Sony's Andrew House

Obviously the biggest single factor is being at a 299 price point on the stand alone and a 349 on the bundle. It will be interesting to start looking at our year-on-year figures when we move into the period where we're reflecting the same value, or fundamentally the same value message and seeing what impact that has. If anything, I would say that we are tacking, even on the full year-on-year, probably higher than our initial expectations. And this factor of momentum, when it starts to move in your favour, it does shift fairly significantly. The biggest factor that we've highlighted is that in a market that is down overall we are significantly up. And not just in hardware, software sales have really come through well ahead of our expectations, certainly ahead of our expectations for the first fiscal quarter that we had this year. That was really very encouraging.

There are several steps in the chain and what has been most encouraging for me is that we've seen significant interest in 3D games actually driven from the studios - driven from the creative arms of the studios, as opposed to some sort of headquarters driven, top-down strategy. Killzone is a good example of the guys at Guerrilla Games being actively excited and wanting to work with this technology, and the opportunities they see for it. What that says to me is that if the guys creating the experiences are excited and wanting to work with this new technology, it probably bodes well for a good sense of how the consumer is going to perceive it.

The critical thing that I would always say around 3D is that we want to manage expectations about the timeline that's involved. In my view this is a shift of the same significance as a move to high-definition. What I find encouraging and bodes well for the uptake is that, and significant for Sony overall because we've got so many touch points in the value chain, there seems to be a faster development in the 3D eco-system that perhaps was the case of the early days of high-definition. CES was bombarded with a raft of related announcements, not just TVs from us but joint ventures and broadcasters announcing 3D adoption, sports rights license holders like the PGA heading into 3D. That seems to be coalescing in my view faster than I recall it happening in previous iterations of technology.

Another thing, and it's not directly comparable to 3D games but is new with the adoption of technology, the consumer is able to pretty much now on any given Saturday go out and see 3D movies at the cinema and get a direct sense of what 3D is. That's not purely a created retail experience of why they should get excited, it's becoming part of the regular cinema going experience.

That's really encouraging to hear that. That was part of our pitch. We were privileged of being on the forefront of 3D with the connections in Sony and we were very early in establishing a centre of excellence globally within the studios and pollinate out a technical march. But the contention right form the start, from our centre of expertise, is that this isn't a really significant investment and probably plays really good dividends in terms of return on investment. Somebody asked how much of a premium are we going to charge on 3D games, and I said "we haven't considered charging for one." Because it's not significant enough an investment to really demand that. I'm a great believer in the brand loyalty and brand differentiation you get out of it more than pays for the investment that goes up front.