House: Extremely Challenging To Surpass E3 2013

Speaking in a long interview with EDGE, published just ahead of Sony’s E3 2014 Press Conference, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Andrew House reflected on the events transpired last year, when the conference ended in a massive Sony triumph over main competitor Microsoft.

House admitted that E3 2013 was “a special moment in time”, thus unlikely to repeat itself, at least not in that way (Sony announced PS4′s lower price and no DRM policies, which the audience cheered audibly).

I think that was a very special moment in time. It’s going to be extremely challenging to surpass the levels of excitement that we had last year. What I hope we’ll do at E3 this year is get people very excited about where PS4 is headed. We’ve got some great games [and] some great franchises that are coming to the platform that’ll keep people excited about PlayStation 4, or will be the prompt that’ll bring new people on board.

House also talked about the importance of PlayStation Now, the great work of Gaikai (the company acquired by Sony to work on the technology) and the challenges behind it.

It’s [about] trying to broaden out to audiences that perhaps have not embraced a console before – to deliver really great console-level gaming experiences with the convenience of a device that they already own. It’s a longterm strategy, and it’s one that we will undertake very carefully.

[It's a big tech challenge], and it [needs] considerable server investment. We felt that the guys at Gaikai brought some significant technical and industry know-how, and that’s why we were keen to partner with them. I think the first fruits of that for us have been Remote Play, which grew out of technology that the Gaikai guys had developed.

Are you hyped yet about Sony’s E3 2014 conference? What game would you like to see? You can watch it live from 6PM PDT/9PM EDT/2AM UK/3AM CET here .