Phil Harrison was an Advocate for Casual Gaming Before Wii?
It's a very interesting and frustrating thing for me to experience because I have been banging the drum about social gaming for a long time, with SingStar, EyeToy and Buzz...
And our Japanese colleagues said that there is no such thing as social gaming in Japan – people do not play games on the same sofa together in each other's homes. It will never happen. And then out comes the Wii. - Phil Harrison, Sony
I've been debating whether to talk about this, but at the end of the day what good is a games conference without a stupid quote from one of Sony's execs? In any case here is Phil saying that he hounded Sony Japan to get into casual games, but was ignored and because of that the Wii came out on top. That's the gist of what he's saying, and it's total bullshit.
Neither Phil nor Sony have ever talked about casual games or reaching a casual audience with the PS3. It's always been hardcore this, hardcore that and tits and ass in all of their conference presentations. Making commercials with people having sex to promote a videogame machine just screams casual doesn't it? Maybe they left some room for their eyetoy and Singstar, but the idea that casual gaming was Phil's idea and that he wanted it before Nintendo and that Sony would be on top if they had listened to him is totally ludicrous.
