SCEA CEO Jack Tretton's recent soundbite offering $1,200 for any PlayStation 3 still sitting on store shelves made him the Internet Man of the Hour on gaming blogs and cartoon sites.
In a more recent interview inside the April issue of GamePro, Tretton responds to criticism from Internet blogs with a little criticism of his own, saying, "We have a new phenomenon as well in recent years, something we didn't have during the PlayStation or PlayStation 2. And that is everybody is a journalist - if you have a PC, then you're a journalist. There are a lot of people weighing in with opinions who are just individual consumers, a very small and vocal group of consumers, that just want everything for free. I'd love that to be the case, but that's not how the world works."
Despite critics' observations that the PS3 is selling slower than the competition, Tretton expressed much pleasure in the sales performance of the new console, pointing out that the PS3 reached a million units sold faster than the uber-successful PS2. "But [critics] are microscopically looking at the first sixty or eighty days," he said. "In reality, the fact that people were paying thousands of dollars for the PS3 on eBay supports the message that they see the value in it and they want it."
One topic of constant debate amongst bloggers is the high price of the PS3. Tretton said nothing to argue against that sentiment, but added that it's costing Sony a pretty penny too. "$599 is a lot of money, but it's the world's worst-kept secret that we're selling it at a significant investment from Sony. The consumer is investing for $599, but we're investing along with them," he said. "We're hoping that investment will return profitability to us over time as we manufacture more and more units."
"For [$599], the consumer will see that paid off in time in spades. You could get a machine that costs less money, but if you're not happy with the games or if the system becomes obsolete in less than five years, you won't think about how much you saved but how much you wasted," Tretton states. "Those PlayStations and PlayStation 2s paid off for ten years, and [so will the PS3]. I'll stack our $599 price tag and our technology against our competition all day long."
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