The initial $399 price point of the PlayStation 4 at launch in 2013 may have been a last minute decision the day of Sony’s E3 2013 press conference, according to Oddworld Inhabitants co-founder and president Lorne Lanning.
Speaking in an interview with Josiah Renaudin on The 1099 podcast, Lanning spoke in-depth on Sony’s history with PlayStation from a developer’s perspective and during Sony’s E3 2013 press conference, Lanning was behind Sony’s stage, watching events unfold in real-time.
“You can remember that day. That day. E3 2013. Microsoft led in the morning and the press came out of [Microsoft’s press conference] and said, ‘Not bad. Not bad,’” Lanning said. “And I remember Microsoft was feeling pretty good about it. But I knew, because I had been in the green room all weekend backstage at Sony, was what Sony was going to do in the evening.”
When Renaudin noted that Sony must have had its announcements regarding the PS4’s initial price point and the policy for sharing games prepared in advance of Microsoft’s announcements regarding the same topics, Lanning said, “Yeah, that’s true, but there’s a couple of really bad ass moves that took place and I’ll shine some light on it.”
“One of the things was that Sony, let’s say, under [former chairman and group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment] Ken Kutaragi, Sony was not a very agile company, meaning it was still like dealing with a 20th century company rather than a 21st century company. 21st century companies realize that having a multi-year plan is very difficult. They need to be adapting very rapidly. They need to be listening more and infiltrating – you know, rapid development, agile development for all who knows what that means – and Sony was becoming an agile company and that was very difficult before when they were always getting approvals from Japan, who didn’t understand the game space. So, I think that was sort of the legacies of [PlayStation 2] and [PlayStation 3] era, was that you were still dealing with upper management at the corporation that didn’t necessarily understand games. It was still consumer electronics-driven entity.
“Well, now, they’re becoming a more agile and so I remember, I think they made the pricing decision that day,” Lanning said.
Lanning went on to reiterate that he was not completely sure that his statement regarding Sony’s decision to finalize the PS4’s initial price point the day of the press conference was accurate.
He also said the infamous video starring president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios for Sony Computer Entertainment Shuhei Yoshida and vice president of publisher and developer relations at Sony Computer Entertainment America Adam Boyes trading a video game was made the weekend leading up to Sony’s E3 2013 press conference.
The interview with Lanning is a great listen for anyone interested in what it is like to work with corporations like Sony and Microsoft from a developer’s perspective.
Source: The 1099 podcast
