Feature: SCE CTO On the New PSP
Masa Chatani talks of the PSP capabilities and on the development of the hardware and its games.
Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. took its first steps into the handheld gaming sector on Sunday when it launched its PSP (PlayStation Portable) in Japan. Thousands of people queued through the night to buy one of the devices and the initial supply of 200,000 units sold out in less than a day.
We sit down with Masa Chatani, chief technical officer and corporate executive of SCEI, to talk about the PSP and what it means to his company.
Gamepro: Sony has said it will prepare 200,000 units for launch and 100,000 units per week for the next three weeks. What are your production plans for next year and the launches in the U.S. and Europe?
Masa Chatani: It's already ramping to prepare for Europe, U.S. and other territories and we already announced we plan to launch in U.S. and Europe by the end of our fiscal year, which is at the end of March, so we are trying to achieve that schedule right now.
GP: The handheld market is new for Sony. What is its biggest challenge for you?
MC: This is battery operated. I think we overcame the technical obstacles and made long-life batteries.
GP: Was battery life one of the biggest issues you faced in designing it?
MC: Our PSP is a very high-performance architecture and normally those high-performance CPUs need a lot of power. We tried to have a more intelligent power control mechanism to minimize the power consumption to give 4 to 6 hours of play and movies.
GP: Does the battery life depend on the game being played?
MC: Some games may use more disc access or WiFi connection, which requires more power.
GP: If I'm using a game that is heavily dependant on disc access and WiFi the battery life will be around 4 hours?
MC: Yes, around four-ish.
GP: What do you think are the key features of the PSP?
MC: The first thing they will be impressed with the PSP is the image quality. We introduced a wide-screen LCD for this product--a very beautiful LCD that people have never seen before. They will also be impressed with the quality of the games, more than PS2 in some sense. Also, it has WiFi capability so that means you can connect to you friends over the wireless network. By taking advantage of the WiFi network, game design can be different from the conventional console because its not necessary to share a screen.
GP: What type of customer will be attracted?
MC: In general we always target everyone with a product but each game may have a targeted audience.
GP: Nintendo talks about "gamer-drift" and says the game software market is decreasing as people move away from games to other forms of entertainment. What's your view?
MC: It might be a macro-issue because the number of young people is decreasing. When we take a train, people are playing games on cell phones. In that sense, the audience may be increasing because they play games if they have appropriate product. So I think we just didn't have the appropriate product to satisfy them.
GP: What's your proposition to people who play games on cellular telephones?
MC: One thing is the quality of the games.We are planning to support the video and audio content as well. People who are interested in contents other than games will have a strong motivation to play videos and movies when they commute.
GP: What are you plans in the audio and video space?
MC: We are still in discussion with various digital contents publishers. That will include the studios in Hollywood and labels in New York. They are all pretty much interested in publishing their content on PSP. This is a huge opportunity for them because they already have the content on DVD and its easier to bring the content to PSP.
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