Tecmo president slams Sony's PlayStation 3 plans

Junji Nakamura, president of Japanese publisher Tecmo, has slammed Sony's plans for the PlayStation 3, accusing the firm of allowing its ambitions in the home appliance space to overshadow its commitment to games.

Speaking to investors at a conference held by the firm to mark its half-yearly results, Nakamura-san also expressed his confidence in Microsoft's ability to build on its experience with Xbox and succeed in the next generation.

"There's not much information from Sony," he told a questioner who asked about the firm's progress on next-generation development, according to a report on Bloomberg Japan. "The situation with Microsoft is very different."

Speaking directly about PlayStation 3, he said that "the CPU was developed for a next-generation game machine, but the hardware is conceived by an appliance manufacturer⦠I feel that they're probably trying to use games as a way to increase their power in the home appliance industry."

Nakamura-san was critical of this approach to designing the console, arguing that Sony was allowing design considerations related to the home appliance market to interfere with its efforts at building a games system.

Speaking about Microsoft, however, Nakamura-san opined that the American giant would "be able to use their experience of the current machine's failure to succeed, even in this country."

Uniquely among Japanese publishers, Tecmo has long been a staunch supporter of Microsoft's efforts in the console market, moving the lucrative Dead or Alive franchise (and spin-off Ninja Gaiden) exclusively to the Xbox and creating the only truly successful titles for the console in Japan in the process.

However, the company has also continued to release a significant proportion of its output on the PlayStation 2, and in the past senior executives at the company have avoided such outspoken comments about console rivals Sony and Microsoft.