Sony’s Jim Ryan has put his foot in his mouth a lot over the last week, but he’s been doing a good job of late. Earlier today, we reported on his comments about the Nintendo Switch, which were surprisingly sensible and even headed. His comments about the Switch in another interview, this time with GamesIndustry.biz, continue being positive on the system, also noting that Nintendo being strong is good for PlayStation.
“When you look at the whole of the industry ecosystem, having a resurgent Nintendo back, and playing in a meaningful manner – I hear a lot of what they showed at E3 was really good – can only be to the benefit to the industry,” Ryan said. “And to pretty much everyone in the industry. So we will see. If it means that some of those people, the many millions of people, who got into the Wii start to come back — in many cases they have been absent for a few years — if they come back, and they go into a store looking for a Switch, I’ll have a crack at selling them a PS4.”
That’s a reasonably sensible and business minded way of looking at things. But the Switch is not the only competition that the PS4 faces- the Xbox One also is, and with the impending launch of the Xbox One X, the PS4 Pro, Sony’s own upgraded PS4, will become extremely important to their plans.
“Talking about competitive plans is never a wise thing to do. Certainly, with 1 in 5 PS4s sold being a Pro, it is clearly going to be a really important part of the holiday season for us,” Ryan said guardedly. “And we anticipate that that proportion will grow. Sometimes when you ship and you’re supply constrained, you don’t want to talk about it too much because there’s nothing to sell. We anticipate we will be in a positive inventory situation this Christmas, and we will look forward to selling a lot of PS4 Pros.”
It will be interesting to see how this Holiday season plays out with the Switch, PS4 Pro, and the Xbox One X, that is for sure.
