House: “It would be absolutely great” to pass 360 globally

By Stephany Nunneley

SCEE president, CEO and CFO of SCEE, has told VG247 it would be “absolutely great” if PS3 were to pass Xbox 360 in sales globally.

Speaking with Patrick Garratt at gamescom following Sony’s presentation yesterday, House said there is no massive graph with lines representing PS3 or Xbox 360 racing across it at Sony HQ in Europe, and if there is one anywhere, he has no idea it exists.

Apparently, while it’s important for Sony to succeed and best its rivals, the company instead wants to maintain focus on the consumer, and offering its products at a great value, instead of constantly focusing on the numbers.

“At the risk of sounding parochial, I think my focus since coming on board is doing the best we can for European consumers, and we’re seeing significant advances here versus both of our competitors,” said House. “I guess that’s sort of the primary area of focus. But if I were to forced to say it, well, yes, it would be absolutely great for that to happen.”

As far as PS3 sales and the surge in figures post the Slim’s release are concerned, House and Sony are pleased with its performance, and feel between it and the new hardware SKUs, the console will surpass company projections once more.

“I think we took up our projections last year when we began to see the initial impact on sales and I think the next interesting measurement point for us, is as we move post gamescom into an almost like-for-like value proposition in terms of pricing with the hard drive enhancements and then seeing how the market is,” he said.

“My sense right now is we’re going to be ahead of plan, even beyond projections for this year. I have such a strong sense of momentum and thanks to the feedback I’m getting from my territory managers and from retail, I think what is really encouraging is my colleges in the US are really bullish for their numbers this year.

“It is always a bit dangerous, perhaps, to talk about tipping points, but I think we reached a tipping point when we reached the 299 price point. That was just a significant event.”

Our full interview with Andrew House will be up shortly.