Sony says it learned its lessons with PSP and PSP Go.

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Sony surprised many at E3 this year when the company put a $249.99 price tag on the PlayStation Vita, its next-generation portable device. While a release date hasn't been set, Sony hopes to launch Vita in Japan towards the end of this year and likely in other territories in early 2012.

We caught up with Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Computer Entertainment's Worldwide Studios, to get his take on the Wii U, developing the PlayStation Vita, and what lessons the company learned from the PSP.
IGN: What are your thoughts on the Wii U? It's one of the biggest stories coming out of E3.

Yoshida: I was surprised to see the final product for what Nintendo was showing. It's pretty close to what was being rumored. Lots of media had different interpretations of the rumors, and something I thought Nintendo might be doing was like a giant DS in your house. I was expecting them to do some demos, like Nintendogs coming from the big screen to the small screen where you can then pet the dog on the tablet controller.

And finally they are going to HD graphics, which must please third-party publishers judging from what they were saying at the press conference. It's interesting.

IGN: Sony has been very clear with its messaging; the PlayStation 3 is a console experience and the PlayStation Vita is for mobile use. Nintendo seems to be blurring that by having a tablet controller where you can play console games both on a TV and portably.

Yoshida: We still don't know much about the Wii U. It seems like the controller can only work with one console. When they show multiplayer they are using the Wii remotes. How games will be developed for that console we still don't know. As I understand, the Wii U remote has to be in proximity of the console so it's not a true portable device in a sense that you can bring it with you outside the room or house.

I still can't get my head around what it is.

IGN: On the PlayStation Vita, it seemed like many were surprised by the name. What are your thoughts on that and were there other names you were considering?

Yoshida: With anything the name is a big deal. There are many people involved pitching ideas. Vita was actually one of the code names for the project. We started this in 2008 and called it NGP actually, that was the very first codename. At one point the hardware guys proposed to call it Project Vita. Vita means "life" and one of the central concepts they were proposing was to bring entertainment to every aspect of a person's life. We wanted people to carry around PSVita where you'll be close to the PlayStation experience everywhere you go.

After a couple years using the Vita name, it sunk into our minds. When we announced the device in January we hadn't decided, but the majority of us thought the Vita name made sense.

IGN: How much concern is there with dropping the PSP name?

Yoshida: When we said NGP, many people called it PSP 2. And when we said PlayStation Vita then people called it NGP. So I think after a few months people will get used to it

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No one had predicted that a $500 dollar device with a large screen would sell like crazy before the iPad came out.
IGN: Most everyone was surprised by the $249.99 price announcement, including a lot of third-party publishers. How important was it for Sony to get to that point and will the company make a profit on the console sold out of the gate?

Yoshida: At the very start of this project a bunch of us core members went to Japan and spent a day discussing what it is that we wanted to achieve with the new PlayStation portable device. One of the goals was to hit the right price point, which was actually $250. So at the very beginning we agreed that we're going to hit $250. But during that time we were still recovering from the difficultly we had with the high cost of goods with PlayStation 3 where the company lost a lot of money. We asked consumers to spend a lot of money to purchase what, at that time, was bleeding-edge technology. That was great from a technical standpoint but the technology has to mature enough so that a reasonable price can be put on the performance.

For Vita, the price on performance was something we definitely wanted to hit, although we all agreed because we are PlayStation, people expect better graphics and prettier pictures, so we have all those things we wanted to achieve in terms of capabilities, but we capped our ambitions with a cost of goods target that we can profitably sell the hardware for $250.

To answer your question, we set out a goal: Yes, we're going to hit the $250 price, and no, we don't want to sell the hardware with a deficit. That's a goal we set out to do and I'm very happy we are achieving that.

IGN: So you're going to be profitable with each Vita sold?

Yoshida: We haven't completed the hardware development. It's like 98-percent done in terms of hardware, and on the system software side and network code, we have a few more months to work on that. We don't have the final-final answer to that question, but the way we are projecting it seems like we're going to do pretty well.

IGN: The Nintendo 3DS launched at $250, and sales for that appear to be slower than most expected. Many say it's because there's a lack of good software. But are you concerned that maybe $250 for a dedicated gaming device might still be too much?

Yoshida: It's relative to what the value of the product is offering. No one had predicted that a $500 device with a large screen would sell like crazy before the iPad came out. Really, it matters what it is that the product enables people to do. And of course what games you can play is one part and we like to see people excited for our games at launch.

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The development cost for one of our studio titles on Vita is way closer to what we've been spending on developing PSP games.
IGN: How have third-party developers been reacting to being able to create high quality games on a portable like this? A game like Uncharted: Golden Abyss obviously costs way more to develop than most iPhone games. Have you noticed a trend of developers wanting to do big-budget handheld games?

Yoshida: Last year, when the company started evangelizing NGP, I joined many of these meetings with third-parties because one of our studios was integral in hardware development and we had prototypes of the games already working, like Uncharted and Little Deviants, to help explain why some of the components are in Vita. When you just say this device has a back touch panel, people may say, "Well, we don't need it." But when you let them try Little Deviants, they say, "Oh, ok, that makes sense." I am there in many meetings with third-party developers and publishers, and because one of our studios is no different than them in terms of being game developers, a lot of questions we asked on the input we had made in determining the features of PSVita, they quickly understood. They agreed this is the right level of technology they would be able to put their games on.

It's not making a next-generation game on home consoles where you have to spend $100 million. Actually, the development cost for one of our studio titles on Vita is way closer to what we've been spending on developing PSP games than what we've been spending on PlayStation 3.

IGN: What would you say are some lessons you learned with PSP that you hope to correct and implement with Vita?

Yoshida: We liked what we achieved with PSP in terms of bringing console-like games to a portable, which at that time were PlayStation 2-quality games. The biggest problem we had was we kind of stopped there. It was very hard for us and game developers to come up with new experiences on PSP. For Vita, because it's a natural technical advancement, we wanted to adapt more advanced CPU and GPU, and include a better screen. We are very excited to be able to use a 5-inch OLED screen. But we agreed that if we stop there, after a couple years people will get used to looking at pretty pictures and start asking for more.

We spent way more time discussing and prototyping how we use new user-interfaces, like a touchscreen, back touch panel, a camera, and motion sensors. So because we knew these features would allow developers to come up with experiences that you cannot duplicate on the home console, it will give the PSVita more longevity than we had with PSP in terms of creating new game experiences. That's the biggest thing we think we achieved in designing PSVita.

IGN: No UMD for Vita. Was that an easy decision to make?

Yoshida: UMD had the definite advantage in terms of manufacturing costs. It's very low, and the turnaround time to manufacture is very short. It's as good as DVD or Blu-ray. But that's from the publisher standpoint. From the consumer standpoint, carrying around multiple discs is a bit cumbersome and the loading times tended to be longer unless you installed the games. We quickly agreed to not use disc media going forward.

We had long debates about what it should be to deliver content to Vita. Of course we all agreed more and more people will be comfortable downloading digital content. So it's going to be very important to have a very easy way to manage your digital content on Vita. But we still agreed there are lots of people that want to visit game shops and browse titles. The new flash-based card was the answer. We also wanted to make it proprietary so it will help us protect the content better because piracy was such a huge problem with PSP.

IGN: Do you think there will be no piracy with Vita?

Yoshida: Vita is very secure compared to PSP. We cannot say it's 100-percent secure because hackers are very capable.

IGN: What should consumers expect in terms of pricing for Vita games? Will they be priced similar to PSP games?

Yoshida: My personal expectation is similar, but it really depends on publishers. Having games on a digital store actually allows us to be more flexible in pricing, though.

IGN: Was the PSP Go a failure in your mind? Was it maybe just too early for an all-digital console to be introduced sort of mid-cycle with the original PSP?

Yoshida: We learned a lot going through the PSP Go experience. From a hardware design standpoint, we quickly learned after launch that, while the hardware guys worked very hard to make it small and more compact - the screen was smaller and the buttons were thinner - and from a gameplay control standpoint, it was compromised. Because of the premium price that the hardware had to have over the PSP-3000, due to internal memory and additional parts, it was a very confusing proposition to consumers. They have to spend more money to purchase a device where the game control is less satisfying because of smaller buttons and a smaller screen. The tradeoff was not in favor to support the pricing. That was one problem.

The second big problem was not all PSP games on UMD were available to purchase on the PlayStation Store. We explored ways how we can help get people's UMD library on PSP Go, but there are many difficulties that prevented us from providing services like that.

PSP Go was a premium product that naturally targeted core audiences, but the core audiences are the ones that have lots of UMD games. That was another confusing factor. There are many things we learned from PSP Go, but we are happy that there are some people that liked it.

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Vita is very secure compared to PSP. We cannot say it's 100-percent secure because hackers are very capable.
IGN: In a couple years, the graphics capabilities on mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad will likely surpass the PlayStation Vita. How are you thinking about that?

Yoshida: It's similar to the relations between the home consoles and PC. PC gets a technical advancement every quarter or every year. People spend money on new graphics cards, for example. PC gaming is great for those people that don't mind spending money on the latest technologies. But the wide adoption of consoles has always been the ease of use and the consistent platform for developers to really to tune the experience.

So the relation between PlayStation Vita and smart phones or iPad will be similar. Every year these companies compete with each other to bring in the newest and latest technologies with bigger screens and higher resolutions. The content provider will have to make a choice. Will they target the latest and high-performance devices or will they go with the lowest common denominator? It's going to be very hard for those content providers or game developers making games on these smart phones to guarantee the same type of gameplay. So that's the same situation with PSVita and products like tablets.

IGN: No PlayStation 3 price drop announced at E3.

Yoshida: We've been very happy with sales of PlayStation 3.We have lots of content to support PS3 this year. So yeah, we are happy.