Harrison: Xbox 360 Not Part Of True HD Era

In a recent interview with consumer game site Eurogamer, Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison has sharply criticized Microsoft's next-gen Xbox 360 hardware by saying that the console's claims of hi-definition graphic capabilities are not entirely accurate. "PlayStation 3 is the only format that has 1080-progressive, which is the true definition of HD," Harrison said, "so it's really premature to be talking about the HD era. The HD era really only starts when we are on the market." The Xbox 360 supports a maximum resolution of 1080i, but true 1080-progressive output, to be featured in the PS3, is something of a rarity in the consumer market. This is true even for Sony's consumer electronics, since only two of the company's thirty-one current so-called HDTVs support it. Elsewhere in the interview, Harrison said that this latest generation of game consoles has managed to attract actual mass-market appeal, rather than just the "hardcore gamer", meaning that the market is every-expanding, a good thing for all concerned. He noted: "There is inevitably some element of the demographic that gets younger, but the reality is that it just gets wider. You see, some element of PlayStation 2 being handed down to younger members of the family when older brother or sister buys a PlayStation 3 - we saw that with PSone - but what we also saw with PSone is that it just gets wider; we get 78-year-olds enjoying games as well as three and four-year-olds." "I think that one of the things our industry's achieved in the last generation cycle is genuine mass-market acceptance," said Harrison, "and the average age of a PlayStation user is kind of an irrelevance now - it's really as prevalent as watching television."