SCEE's Reeves Discusses European PS3 Strategy

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) president David Reeves has spoken at length about the recent price cuts in America and Europe and the importance of the upcoming Christmas sales period, in a new interview on semi-official blog Three Speech. Questioned on why Europe received a new PlayStation 3 bundle, including an extra controller and two free games, rather than the price cut seen in the U.S., Reeves suggested that the console’s later release in Europe was partially the reason, with the console having been on the market for less than four months. “Our thought process was: ‘Wait a minute – we’re actually not doing too badly – we’re not selling as well as Wii or DS – but seasonality-wise, compared to, say, PS2 at the same time we launched it in 2001, we’re actually doing quite well on a regional level’”, said Reeves. “It’s exactly the target that we sought. July is not really a gamers’ month unless you get a big, big title. So we thought if we reduced the price, we’d annoy a lot of people,” he added. “We did think about it, but we also felt that it wasn’t doing that badly. In the U.S., they’ve been going for more than six months, so they took the decision that going down in price was a better thing to do than a value pack.” Reeves went on to hint that a UK price cut could well occur before Christmas this year, but refused to give any definitive statement, indicating that it “would get me into tremendous hot water”. He also suggested that this Christmas would not be as critical in terms of success for the various next generation consoles as Christmas 2008. “I see this more as kind of like a tsunami – it starts small and gathers speed, and eventually, after four or five years, it will start to take you over. At least, that’s the way we’ve mapped it out. We’re not necessarily trying to take a scatter-gun approach with all the top titles just before Christmas.” Finally, in regards to forthcoming but as yet unannounced titles, Reeves commented: “We now have, every quarter, something called Gameshow where we all get together globally and look at what Worldwide Studios are producing. Now, we don’t see every game at every session, but every session, we see five or six new IPs which we can rate. I can, hand on heart, say that there are six or seven such games, coming in the next 18 months, which are absolutely spectacular.”