"There are several candidates for the name of the controller," said Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida. While still undecided, those names are making their way through Sony, being run up the flagpole and getting feedback from various internal departments.

"The SIXAXIS and the DualShock 3 — while great product names — are based on the actual tech," Yoshida explained. "The name we pick for the Wand Controller maybe won't be so techy."

The reason is this: Sony is hoping to appeal to a casual and core market, so the company needs a name that can convey an image or a brand to both groups. And for Yoshida, the Wand Controller could very well expand the PS3 user base in the same way that the Eye Top did for the PS2. That's not to say, it's a casual only peripheral. "Hardcore gamers are surprised how accurate and responsive the Wand is," the exec added.

At Sony Japan's press conference, Capcom producer Jun Takeuchi and his demo demoed a Wand version of Resident Evil 5, called Resident Evil 5 Alternative Edition. Later, Takeuchi joked that Sony should call the Wand Controller the Alternative Controller to do a clever marketing tie-up with RE5 Alternative Edition. The RE title was controlled by the Wand in one hand and the the PS3 DualShock 3 in the other hand, using the buttons and analog thumbstick as a make-shift Nunchuk.

There have been rumblings that Sony is currently working on a proper Nunchuk peripheral — that it is already in the design phase. Yoshida was unwilling to confirm this secondary peripheral, but did concede that using the PS3 DualShock 3 as a Nunchuk was "the cheapest solution". Yoshida wasn't being glib: While the PS3 DualShock 3 might not make the most attractive Nunchuk solution, it does appear to work.

Meaning? Meaning that gamers won't be forced to shell out for yet another peripheral.

Pic]

When asked if there was concern that the price gap between the PSP-3000 and the PSPgo would push Japanese consumers towards the less expensive PSP-3000, Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida told Kotaku, "That's fine. We have no intention to stop producing the PSP-3000."

As the company's continued support of the PS2 has shown, Sony is not one to kill off older hardware — especially when there is still a market for it, as there is in The Land of the Rising Sun.

The UMD format will continue to be produced by Sony, Yoshida said. "New games will be released in both UMD and digital formats," he added. Those who own a PSP-3000 will be able to pick up the hard copy, while those with the PSPgo can purchase the digital version. "However, some small games aren't getting a UMD release," Yoshida conceded. According to Sony, the major titles will be getting released on both platforms — take the upcoming Gran Turismo on the PSP, for example.

While digital and UMD formats provide a sharp divide between to the PSP-3000 and the PSPgo, Sony did explore ways to enable users to bring their UMD titles to the PSPgo.

"We seriously looked into solutions," Yoshida said. As Kotaku broke earlier, legal and technical issues regarding publishing and rights have prevented Sony from bringing that UMD solution to market.

"We will continue supporting the UMD format," Yoshida stated.

"The ultimate goal or wish for us is if you have two controllers," says Sony exec Shuhei Yoshida, "like we demoed at E3, we can do something really amazing."

That's the ultimate goal — the short term goal is "making the entry barrier as low as possible". Yoshida continues, "But because of cost-of-goods and, you know, people have to have the PlayStation Eye camera as well, we are approaching the launch by making sure that all games that we create can be played with one controller and the camera."

Sony plans to introduce options if players have more than one controller, and gameplay will be "enhanced" for those who purchase.

But by not making two controllers a requirement out of the gate, Sony could be signaling to third party developers that supporting two controllers isn't a requirement either.

Sony's Shuhei Yoshida Interview [Eurogamer] [Pic]

Shuhei Yoshida, President of Sony Computer Entertainment's Worldwide Studios, teases "new titles and innovations that will connect and expand the PlayStation experiences" on the PSP. But that's about all the love the PSP gets from developers and SCEE execs. I mean, David Reeves, president of the European arm seems mostly worked up over the PSP selling in "incredible numbers."

And what about the PlayStation 3, Sony's area of focus?

Reeves says that, once the company heads back into the black, "we can move forward at a rate of knots." Most of the internal excitement comes from games like Killzone 2, Heavy Rain, MAG and God of War III, but there's plenty of super secret stuff, "more big titles that we have not even announced yet," teases Yoshida.

Hmph! That better mean "Team ICO game that is almost done," Mr. Yoshida!

“What are you looking forward to most on PlayStation in 2009?” [PlayStation.com]

It’s mostly a software thing. Price is important, but relative to the the value consumers perceive. There are lots of consumers, game fans in Japan, that are waiting to spend their money.

What’s happening is that lack of support from the Japanese publishers - not necessarily from intentions but from development capabilities.

What do you mean lack of support? Look how many of the PS3's best exclusive games are from Japan! There's Metal Gear Solid 4, and...and...oh, I see.

Yoshida: PS3’s lack of fortunes in Japan is “mainly a software thing” [VG247]

The technology base has shifted from Japan to the US and Europe... There are also talented people, engineers… in the US and Europe, and it’s relatively easy to form a large team that required to create this generation of games... That’s not the case in Japan. Because they don’t have a large base, like the movie industry; there aren’t [a lot of people] in the high end of computer graphics. That’s making the many great developers in Japan make slow progress.

Yoshida went on to state that Japanese developed games like Metal Gear Solid 4 are the exception to the rule, not the rule.

Yoshida: Games tech power “has shifted from Japan to the US and Europe” [VG247]

...not having a hard drive in every Xbox 360 was a hard decision, but we wanted to get price under control. The hard drive in every Xbox killed us; we we're still selling it at $199 and the hard drive was like $70. That's why we prematurely left the original Xbox, because the more we were selling – there was still great demand – it was killing us, and there was no way to bring the price down. So in the end we determined at around the 25 million unit mark that we just needed to slow this thing down and just not sell any more, and move to the 360 as quickly as we possibly could. And to this day people still believe we left the Xbox too early but it was purely for financial purposes.

So that's the Xbox. But what about the PS3?

SCE Worldwide boss Shuhei Yoshida says exactly the opposite. That the 360's HDD plan is silly, and that including a HDD has been an integral part of Sony's strategy with the PS3:

It’s one of the things we really supported when the hardware specification was decided for PS3. Like Microsoft did, we could have had an optional hard drive and settled for cheaper combinations of hardware, but if we had done that - from a [development] standpoint - we cannot rely on every consumer to have a hard drive.

So that really helps us to focus on [the fact that] every consumer has a hard drive. Now we can cache data so that gameplay is seamless.

Truth be told, the HDD was the best thing about the original Xbox, and the 360 is only going to increasingly suffer from the fact developers can't build games that require a HDD. We kinda wish they'd just stuck with it, since the cost argument is surely nullified by the fact nobody buys a HDD-less Arcade.

Peter Moore Interview: Part Three [The Guardian]
Yoshida: Why Sony decided against Microsoft’s no-hard drive policy [VG247]

Yeah, it’s really, really disappointing and it’s a lost opportunity for the third-parties... They should look at what the PSP can do for their titles and the potential for the business that their IP has... We have to show by examples... What’s happening in Japan is interesting — because of the massive success of Monster Hunter, Japanese publishers realize, ‘here’s a resource’.

Monster Hunter has definitely breathed life into the platform here in Japan. But, that's here in Japan. Aboard, well...

Shuhei Yoshida Interview [IGN via VG247]

All the things are now coming together in terms of the right hardware, cost and pricing, and we are increasing our hard disc space as we are increasing the content we’re offering through the network and the big titles we’re working on, coming out this Christmas. All that is coming together this year... That’s not to say we’re not working on product for next year. We have some titles that we have announced this year for release next year, like Heavy Rain and MAG, our big 256-player online title... Also there are some titles that we are targeting to launch next year that we have not announced yet. We still have a lot to come.

That way Yoshida can say the year after next is the year of the PS3, too. Endless!

Yoshida - PS3 hardware, cost and pricing “now coming together” [VG247]

LittleBigPlanet is going to be the biggest title for Sony in all markets this year...History tells us how difficult it is for games developed in Europe or in the US to be successful in Japan, and with this generation we see Japanese consumer supporting more and more games coming from western Europe.

That last part's a bit of a stretch, but hey, the general point's probably a sound one.

Yoshida: ” LittleBigPlanet will be the biggest title for Sony in all markets this year” [VG247]

We like to provide as many services as possible for free — we already provide our network access for gameplay for free — and the interesting thing about the network side and the Internet business is that there's a variety of revenue sources. Not necessarily getting people to pay, but with advertising and so on.

Those are things we're looking at, and learning how we can provide a service without people having to pay — but we still get our operation running with funding from somewhere so that we can maintain the level of quality we want.

While there's no such thing as the proverbial free lunch, it's nice to see Sony try.

Yoshida's Island - Part One [Games Industry]

They are working on a title. I started the ICO project. Ueda-san joined my team in Japan as a cinematic animator, but he created a short movie and presented it to me and said, ‘I want to make this game.’ I said, ‘Yes, let’s do it, but you have never made a game. We have to have experienced people do it,’ so it took a while, recruiting one person at a time. And because Fumito Ueda doesn’t compromise, we had to move the development from PSone to PlayStation 2. Then I couldn’t complete the game because I moved to the United States. It took four years and the second game took four years too. So I started calling them the ‘Olympic Team.’ They haven’t released a PS3 title yet — of course not — they’ll take four years! But they have something really, really good on the way.

Then patient we will be!

They have something really, really good on the way [NeoGAF via VG247]

Discussing how third-party relations — the management of which was Yoshida's prior role — saved the Playstation, Yoshida said:

We didn’t have a first-party operation. Our success had to come from the third parties. It was really fun. Namco was a believer because on Super Nintendo they had no outlet for their 3D arcade technology. We really targeted them as a launch partner. The biggest challenge was to get Square and Enix to make games for PS. We had to prove ourselves and it took a couple of years. They made the decision to make games like FFVII. So then I got to move to product development.

Now, though, when asked if the PlayStation 3 is the underdog again, Yoshida sees shades of the past:

Yes. We were not taken seriously by the industry at first. Because I was there at the time, the difficulty with PS3 reminds me of our roots. We should work with our partners and find out what consumers and developers want.

It's an interesting issue in an era where third-party exclusives are becoming an endangered species, and El Savior Squeenix has gone Xbox 360 with Final Fantasy XIII.

Q&A: Sony’s new worldwide game studio chief recalls the humble underdog years [VentureBeat]

So here's Shuhei Yoshida on all the SCE's working together:

After Ken Kuturagi's departure, Kaz Hirai completely changed the way we worked internally. Before, because Ken was such a big visionary, he came up with something, a great technology, but then landed it on us as a finished thing...but Kaz is involving Worldwide Studios members and regional headquarters people to inform strategy, for the company and the platforms.

That's a major, major change in how we work, and I think it's the right change. Looking at how we struggled with PlayStation 3, one visionary just can't get it perfect three times in a row.

And here's Shuhei Yoshida on the woeful level of support the PS3 received from third-party developers early in the console's lifespan:

[Developers] massively underestimated the effort that was needed to re-architect the game to properly take advantage of the PS3's multi-core architecture...But it's impossible to bring the level of support that we feel is important for the PlayStation 3 platform without the third parties' continued support. That was the miscalculation by both us, and from third parties.

And there you have it! Shuhei gets off the mark. I would have preferred something a little more explosive - maybe along the lines of "ROBBIE BACH EATS BABIES" - but I guess he's got to warm to the position first before kicking it up a notch.

Yoshida-san: I have big plans for Worldwide Studios [GI.biz]