PlayStation CEO Andrew House: Not messing with the PS4 business model was just common sense

The boss of Sony’s PlayStation business told MCV he is ‘literally scratching his head’ over the game ownership debate that dogged the Xbox One announcement.

In an interview with MCV during last night’s PlayStation 4 launch, the CEO told MCV that the firm found it surprising that it was forced to make a statement about its business model. A model it never even considered changing.

It followed the Xbox One reveal in May, which suffered a vocal fan backlash after Microsoft proposed online, sharing and trade-in restrictions for video game software.

The one thing that surprised me most is that we were required to make such a clear statement that we were going to maintain status quo in areas that we took for granted,” House said, referring to the company’s E3 showing where it announced you would be able to trade-in games, share them with friends and not have to log into the internet daily.

That wasn’t something dictated by us, that was by the moves the competition was making. That remains the largest surprise for me – how visceral that reaction was from consumers. But the fact that we had to put a stake in the ground, in an area that we felt was just common sense, still has me quite literally scratching my head.”

PS4 launched last night at the firm’s PlayStation Lounge near Convent Garden. Over 400 consumers turned up to the event to see Tinie Tempah perform before collecting their new games console at midnight.

The front of the Lounge was turned into a temporary store by High Street retailer GAME, and the whole event was live-streamed over the internet by various media outlets, including The Sun.

You can read more from Andrew House in next week’s edition of MCV Magazine.