Harrison: 'Nintendo Will Be The Second System'

The fallout from E3 has continued, with a new interview with Sony's president of Worldwide Studios Phil Harrison on consumer website GamePro.com, in which he defends the controversial pricing of the PlayStation 3, and counters Peter Moore’s surprisingly positive comments on the Wii. One of the more unexpected effects of the verbal jousting between Sony and Microsoft has been the use of Nintendo’s Wii console as a political football between the two companies. Microsoft vice president Peter Moore made headlines when, in a Reuters interview last week, he questioned “Why you would buy a $600 PS3?" Suggesting that: “People are going to buy two [consoles]. They're going to buy an Xbox [360] and they're going to buy a Wii ... for the price of one PS3." Moore went further in his praise of Nintendo’s new console with the comment, "People will always gravitate toward a competitively priced product - like what I believe Wii will be - with innovative new designs and great intellectual property like Mario, Zelda and Metroid”. In the GamePro interview, Harrison responded to Moore’s comments by saying, “I think Peter Moore is exactly right. I think Nintendo will be the second system consumers purchase after PlayStation 3." He continued: "I know what Peter was getting at with his price point issue but he's not comparing apples to oranges. He's not even comparing the same kind of food products at all,” he added. “It's clearly a case that PlayStation 3's price is justified by PlayStation 3's value. That's what consumers base their purchasing decisions on - value." In the interview Harrison also responded to suggestions that the cheaper 20GB hard drive versions of the PlayStation 3 would not have full Blu-Ray support. He stated that the only difference between the two hardware versions would be the size of the hard drive, and the use of the digital HDMI connection on the 60GB version and an analog HD component on the 20GB version.