Developers underestimated PS3 - Sony

Shuhei Yoshida, the man who recently replaced Phil Harrison as head of Sony Worldwide Studios, has conceded the PS3's been lagging behind when it comes to third-party software - until now.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz Yoshida admitted there was "disappointment" during launch year over the number of third-party games available. "I'm sure that third party publishers had planned to release their titles day-and-date with the launch of the PlayStation 3, or day-and-date with the launch of the title on the Xbox 360, but because the 360 hardware was out earlier, the games were built based on 360 architecture," he said.

"But still, they must have been planning, thinking they have enough time, to port the second game to PS3 and release at the same time with the same quality. So they massively underestimated the effort that was needed to re-architect the game to properly take advantage of the PS3's multi-core architecture."

Yoshida said Sony was "pretty happy" with the first-party titles that were released in launch year, even if they didn't all arrive on time. "But it's impossible to bring the level of support that we feel is important for the PlayStation 3 platform without the third parties' continued support," he went on. "That was the miscalculation by both us, and from third parties.

"But I think after the end of last year, there are more and more titles are coming out on the same day [as Xbox 360] and the same quality, and we can start to see some additional things on PS3 because of the space available on Blu-ray."

To read the full interview, visit GamesIndustry.biz.