Sony: "We like to provide as many services as possible for free"
Shuhei Yoshida on partnerships with other companies, and new revenue models
The president of Sony Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, has told GamesIndustry.biz that the company is keen to provide as many services to PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable users as possible - and is happy to look at business partnerships and new revenue models in order to do so.
Speaking in an interview at Games Convention in Leipzig, following the Sony press conference in which the free music video streaming from VidZone was announced, Yoshida-san explained that it wasn't possible for Sony to address every aspect of a user's needs itself.
"We're more open about approaching and bringing services in to PS3 and PSP," he explained. "We can't support all the needs of the consumer and there are great companies providing services on the PC already - so we're very open to provide the opportunity to those companies to reach our user base as well."
And when pressed on the importance of the VidZone deal as being free to consumers, he revealed that Sony has been looking at the Internet as a good example of alternative funding methods.
"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," he said. "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."
PlayStation 3 users will be able to access the free music video streaming service from Q1 2009, with the added bonus of creating playlists and porting them to the PSP.
The full GamesIndustry.biz interview with Shuhei Yoshida, in which he also talks about the reasons behind his move back to Japan and the impact of titles like LittleBigPlanet and EyePet, is available now.