IGN's posted their E3 interview with head of SCE WWS, Shuhei Yoshida.
He gives a clearer outlook on a number of points than some of his colleagues, for example on Vita hardware profitability. It's a much more realistic/nuanced answer that probably reflects the reality of that issue right now.
http://ie.psp.ign.com/articles/117/1177042p1.html
On Vita dev budgets:
He talks about a number of other things at the links, including the stuff mentioned in the title. Pretty good interview.
He gives a clearer outlook on a number of points than some of his colleagues, for example on Vita hardware profitability. It's a much more realistic/nuanced answer that probably reflects the reality of that issue right now.
http://ie.psp.ign.com/articles/117/1177042p1.html
Yoshida: At the very start of this project a bunch of us core members went to Japan and spent a day discussing what it is that we wanted to achieve with the new PlayStation portable device. One of the goals was to hit the right price point, which was actually $250. So at the very beginning we agreed that we're going to hit $250. But during that time we were still recovering from the difficultly we had with the high cost of goods with PlayStation 3 where the company lost a lot of money. We asked consumers to spend a lot of money to purchase what, at that time, was bleeding-edge technology. That was great from a technical standpoint but the technology has to mature enough so that a reasonable price can be put on the performance.
For Vita, the price on performance was something we definitely wanted to hit, although we all agreed because we are PlayStation, people expect better graphics and prettier pictures, so we have all those things we wanted to achieve in terms of capabilities, but we capped our ambitions with a cost of goods target that we can profitably sell the hardware for $250.
To answer your question, we set out a goal: Yes, we're going to hit the $250 price, and no, we don't want to sell the hardware with a deficit. That's a goal we set out to do and I'm very happy we are achieving that.
IGN: So you're going to be profitable with each Vita sold?
Yoshida: We haven't completed the hardware development. It's like 98-percent done in terms of hardware, and on the system software side and network code, we have a few more months to work on that. We don't have the final-final answer to that question, but the way we are projecting it seems like we're going to do pretty well.
On Vita dev budgets:
I am there in many meetings with third-party developers and publishers, and because one of our studios is no different than them in terms of being game developers, a lot of questions we asked on the input we had made in determining the features of PSVita, they quickly understood. They agreed this is the right level of technology they would be able to put their games on.
It's not making a next-generation game on home consoles where you have to spend $100 million. Actually, the development cost for one of our studio titles on Vita is way closer to what we've been spending on developing PSP games than what we've been spending on PlayStation 3.
He talks about a number of other things at the links, including the stuff mentioned in the title. Pretty good interview.