David Reeves, SCEE Chief: Leaving it all behind

Next-generation battles, handheld grudge matches and verbal mud-slinging isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. As the hype and madness of E3 disappears over the gaming horizon, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo can finally breathe a sigh of relief and get back to the business of paying the bills, i.e. selling consoles and games.

But it seems the media and the gaming hardcore aren’t playing ball. The insatiable appetite for next-generation news, be it scandalous speculation, well founded rumour or otherwise, continues to populate online blogs, message boards and tech sites. For David Reeves, president and COO of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, we’re doing gamers a disservice by hanging on every next-generation thread. Speaking to Pro-G during ELSPA’s International Games Summit in London last week, David’s thoughts are very much with the here and now, the PS3 and the next-generation a spec in the distance.

“I feel proud that E3 went well from the presentations that they did“, said Reeves only minutes after delivering his (somewhat controversial) keynote at the industry conference. “I feel very happy about that, but I told the troops: OK now we go underground. The PS3 goes underground until it comes out next year.”

Reeves’ comments make sound business sense. The PS3 isn’t planned for release until Spring 2006, and all the hype overload in the world won’t ring a single till this Christmas. Reeves believes, as many at ELSPA’s conference did, that the current generation of hardware still has a great deal to offer.

“Ray Maguire, who looks after the UK, his number one priority is PS2 this Christmas, and PSP is clearly number two. In the UK there is still 50% of the software to be sold. Konami will come out with PES5 in September or October and they’re already developing six for PS2 for next year because they are confident that as the installed base goes up they will make money from it. Not everyone dives in and buys the PS3 because the price is still relatively high. Not everyone has the money to be able to go out and buy it.”

And as head of Sony’s European wing, David isn’t simply concerned with the UK, which is “probably 70 maybe 80% of the way through the life cycle of PS2“. There are many countries to contend with, each with differing demographics and evolving console lifecycles.

“In Iran we’re 10% of the way through. We’re shipping maybe 10,000 PS2s a week into Iran legally. Sony has an office there. We ship them into North Africa; we ship them into West Africa, Poland, Hungary, Czech, Slovakia, Croatia. There are many, many places.”

So as the media continually bothers David about the PS3 and the war of words with Microsoft, you might expect it to start grating when he knows that the PS2 is still very much where it’s at for a lot of gamers. “Yeah I know we have the hype and we have to live with it, but it’s easier in Europe than in Japan and the US” he says. With Reeves you get the impression of a man who’s seen one or two hardware races in his time, and is riding this one like a veteran surfer out on some familiar coastline.

But one small piece of upcoming hardware is very much relevant to Sony’s European success this Christmas, and that’s the much talked about PSP. With the DS enjoying a very healthy head start on its handheld rival (the PSP is due for release in Europe on September 1st) as well as Sony clearly against Euro gamers importing the console, some critics have questioned the potential commercial success of the hardware. But what are Reeves’ hopes for the best portable games screen in town?

“I think we’re looking to match what happened in Japan and the US. I think in the US they sold about a million. We hope to match that within the same time scale. I think we have a big advantage in coming straight into Christmas. In the US they had to launch in March, then they had to go through the summer blues, now they’ll come into the holiday period.”

Ambitious plans indeed. But this year’s ELSPA conference was full of ambitious hardware projections. Indeed, Microsoft’s Corporate VP Worldwide Marketing and Publishing kicked off the event proclaiming he expected 10 million Xbox 360 units sold within 12 to 16 months of its release to provide them with a great “first mover advantage.”

One problem patient consumers of the official European release might encounter is a short supply of the console. As David made clear in his presentation, he made no apologies for the delay European gamers face waiting to get their hands on the PSP, and it’s a deliberate policy of Sony’s to have too little stock than too much.

So assuming you pick up your brand new Sony PSP, the luscious screen reflecting your beaming smile in glowing pre-order glory, what games does David reckon will keep you entertained while the relatives get drunk over Christmas Turkey?

“We think Pursuit Force will be very big“, said Reeves. “Ridge Racer, which is a launch title, Wipeout definitely, Fired Up and I think World Rally Championship. From what I’ve seen that is looking really, really good.”

All of those games, bar Ridge Racer, are Sony developed titles, but Reeves acknowledges that EA and Ubisoft have some promising games coming out for the machine. However, games aren’t the be all and end all of the PSP. In fact, according to Reeves, the PSP’s connectivity function is the key feature Sony will be pushing to prospective buyers of the console.

“We want to position it as multimedia. That’s why we will have games, will have movies and there will be music videos out during that period.”

So does that mean European gamers will be able to browse the web on their PSP at some point?

“They will be looking to do it. I can’t confirm that it will actually happen.”

Connecting the PSP to the PS3 through a wireless connection, you would imagine, will provide developers with some very promising avenues for unique gameplay, a bit like what Nintendo tried to achieve with the GameCube and GBA.

“We will want to do it that way where it is possible. On PSP we don’t have a video out because of the movie industry. Where that is not practical we would not do it. We would only do it where it satisfies digital rights management. It has to be legal.”

Cryptic stuff. What Reeves is more clear on is the already revealed connectivity of the PSP with wi-fi hotspots and other PSPs. “If I had a Wipeout UMD, and you have a PSP but no Wipeout, I can actually share that wirelessly so you can actually try out a couple of levels. And if you had Fired Up and I don’t have it you can wirelessly give it to me (not the full game). We think that’s good for sampling.”

Which sounds fantastic. But it doesn’t stop there. Everything the PSP is about screams of technological forward progress. Wireless connectivity, downloadable content, multiplayer gaming. It’s all there. It’s an approach that Sony believes will convince gamers they are getting more for their hard earned cash.

“You are able with wireless LAN, and the hotspots in Starbucks over the road for example, to download a new Wipeout level from a website and put it on and play it – we see that as very much extending the life of PSP games.”

Although online gaming is very much a buzzword around the industry right now, with MMOs on PC selling bucket loads and Xbox Live attracting increasing subscribers, Sony were quiet about their plans for the PS3’s online capabilities. Reeves, too, is coy on the subject: “It was revealed at E3 and it was called Playstation Network. It will be introduced as [the] PS3 is. It’s not just online, it’s a whole community and it embraces other non-game content as well.”

Perhaps Sony’s reluctance to dive straight onto the online bandwagon Microsoft have so vocally proclaimed is because their hearts are simply not in it. Reeves is personally cautious about online gaming’s commercial potential as it stands at the moment and doesn’t think it is as important as Microsoft says it is.

“I think that gaming is basically sociable. People want to see who they’re playing with. And if you really think about it online gaming is to some extent anonymous – you’re using a handle. When we get to the point when you can actually see who you’re playing against, and it really comes alive and you can hear their voices as if you’re in an auditorium, and it gets simpler, and there are games that are written specifically for online gaming, then we will start to see it, but we have not reached that. We’re at kind of 0.5. We’ve got to get to 2 before online gaming really takes off.”

Online gaming is of course, still very much a hardcore passion. As everyone scrambles for the hearts and minds of the casual gamer, it’s all about making online gaming compelling for those who don’t normally play games in the first place. It’s this obstacle that Reeves sees as problematic.

“The psyche is I come back from the pub or wherever and you want to play with the guys. Some people say I want to go online, but more people actually want to see people’s faces and feel the enjoyment and that type of thing.”

Indeed, Reeves doesn’t see the step up from 0.5 to 2 on the next generation hardware at all. “It will be the next one after I think.”

Tired as Reeves might be with constant next-generation pokes, hopeful launch date punts and misguided pricing queries, we couldn’t help but have a go ourselves. As we suspected, the gems every gamer that considers themselves hardcore wants to know aren’t forthcoming.

“We don’t say we target them (trade shows) but we say we have plenty of opportunity where we can go and show the next demo, give more details, maybe give more accurate launch dates and things like that. But that’s not my responsibility, that’s what Tokyo will manage.”

Will we learn more about PS3 this year?

“You will do and I think you’ll pick most of it up from the net. A lot of will be speculation.”

As we scour the fan forums, indulge rumours from friends’ uncles who work for development companies, as we pick apart every mocked console image bashed out over lunch in Photoshop and analyse every comment made by some over exuberant Japanese executive, we suspect David Reeves has a few PS2s to sell to some very excited Iranians.