Sony's Shuhei Yoshida

That's totally feasible and it's going to be happening. One of the games we're making, called Ruin, we are developing both the Vita version and the PS3 version of that title. Both games will be packaged together. You can play the game at home on PS3, save your data on our PSN server on the cloud, and you can continue playing the game on PS Vita by downloading the save from the PSN. And you can do vice versa. It's a continuous experience, playing the same game on PS Vita and PS3.

There is lots of interest from publishers and developers to do that. At Konami, Kojima-san announced the concept of Transfarring. The initial product will be between PSP and PS3, but he is also talking about between PS3 and Vita. Actually, it's easier to create the experience on PS Vita and PS3 because the performance is much similar, and the amount of RAM is pretty similar.

More games like Ruin will be released. But that said, PS Vita has lots of unique functionality you cannot replicate on PS3. The larger focus we have from worldwide studios standpoint is to create games on PS Vita you cannot really experience anywhere else, like the use of touch or camera. We showed a video of how LittleBigPlanet on Vita can use the camera to capture textures and use attach to edit your level. That's great. You cannot do that on the console. That's a larger focus.

Technically, yes. PS Vita and PS3 can be connected. Actually, PSP and PS3 can be connected as well. They function when you have video on PS3 you can browse using PSP Remote Play function. Again, because PS Vita and PS3 performance is similar, because the PSN feature set is complete on PS Vita, it's going to be much easier to use PS3 and PS Vita in the connected function.

Yeah. It has to be built into the game. We've been working on the technical side, on how to make it easy for developers to be able to do that. It's still under development, but we should be able to demonstrate that functionally later.

We have great momentum on PS3. The last year was our biggest year for the PS3. We'd like to continue this momentum. We are now broadening our reach with PS3, with the introduction of PS Move. So we think it's about the time to slightly reduce the price so PS3 can be more accessible to those people who might be waiting for that right chance to jump onto PS3.

We have the right content - casual content, PS Move content - and we have the more accessible price with PS3 hardware, and a big title coming out like Uncharted 3. So it's the perfect time for us to do the move.

It's a reflection of the fact that the technical leap was greater from the last generation to this generation. PS2 to PS3 was a bigger leap. That created the very high cost of goods at the launch of PS3 - that was very painful. At the same time the game developers had to shift from the single core architecture to multi-core architecture. There was lots of learning.

So from both the hardware standpoint and the game development standpoint, the learning curve was much steeper. So the penetration rate, even combined with 360, was slower this time around. But after a couple of years of time, the hardware costs have come down and developers have developed their engines and pipelines. Now, it's the primetime for this generation of hardware and games. That was the reason it took more time and after four years we are still seeing better and bigger titles coming out.

As far as for how many more years, it really depends on how long the industry continues to support the platform. As long as we continue to support the platform, there is huge value with PS3. It's not just a game product. There are network services available. It's great value for money for millions of people.

As far as we are concerned, we have no desire now to do that. Looking at the platform cycle, when the platform becomes something game developers are not able to improve their creations with, that's the time we have to really seriously consider shifting to the next generation. Gamers always need something new and more exciting. If they're seeing just similar types of games coming year after year, they will quickly lose their interest.

Looking like that, when you see games coming out on PS3, both the traditional type of games as well as new kind of games using PS Move, there is a lot more we can do from the game development standpoint. So as long as we and our developers can create new experiences that are more exciting to consumers, I see no need to transition into newer generation.