[This post is the third in a series that recounts the chain of questions and answers I solicited from the people I interviewed during E3. I asked each of my interviewees to ask a question of the next one. Hence: Chain Interview.]

In a hotel room suite on the Wednesday of E3 week, I asked the next chain interview question to Sony's Peter Dille. He had just let me play Gran Turismo on his white PSPGo and answered a batch of questions about Sony's E3 showing. Dille was happy to answer Schappert's question, but admitted to having trouble doing so simply due to a lack of regular use of Xbox Live.

Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing for Sony Computer Entertainment of America responds: "I don't spend a lot of time on it… Xbox Live has been out for a while and Microsoft's done a really good job getting people involved in online gaming. And that's good news for the industry."

Dille surprised me, and I told him so. I thought he would have made a remark about Microsoft charging for online play, but he didn't take the bait. Instead, he took the opportunity to keep the chain going for my next interview, located on floor below.

Peter Dille asks Sony Computer Entertainment vice president of product development Scott Rohde: "What advantages do you see in developing for PS3 compared to other platforms?"

Armed with that query, I headed over to Rohde's room. We talked about Sony's U.S. studios, whose efforts he oversees. He let me videotape his PSPgo's sliding action. And then I lobbed him the softball.

Scott Rohde responds "What developers have discovered over the past three years — you've heard [Sony Computer Entertainment president] Kaz [Hirai] make reference to this in other interviews — it's kind of the machine that just keeps giving. As you peel off new layers of the onion, you kind of find out more capabilities that the machine can do. When people start taking advantage of the [PS3's seven] SPUs and the Cell [processor] they really find that, \Wow, we can throw more and more tasks and processes at those SPUs and we have all this freedom on the main processor to do more.'"

I pointed out to Rohde that Dille was asking for a comparison to other platform. His answer implied that the same kinds of things couldn't be said about the other major consoles. Fair? "Absolutely," he replied.

My next interview later in the day would be with Microsoft's corporate vice president of strategy and business development for the company's interactive entertainment division. That'd be Shane Kim, former head of first-party game development for the Xbox 360. This would be Sony's chance to turn things back on Microsoft and keep the chain connected. Question, please?

Rohde prefaced his question by noting that I always ask him about sports games, largely because Rohde used to run Sony's San Diego studio which produces the PlayStation's basketball and basebell games.

Scott Rohde asks Shane Kim: "[Stephen] identifies me as a sports guy and, at heart, I am. I would love to know if Microsoft has any thoughts about getting back into first-party sports development."

Shane Kim's answer, and more links in the chain – including the most awkward question of the week – will run here tomorrow.

[Scott Rohde Pic via GameTrailers]

[This post is the second in a series that recounts the chain of questions I solicited from the people I interviewed during E3. I asked each of my interviewees to ask a question of the next one. Hence: Chain Interview.]

Yoshio Sakamoto, longtime designer of many Metroid games responds: "I want him to be there forever. [pause] That's quite a question!"

Sakamoto gave me this answer over much laughter. But Miyamoto had it easy, asking a question of one of his co-workers. Sakamoto had a tougher challenge. I explained that I was next going to interview Xbox Live software and services corporate vice president John Schappert (aka the guy who delivered most of Microsoft's E3 press briefing.) I needed a question. Sakamoto, through his translator, obliged.

Yoshio Sakamoto asks Microsoft corporate vice president of Xbox Live software and services John Schappert: "Do you like Metroid?"

And he can't resist throwing in a second question: "Do you like Mr. Miyamoto?"

Later in the day, in a meeting room on the second floor of Microsoft's always-gleaming, always-white E3 Xbox 360 booth, Schappert reached the finish line of my interview with him when I sprang Sakamoto's two questions.

John Schappert responds: "I do like Metroid. And I think Nintendo has made absolutely amazing games. I grew up playing Nintendo. I grew up as a Nintendo SNES programmer… the Metroid on the SNES was phenomenal."

Note that Schappert founded Madden development studio Tiburon and had been making games for multiple hardware generations. The SNES was not an alien object to him. And to the second question about Miyamoto?

"He's my hero. And I proudly have an original Mario drawing that he made for me in my office. He is my inspiration in the industry. I think he crafts some amazing experiences and I think that he is an icon for us all to look up to."

Schappert was my final interview of the day. I'd start the next day with a Sony interview. I needed a Schappert question for it.

John Schappert asks Sony Computer Entertainment of America senior vice president of marketing Peter Dille: "What do you think of Xbox Live?"

Peter Dille's answer will run tomorrow, along with two more links to the chain.

Despite being announced by Hideo Kojima at Monday's Microsoft press conference, Peter Dille, Sony's head of marketing for PlayStation in the U.S., told Kotaku today that the expected hit will also be available for his customers promptly. "Look forward to playing it on a PS3," he said when we inquired if it was a Microsoft exclusive.

Asked if he expected that PS3 owners would be playing Metal Gear Solid Rising on the same day the game comes out on the Xbox 360, Dille said, "Yes, that's correct."

Dille used the question to draw what he sees as a distinction between Sony and its competitors. "I think the difference between our approach in our press conference and our competitors' is that our focus is on exclusive content," Dille said. "When a third party comes on our stage, it's because they have something for our audience that is exclusive. And so whether it's the Assassin's Creed demo where Assassin's Creed [2] might be cross platform, what we're doing with the [weapon-unlocking] functionality between the PS3 and the PSP is a point of difference."

Metal Gear has not abandoned you, Sony fans.

Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment America, tells Gamasutra that third-party publishers were "just about ready to jump off the cliff and pull support for the platform," some of which may be chalked up to massive amounts of PSP software piracy.

Dille says that "piracy has taken out a big chunk of our software sales on PSP" and that the company is pursuing both legal and educational efforts to decrease it.

"It's not good for us, but it's not good for the development community," Dille tells Gamasutra. "We can look at data from BitTorrent sites from the day Resistance: Retribution goes on sale and see how many copies are being downloaded illegally, and it's frankly sickening. We are spending a lot of time talking about how we can deal with that problem."

One of those changes may be a move to more digitally distributed titles, as games like echochrome and Patapon 2 go download only.

Sony: Piracy Has Taken 'Big Chunk Of Game Sales' From PSP [Gamasutra]

Speaking with GameDaily, Sony's Peter Dille has revealed a few user statistics for the service. Did you know, for example, that the average user spends 55 minutes in Home per session? Or that, since launch late last year, there have been four million "users" (which, in any online service where they don't specify "active users" usually means the total number of registered accounts) in Home? You most certainly do now.

So what do those numbers mean for Sony? Bad news first: they either mean there are a lot of PS3 owners who don't connect to the internet, or there are a lot of PS3 owners who simply don't care about Home. Probably a good mix of both, because for a free service pitched as such an important part of the PlayStation Network, four million is a pretty low figure.

And the good news? Well, for those amongst the 4 million who still regularly use the service, an average of 55 minutes per session is surprisingly high. That's a lot of time spent seeing Sony ads and, hopefully, building a Home "community", even if it's not breaking down how much of that time is spent loading spaces, playing games or simply wandering around and chatting/grinding.

Interview: Peter Dille Says Publishers are 'Fired Up' for PlayStation [GameDaily]

UPDATE - Joey over at Virtual World news was kind of enough to let us know that Peter Dille's numbers are old. According to Jack Buser, SCEA's Director of PlayStation Home (who, really, should know), there are five million users, not four. A healthier figure! He also discloses that of that five, 2.2 million are from the US & Canada, suggesting the service is doing a little better in Europe and Japan than it is in North America.

He also confirms that five million is the number of people who have registered an account in Home, not the number of active users, a figure Sony is yet to disclose.

Despite publishers, analysts and consumers calling repeatedly for a price cut on the machine, SCE America's senior vice president of marketing Peter Dille sounds positively fed up with other people telling him how to do his job. "Everybody in the development community would love for the PS3 to be free", Dille told Bloomberg, "so they could just sell razor blades".

Why so huffy? It's an understandable request. After all, razor blades are expensive!

Sony Faces Heat From Game Publishers to Cut PS3 Price [Bloomberg]

We asked each of the companies to write up a welcome letter to new owners of their consoles. They did the rest. We are running them in the order they were received. Stay tuned for Nintendo's welcome letter and check out Microsoft's letter.

And now a word from , Peter Dille, Senior Vice President, Marketing and PlayStation Network, SCEA.

Welcome to the Family…

If you’re one of the many who just opened your PS3 this holiday, welcome to the PlayStation family! We’re thrilled to have you join the millions of people who know that the PS3 will help define their entertainment experiences and deliver the most compelling content for the next decade. Your new PS3 is truly one of the most advanced, reliable and multifaceted gaming systems you’ll ever own. And I’d like to take you under the hood to ensure you’re enjoying the full breadth and depth of what this machine has to offer.

Sophisticated Hardware
Unlike other electronic devices that provide mostly the same feature-set throughout their lifecycle, the PS3 stays up to date with the latest technologies and features as your entertainment needs evolve. We continue to add new features such as BD-Live, an innovative new Trophy system, and remote access to your PS3 with PSP (PlayStation Portable).

PS3 obviously has a built-in Blu-ray player, the defacto next generation high-definition disc medium. Once you’ve experienced the difference in picture and sound quality, you’ll never want to go back to DVD. Blu-ray isn’t just about movies though – it brings an unmatched benefit to gaming that enables the development community to create content and experiences that were only previously imagined, but are now becoming a reality with titles like Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

Beyond gaming and watching movies, you can share your photos, videos, and music with friends and family on the big screen TV right from your PS3. Store and easily access them from your PS3’s hard drive or use the media server feature to stream music, videos and photos from your personal computer to the PS3. Now there’s no longer a need for crowding around a small monitor in the den; the PS3 even offers a fully functional Web browser with Flash Player 9 support – so you can enjoy the full use of the Internet on your TV, again something you can only get on PS3.

Games, Games, Games
We know you’re looking for exclusive content, and PS3 has the best lineup of any platform, full of award-winning games like LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2 and, coming soon, Killzone 2. Games like these truly demonstrate the raw power of the PS3 with their detailed graphics, immense scale, unique online capabilities, and epic gameplay. You can also build your game collection with classics like Assassin's Creed, MotorStorm, Warhawk and Resistance: Fall of Man, which we now offer at “Greatest Hits” pricing for a great value. Layer on top of this our PlayStation Store, which has a vast array of content from hardcore games and add-ons to casual games for everyone, and you immediately realize PS3 is the clear choice for content.

A True Entertainment Network
One of the hidden costs of some other systems on the market is the need to pay a fee for enjoying online gaming. With PlayStation, access to PlayStation Network and online gaming is free. One of the first things you should do when you take your PS3 out of the box is to register for the PlayStation Network - this will be your connection to other PS3 gamers from around the world as well as to access all the downloadable games, add-ons, demos, videos, and content on the PlayStation Network.

Within the PlayStation Network, you can browse the PlayStation Store (either through PS3 or remotely via your PSP) to download exclusive full retail-versions of games like SOCOM: Confrontation and Burnout Paradise as well as unique experiences like echochrome, PAIN and PixelJunk Eden. In addition to the games, the PlayStation Store also offers rental and purchase of Hollywood’s biggest blockbuster movies and popular TV shows in SD and stunning HD resolution, from The Dark Knight to Family Guy.

You’ll also want to create your avatar and take a tour of PlayStation Home. This revolutionary 3D social gaming community is your gateway to meeting and building your network of fellow gamers. It brings to life the more than 17 million people who make up the PlayStation Network community and offers a new way for gamers to connect, add meaning to their friends list, share, and launch into games together – all in high definition. We continue to add new experiences and partners to Home from spaces dedicated to the industry’s top games to uniquely branded spaces like the EA Sports Complex.

From the Living Room to the Plane to the Hotel and Back
You’re probably like many of our users, always on the go to school, to work, or on a trip. Now more than ever, being able to take your entertainment content with you is not a nice to have, it’s a must have. We’ve made it extremely easy to do just that with the connectivity between the PS3 and PSP. With PSP’s built-in Wi-Fi capabilities and the remote play functionality enables you to remotely access your entertainment and media stored on the PS3 – from playing games to queuing up and starting movies for download, it’s really that easy.

I know I’ve given you a lot of information to absorb, but the best part is that this is just the beginning of what your new PS3 can do. We’re just getting warmed up, and we have a lot of great content on the way in 2009. We’re dedicated to providing you a truly comprehensive and interactive entertainment solution, and I’m sure you’ll agree that the PS3 is a powerful machine that offers the best content available. To stay connected and updated with everything PlayStation, remember to read our official blog.

We want to welcome you again to the PlayStation family, and I’m looking forward to your feedback.

-Peter Dille, Senior Vice President, Marketing and PlayStation Network, SCEA

Developers know they have to amortize that investment over a global marketplace and the best place to do that is on a PlayStation format. Because if you look at the global footprint, PlayStation 3 dominates in Japan where the 360 is really irrelevant. In Europe, the PlayStation 3 is already past the 360. And in the United States you have a dogfight...So back to the third-party community, they’re looking at what’s going on, they’re realigning their development resources to exploit PS3 and I think they understand that if they want to have a global return on their investment, PlayStation 3 is the only place they’re going to get it.

Man's got a point, a point that - as the PS3 begins to slowly, inevitably pull away from the 360 in Europe - will only get sharper!

Sony: ‘Final Fantasy XIII’ Going To XBox 360 Creates ‘Jump Ball’ [MTV]

Consumers responded to “GTA” on the PS3 just as they did on the 360. And it becomes a bit of a jump ball. But it didn’t rise the tide for them. And I think if you fast forward to when “Final Fantasy XIII” comes out I think you’re going to have millions of people who grew up playing “Final Fantasy” on the PlayStation playing it on a PlayStation 3. They spent a lot of money, I’m sure, to get “Final Fantasy” onto the 360 but at the end of the day it’s on our platform as well. Which is why we focus on, “Let’s look at what happens when you have “Metal Gear Solid” on your platform … when the NPD numbers come out … I think you’ll see the value of what a real exclusive title does and how it raised the bar for PS3 versus 360.

So...exclusives don't really matter, yet exclusives like MGS4 bring "value" and "raise the bar" for the PS3? You seem confused, Peter.

Sony: ‘Final Fantasy XIII’ Going To XBox 360 Creates ‘Jump Ball’ [MTV]

Argh! Not accurate enough, for our tastes! Fortunately, we'll be able to more obsessively split hairs on the matter later this week, when NPD data is revealed, but for now we have some expertly sculpted spin to enjoy!

First up, the clear winner, Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg. He says, in part, "These sales results add GTA IV to a long list of franchises that have switched over from Playstation to find a new home on Xbox 360 similar to what happened last year with titles like Madden and Guitar Hero." Greenberg, who seems pleased, tells Level Up that it's a trend he expects to continue.

Peter Dille, senior VP of marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment, responds in kind. "If I had an installed base advantage of 3-1," he says "I wouldn't be crowing too much about a 60-40 sales advantage." Touche! Dille says that 60-40 split isn't such a big deal. Actually, it's a testament to PlayStation brand loyalty, Peter says, in a roundabout way! Regardless of the hard numbers, Dille manages to seem pleased too.

Mr. Croal breaks it down further, with some pre-April console install base numbers, for those interested. We expect better sales insight due Thursday, at which point there will be much slap fighting done across message boards and commenting threads. Don't miss it!

Scoop: GameStop Reveals That When It Comes to Grand Theft Auto IV, Xbox 360 Has a 2-1 Advantage Over Playstation 3 In First Week Sales [Level Up]

Details are still incredibly scarce on the movie and television download service that was shown to publishers earlier this year at Destination PlayStation, but Dille teases that Sony will "be offering a video service for PS3 in a way that separates the service from others you've seen or used." The LA Times sources anonymous film execs who say that video downloads could... yes, could be transmitting via PlayStation 3 connections this summer.

Clear some space on your calendars, folks!

Sony to launch online video service for PlayStation 3 [LA Times]

...we'll be offering a video service for PS3 in a way that separates the service from others you've seen or used. Ultimately the goal of the PLAYSTATION Network service will be to break through the overwhelming clutter of digital media to give you the TV, movies and gaming content you want.

The games are here, the price point is now $399 and we wanted to make the news loud and clear. But we need to deliver that in a way that befits the PlayStation brand. And so, beyond the brilliant HD games that the PS3 delivers, you'll also see a big focus behind the PS3's Blu-ray movie capability and, for the first time, you'll see a major focus behind the PLAYSTATION Network (did I mention online gaming is free on PS3??) and the exclusive gaming content available on the PLAYSTATION Store, as well as breakthrough services like Home.

I recall seeing some comments on this blog recently lamenting why we weren't making a bigger deal out of Metal Gear. Well, get ready for a steady diet, because Metal Gear Solid is the mother of all exclusives and we can't wait for its release.