to "realize it's true power" yet? Hell, it's so advanced nobody knows how to use it or exactly how advanced it is besides sony! But you can trust sony, it's an advanced supercomputer right?

3. Built in wifi - sure, out of 2.5 million PS3s, only 600,000 have registered online accounts despite the free service. If half the online users need wi-fi, only 12% of the people that are forced to pay more for it actually use it!

4. Built in memory card reader? They are like $15 at wall mart! Who gives a s*it?



Take the above fantard, give him a good smacking several times a day, let him try an XBOX 360 and some of the great games it offers, then notice how he loses interest in a PS3.

by Typhon_Inc - 2007-04-23 02:21
» Too much Hating

1. blu ray's advantage is the 50 GB capacity; a year from now all that extra capacity will show its worth over DVD.

2. Developers are coding for the CELL, just because Retard, (fanboy hater) can%u2019t figure it out doesn%u2019t mean the professionals cant.

3. Retard, FbH - keep you facts straight, 1.3 million users of the 3.2 units sold have registered online. Around the same percentage of 360 users that are online (3 mil of the 9.7 sold.)

4. A card reader is a card reader. Perhaps Wal-Mart should give one away with the 360?



To the self labeled Retard who is a fanboy hater; have you played a PS3? My house owns all three consoles; it%u2019s only the 360 that is collecting dust.

by Retard fanboy hater - 2007-04-23 05:53
» ?

So you believe there is 1.3M online users suddenly after just last week sony announced they had a mere 600,000 users?

Never said they couldn't figure out the cell, just who would want to? It's general purpose computing power sucks.

Never cared about blu ray, never will. We'll just see next year what new badass game can fit on a DVD9 that takes triple the storage on a PS3.

by Jack_Jackington - 2007-05-05 14:30
» RE: fdsafdsa

if sony didnt offer blu-ray drive, no one would be able to play PS3 games. u r a genius, dingus

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