PlayStation boss: 'We don't need the PC'

Thursday 1 June 2006
PlayStation 3 will be the only device you will need for gaming, watching movies, browsing the web and many other activities usually associated with PCs, according to the head of Sony's Worldwide Studios.

"Once you adopt a game system as your primary entertainment device, that's what you want," reckons Sony's Phil Harrison. "We think that PlayStation 3 is the place where our users will be doing a lot of other computer entertainment functions. That will satisfy them. PlayStation 3 is a computer. We don't need the PC."

Harrison, during an interview with the website of weekly German magazine Der Spiegel, also took the opportunity to brush aside claims that Sony copied Nintendo's motion-sensing controller. "I understand why people say that," he admitted, "but it's a little stupid."

He went on to say that he expects "every PS3 game to use the feature in some way" - even though third-party developers had no idea that PS3's controller would even be motion sensitive until Sony's pre-E3 conference on 8 May, a mere six months before PS3 launches.

Sony has actually held a patent for a wand-shaped motion detecting controller since way back in 1999. Shocked? Just take a look at the image below of a design created to capture a player's movements and replicate them on screen.

Above: This design for a motion-sensitive controller was patented by Sony way back in 1999

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.