Sony's Playing to Win

But what about the reaction of the consumers and the consumer press?

We are in the process of reaching out to the consumers to try to explain what our platform's all about and why they're going to want one between that May and November time frame. But I think six months out of any platform launch, it's a little bit early in terms of being able to roll out all the details.

The PlayStation 3 is going to be priced significantly higher than the machines from your two other competitors. How do you think that's going to play in Peoria?

Well, I guess if price is the only consideration, then we've won the war, because we've got a $129 PlayStation 2 that outsells the Xbox 360 today.

If you look at the cost of the components and more importantly, the value to consumers, you have everything in the box at $399 on the Xbox 360; and it still falls well short of what the PlayStation 3 offers at $499.

Microsoft is going to have somewhere between 6 million and 10 million Xbox 360s sold by the time Sony gets to market. How do you catch up?

Well, we've never been first to market in any generation. We weren't first when we debuted the original PlayStation. We weren't first with PlayStation 2.

It ultimately came down to the system and what consumers preferred. At the end of the day, what you do in the first year, and whether you do 6 or 10 million units does not determine whether you're successful or not. We're looking to sell 100 million-plus worldwide. We're looking to sell 50 million plus in North America.

So, if a competitor gets to 6 to 10 million worldwide, I would not consider that to be a significant advantage or a significant disadvantage as far as we're concerned.