Sony stresses on the importance of innovation for prosperity of industry

By: Muhammad Qasim Hassan

  |   August 29th, 2012   |  

Uncategorized

The gaming industry is evolving without any doubt, with the necessity becoming even more apparent since the arrival of smartphones and tablets in the market.

There is hardly any analyst who undermines with the importance of innovation in an entertainment industry and that is exactly what the gaming industry needs to currently focus on in order to thrive.

PlayStation Europe CEO Jim Ryan is among the many brains who are convinced that the gaming industry is not what it was years ago. Things and trends have changed drastically and in order to remain on the surface, companies need to adapt to these changes without any delay or hesitation, otherwise face the risk of falling too far behind.

During an interview with MCV, he stressed that the gaming industry needs to seriously focus on innovation and evolving as the two things are integral to its success and even survival.

“It is great that the industry evolves and goes in different directions,” Ryan said. “No entertainment industry can just carry on the way it was. For our industry to thrive and prosper it has to evolve and it has to innovate.”

He pointed out that the age of closed gaming platforms is dissipating. The current generation consoles and handheld gaming devices may have enjoyed success over the last few years, but will not be able to same success or offer the same appeal in the not-so-distant future as the “walled garden model” is coming to an end.

This rapidly changing trend has been triggered because of the advent of connected devices. Using Sony’s own product as reference to make his point, he noted that while the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable (PSP) had little to no connectivity between them, the current model of PlayStation and PlayStation Vita are able to connect to each other.

“This is new ground for us,” he said. “It didn’t seem it at the time but these walled gardens are actually nice, cosy places, and we are now going out into the big bad world where there are no rules. We are trying to set those rules.”

Instead of simply acknowledging the changing trend, Sony has already begun to move towards what it considers as the future of the industry. The sheer variety of devices that it is competing against in the market has not only forced it to redesign its strategy and “reset” its thinking, but also realise that its former strategy was flawed and thus needed to be discarded in order to thrive in the evolving ecosystem.

Sony is yet to make any announcement regarding its next-generation console, but if what Ryan stated during his interview with MCV is taken to be a reflection of the thinking that currently persists in the company, then we can surely expect something that will be ground-breaking in every sense of the word.