242w ago - SCEA's VP of product marketing Scott Steinberg outlines his vision for PS3's future, and the benefits he believes will drive it to market dominance

In a Keynote, he covers the benefits Sony will be promoting to consumers this Holiday season. They include PS3's Blu-ray drive, first party games, PSN's increasingly diverse product portfolio and community features.

Steinberg writes, "In the next few years, you're going to start to see us separate from the herd. Some of the other platforms are going to look very dated because their life spans are so much shorter than ours."

He adds, "If you're a competitor I've got bad news for you because we've got some absolute blockbusters that are in the works, some of them new IP, some of them existing IP, that we're building specifically for the PS3

"From a competitive standpoint our competitors are going to have a tougher road now then even in 2008. But for PlayStation 3 consumers, it means more quality and more choice."

247w ago - European folks: You know the deal, enduring the agonizing wait for a new game release to be localized in a dozen or so languages for PAL territories can be frustrating at times. Or so it seems. Outspoken Sony Computer Entertainment Europe head David Reeves believes the wait is a clear advantage for Europe at times:

To quote: People say, 'Well, why do we always get things last? Why can't we say things?' Well, I've said this many times before: sometimes it's an advantage to be last in Europe, you know, when everything's ironed out.

"This time, we do have things to say in the European [market]. We have the music service, and we're doing great things on SingStar and there's more to come. These are global announcements.

"They recognize that the [Games Convention] in Europe, whether it's in Leipzig, Cologne or London: we can do the announcements wherever. So they said to us in Tokyo, 'Do you want to do it here?' And we said, 'Yeah, we'd love to do it here.

Is the assurance of a bug-free title worth waiting up to six months? Half the time there are no differences and not to mention, those living in Europe sometimes have to wait longer for the same game patches that are released in North America and Japan. All in all, not a very significant advantage.