Former Electronic Arts CEO and current top boss at Unity Technologies, John Riccitiello, has spoken out to say he thinks Sony “f**king nailed it” with the PlayStation 4 and deserves “victory” in the current console race against Microsoft and its Xbox One. Riccitiello made the comments during the GamesBeat Summit.
“There was a clash of ideas that really separated Sony and Microsoft,” Riccitiello said, as reported by GamesBeat. “[The Xbox One and PS4] actually had very similar architecture that they were trying to bring to the table. But Microsoft focused … a lot on entertainment beyond gaming. Microsoft was trying to [compete against] Apple. They didn’t feel gaming was big enough to justify the pent-up desire … to have the recognition they wanted as an innovator.”
Riccitiello added that Sony, meanwhile, took a “gamer-first” approach with the PS4–something he says paid off. Microsoft’s attempt to reach a broader market with its Xbox One TV integration was not necessarily an ill-advised move, but Riccitiello said Microsoft’s “unfocused execution” was its downfall.
He used a billiards analogy to sum up the differences, in his mind, between Microsoft and Sony.
“Sony just said, ‘We’ve made the best f**king game system we could’ … partly because they didn’t have the resources to do more about it,” Riccitiello said. “Microsoft was focused on the shot after the one they needed to make, putting the 7-ball in the corner pocket, but they missed the first shot and didn’t get another shot after it.”
“Sony focused on the shot they needed to make, which was win the hearts and minds of the gamer. The broader scope of entertainment might be a bigger idea, but not with an unfocused execution,” he added. “A tight execution on the 50 million people that matter, which are the people currently lapping up consoles … Sony f**king nailed it, and they deserve the victory.”
With more than 22.3 million PS4s sold, Sony’s new console is the current leader of the new-generation console race. But as Microsoft has stressed time and again, the sales race is a marathon, not a sprint.
