Sony Computer Entertainment president Kaz Hirai has been speaking to a number of publications about the PS3's uniqueness and longevity, cross-platform development and the Japanese and Western markets.

Speaking in an interview with Japanese website ITMedia +D Games, translated by Develop, Hirai acknowledged that while high development costs are driving the creation of cross-platform games, developers should make the most of individual consoles’ unique features, as opposed to standardizing games across different platforms.

“When you consider the cost of developing on today’s platforms, I think it’s a logical progression that they’re all thinking of making their games cross-platform,” Hirai said of third party developers.

“But I think it’s important that third parties use the unique characteristics of the platform to add a little bit of extra flavor to their games. For example, with the PS3, you’ve got the Sixaxis controller, or you could utilize the extra capacity provided by Blu-ray to add more levels, put on interviews with the developers or have your videos able to play in 1080p. I think it’s really important that we talk with third party developers so that they can have these interesting extras in the PlayStation 3 version.”

Hirai also stated in the interview that SCE wouldn’t lose focus of the Japanese market because of the sheer scale of the Western market.

“Sony Worldwide Studios has three pillars – Europe, America and Japan… Just because the foreign market is bigger than the domestic one, we don’t intend to take strategy of just making what would have been considered previously as ‘Western games’ and saying ‘We’ve got no choice but to do this’ to our Japanese users. If we did that, there’d be no point in having the Japan Studio.”

In a separate interview in the latest edition of Official PlayStation magazine, spotted by GamesRader, Hirai maintained that it was only natural that some coders were having problems getting to grips with PS3 game development. The highly complex machine wouldn't be exploited fully for a number of years, he said.

"If you look back at the commentary we received when we launched PS2, there was a lot of talk to the effect that 'It's very difficult to program for' and 'It's easier on a Dreamcast'. It's happened before.

"If they came back and told me, 'PS3? We can do this in a heartbeat,' that would be worrying because what it is telling me is that we're not pushing the envelope from a technology standpoint."

"The power that we've packed into PS3 will really manifest itself in software titles that come up four, five or six years down the line."