Sony Responds To July NPD Sales, Seems Pleased

The PlayStation brand had a pretty darn good month, as it continues to cool off from strong Metal Gear Solid 4 sales, with over 600,000 things named PlayStation sold in the U.S. last month. Sony Computer Entertainment America responded to those NPD figures today, citing "strong momentum" — one of our favorite intangibles — and flooding us with growth percentages.

The first percentage of note is the 99% year-to-date hardware sales growth of the PS3. SCEA also wows us with a 206% figure, which one can apply to year-to-date software sales on that platform. Stop! We're already getting dizzy!

We'll just let the soothing words and overhyphenating of CEO Jack Tretton finish the post off. He says "Our year-to-date sales growth of 99% for the PS3 reaffirms that consumers are indeed embracing PS3 as their entertainment hub-of-choice with its feature-rich offerings like Blu-ray and our recently announced video delivery service." Full percentage peppered gloat after the jump.

Speaking with a group of game writers earlier this week SCEA head Jack Tretton talked briefly about how Sony Computer Entertainment has benefited under the shift from Ken Kutaragi to Kaz Hirai.

Specifically, he talked about the promise that Sony's regions would be a bit more antonymous under Hirai.

"There is no question that Kutaragi-san ruled with an iron fist, but it was his vision," Tretton said. "In terms of how we went to market in region, that was anonymous."

PS3 Press Conference Rehearsal Crashed By Mystery Blogger

Shrine auditorium security grabbed an overly eager blogger from his third-floor balcony perch during a recent Sony E3 press conference dress rehearsal, SCEA head Jack Tretton said.

Sony was working their way through a dry run of the upcoming Playstation press conference when someone noticed that what they were saying and doing was showing up on an unnamed site.

Tretton Explains the Long Road to Home

Sony's ambitious virtual world has been so long in coming because it was for a time lost in a no-man's land between software and hardware developement, said SCEA president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America Jack Tretton.

"I think it is in no-man's land," he said. "We know how to develop software, we know how to develop hardware. But Home is not a software title and it's not necessarily a service. It kind of sat in the Worldwide Studio Group, but it really needed a lot of software support. It didn't get wok on that until more recently."

"There was a lot of learning and naivety."

Tretton: Sony Considering PSP with Harddrive

Sony has thought about and continues to play around with the idea of building a Playstation Portable with a built in hard drive or internal memory, Jack Tretton, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, said this morning at a gather of game writers.

"I think we definitely thought about it," he said. "I think that's the trend moving forward."

With the recently announced ability to purchase movies on a Playstation 3 and move them over to a Playstation Portable, and as the cost of memory continues to drop, the chance that a new Playstation Portable would include some sort of internal storage option is becoming increasingly likely, Tretton said.

Sony Responds To April NPD Sales, Seems Pleased

The PlayStation 3 may have finished (well) behind the Wii and (a smidge) lower than the Xbox 360 for the month of April, but that doesn't mean that we'll bat an eyelash when Sony sends us a statement that kicks off with "PS3 Continues Blockbuster Year." Fortunately for SCEA, it has triple the hardware representation, letting it flex carefully chosen figures like "total PlayStation hardware sales" topping 505,363 units sold in April.

Sony compared much of its performance to itself—well, its former self—as it touts 127% year-over-year sales growth on the PS3 hardware, with software up 410% over the previous April. That looks impressive! In other crazy percentages, Sony notes that 23.6% of PS3 owners bought a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV in April, a "29.0% higher attach rate for the title than Xbox 360." Stop! I'm getting dizzy!

"PS3 momentum is fueled by enthusiasm for Blu-ray as the definitive high def standard and the growing number of consumers gearing up for some of the most anticipated titles of the year, exclusively for PS3, including the June release of Metal Gear Solid 4, and other great exclusives in the second half on the year, such as Resistance 2, SOCOM: Confrontation and LittleBigPlanet to name a few," said SCEA prez Jack Tretton. "With exciting PlayStation Network innovations and our strongest console-driving titles of the year still on the horizon, PS3 remains on pace for a breakthrough year.” Enjoy the full statement after the jump.

SCEA Boss Understandably Chuffed Over Blu-Ray Triumph

The emergence of Blu-ray as the de facto high definition standard is one more reason why PS3 is a great value to consumers...The combination of strong sales, Blu-ray dominance and widely-anticipated games all point to 2008 as a breakthrough year for PS3.

Sony Responds To January NPD Sales, Seems Pleased

Microsoft may have suffered heavily on the hardware side this January due to stock shortages, but Sony isn't going to put an asterisk by its win over Microsoft. It starts off its corporate statement on last month's U.S. sales by pointing out that the PlayStation 3 outsold the Xbox 360 by 17%, boasting of "continued momentum" for the console. Increased PlayStation Network downloads and nearly 3 million PSN accounts, corporate says, illustrate that momentum.

The rest of the statement covers not just the PS3, but the PlayStation "brand" which, Sony says, was number one in both hardware and software in January. The company also chose to focus on its upcoming library, with SCEA CEO Jack Tretton commenting "We have an exceptionally diverse lineup of exclusive games, from Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Resistance 2 to more mainstream games such as LittleBigPlanet and SingStar." What? No Killzone 2, Jack?

For the full statement, packed with selective data, read on.

Next-Gen Picks Top Ten Blunders Of 2007

"Best of" awards are fun, sure, but it's the screw ups that give us the most joy during the depressing holidays, not the accolades. Watching others fail so spectacularly makes our own lack of accomplishment that much less memorable. Fortunately, Next-Gen knows what we like and have rounded up the year's biggest blunders in its latest list, which not only includes the familiar Sony blackballing incident from March, but also touches on other fun and interesting topics like the dismissal of Jeff Gerstmann and the whirlwind of confusion surrounding this year's PlayStation 3 SKU confusion. Even better are trips down memory lane with execs Shane Kim and Jack Tretton.

I won't spoil number one, but it's certainly the most expensive of the lot. Let loose the finger pointing and HAHA-ing!

TOP 10 BLUNDERS OF 2007 [Next-Gen - thanks, Duane!]

Sony Pleading To Keep Third Parties On PS3

Jack Tretton Says Dropping BC Wasn't For Cost Measures

Tretton Says Follow Heart, Not Trends

Sony Says PS3 Sales Up 135% On Price Drop

Responding to recently released NPD hardware sales data for June, Sony Computer Entertainment America reps praised itself for $393 million in sales, with PLAYSTATION 3 unit sales up 21% over the previous month. The company's PSP saw a 31% sales increase, year over year. The entire PlayStation family of products saw a 21% boost in total dollars year over year. God, my head is spinning from all the carefully chosen percentages!

However, the most interesting news was a preliminary look at PS3 sales following the pre-E3 pseudo-price drop to $499.

Tretton: Wii Is To Lollipop As PS3 Is To Surf 'N' Turf

Our Exclusive Tretton Interview

I had a chance to meet with Jack Tretton and Kaz Hirai during their now annual blogger event. It's kind of a neat idea. Sony gathers together a bunch of bloggers for an open meeting with an assortment of Sony executives.

The first such event, held at GDC, was quite amazing. Not only was there a pretty wide selection of Sony folks on hand, they were just as interested in hearing what we had to say as we were in what they had to say. So it was more like a chat than an interview.

This time around things seemed more like a straight-up interview. I ended up not really asking that much because Sony had been kind enough to set up a one-on-one interview for us with Jack Tretton earlier in the day.

Kaz had some interesting things to say, in particular he said that in his new role with the company he's trying to afford the regional presidents more control or at least say over what's going on in their area.

"One of the things I've tried to start changing is giving more autonomy, decision power to the regional headquarters," he said in the group meeting.

As always, I asked about the PSP download service, my now years long pet-peeve. Kaz said that they are "looking at a variety of ways of brining a video download service and a music service to the PS3 as well as the PSP." He also made a good point about the delay. He said that they couldn't launch a PSP service that didn't also include the PS3 and because of that there have been some hang-ups.

"Given the fact we want to make sure we are integrating the experience, we want to make it a PSP, PS3 experience, we can't look at it in a vacuum. It's is a bit of a hardware transition issue. This is the reality of being in the business of both a console and a portable... the ingredients are all in place."

Hit up Joystiq which was kind enough to transcribe a redacted version of the full interview, or you can check out or exclusive one-on-one interview with Tretton after the jump, broken down into bite-sized videos.