"More than 100" PS3 titles in development - Harrison

Over 100 games are currently in development for the PS3, according to Sony's worldwide studios president Phil Harrison - who revealed that over 10,000 development kits have now been shipped.

Speaking to British newspaper The Guardian, Harrison was upbeat about the amount of software which will be available for the PS3 around launch - both in terms of game titles, and Blu-Ray movies.

"We have shown more playable games than ever before, so the signs are good," he commented, "and right now there are more than 100 Blu-ray movies available today in the US. More than 100 games are in development, and all the major third-party publishers have pledged their strategic support for the platform."

Harrison described work on the PS3 as being "in full swing, from a developer point of view," and pointed to the firm's success in delivering hardware to its partners long before the scheduled launch.

"Developers now have final hardware in their hands, though there will be some upgrades to the operating system - there's nothing unusual about that," he explained. "The new controller is now in developers' hands, so all the pieces of the puzzle are there."

Harrison noted that one crucial step - the shipping of Blu-Ray burners to developers so that they can actually test games running off real discs - has been accomplished, with studios "now doing their first iterations of games running off discs."

While Harrison is, of course, duty-bound to present a positive picture of the PS3 situation, his assertions are backed up by comments from outspoken Epic Games boss Mark Rein, whose platform-agnostic firm is working on the biggest title for the Xbox 360 this Christmas, Gears of War.

Speaking to our sister site Eurogamer TV recently, Rein said that Sony was "in a better place vis-ÃÂ -vis Microsoft in relation to launch", pointing out that "developers were just getting final PS3 hardware [around E3], which is a long time before ship - developers did not have finished Xbox 360 hardware last year at E3."

"I think Sony's in a good spot with the PlayStation 3," he added. "I know we're getting some great results with it back at our house, so I would expect other developers will be as well."