President of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Kazuo Hirai has said that he believes the company is not in competition with Nintendo, further adding that Microsoft’s Xbox 360 “lacks longevity.”
“I’d like to think that we continue official leadership in this industry,” Hirai told the Official PlayStation Magazine.
“It’s difficult to talk about Nintendo because we don’t look at their console as being competitors. They’re a different world and we operate in our world – that’s kind of the way I look at things.
“And with the Xbox – again, I can’t come up with one word to fit. You need a word that describes something that lacks longevity,” he said.
Hirai noted that Microsoft has yet to have a console on the market beyond the four-five year mark, as opposed to previous iterations in the PlayStation brand, with Sony committing to a ten-year life cycle for its latest home console, PS3.
Furthermore, the Sony boss is adamant that its competitors are unlikely to have a higher install base than PS3 at the end of a console life cycle – that is, unless things “go really bad.”
“Last time I checked, they’ve never had a console that’s been on the market for more than four or five years and we’ve committed to a ten year life cycle, so you do the math.
“And unless things go really bad there’s no way that at the end of a life cycle our competition is going to have a higher install base,” he observed.