Phil Harrison: We Were Too Slow to Adopt Social Gaming

One of Sony’s earliest failures with the PS3 was that it focused on ’single’ gamers as opposed to a full family of gamers. Phil Harrison, head of worldwide studios for the company, has expressed his frustration at Sony’s Japanese division, saying they were too slow to accept the ideas of social gaming, one which has been cornered by Nintendo and its Wii console.

“It’s a very interesting and frustrating thing for me to experience because I have been banging the drum about social gaming for a long time, with SingStar, EyeToy and Buzz,” he said to Gamesindustry.biz. “And our Japanese colleagues said that there is no such thing as social gaming in Japan - people do not play games on the same sofa together in each other’s homes. It will never happen. And then out comes the Wii.”

It is an interesting point that Harrison raises. Both Sony and Microsoft have focused on the online multiplayer portion of gaming, whereas Nintendo focused on bringing people closer together, sitting on the same couch and enjoying a round of Wii Sports. The latter paid off quite well.