Sony: Wii "a shadow of its former self"
PlayStation UK's Fergal Gara on aiming for the casual market
PlayStation UK's managing director has outlined PlayStation's plans to attract a more mainstream audience, filling the gap left by Nintendo's console.
"What we want to see in the next year or two is a bigger mass market play, shall we say. So in order to broaden and perhaps fill the void that's being left latent by, say, the Wii - which is a shadow of its former self," Fergal Gara told Red Bull.
"We need to have the kind of product that will engage that more casual consumer. I think that's a big opportunity for us, and that's not yet clear on the horizon, but something we should and I'm sure will be focused on as we look forward into year two, three and four."
In the interview he also highlighted the console's other offerings, Share Play, PlayStation TV, PlayStation Now and Project Morpheus and celebrated the success of the PlayStation 4 so far.
"We've learned how important it is to get your positioning right in the first place," he said.
"Adopting a very gamer-focused perspective from the outset served us extremely well. I think what we also learned is that it's really important to keep innovating to keep interest in the sector. We have innovation coming through this year and plenty more on the agenda for years to come."
The PlayStation brand is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary.
The problem seems to me to be that motion controlled games are designed by people who don't see the attraction in motion controlled games. That's why in the long run these games fail. The "casual" Wii players aren't on mobile, they're nowhere in the gaming scene. Well, the younger ones may be on mobile simply because everyone is on mobile, but a lot of console and PC games are on mobile too. That's unrelated. It's not that the "casual" Wii players moved to mobile because it's a natural place to go from the Wii, it's just that there's nothing like the Wii experience to replace the Wii with.