Former PlayStation America Head says that despite all the powerful specs, Sony will face a lot of competition with the PlayStation 5 than it has ever before.
Jack Tretton was perhaps one of Sony’s biggest guns. Tretton ran Sony’s game division in the U.S. for several years. He played a vital role in making PlayStation 4 one of the most prominent gaming consoles of this generation. He left Sony in 2014 and went on to announce his venture capital fund, Interactive Gaming Ventures, which focuses on emerging indie titles.
In an interview with Venture Beat, Tretton argues that even though Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 5 packs a lot of hardware power, Sony will still face competition that they have never faced before.
During the interview, he was asked about his stance on the current state of Sony. Tretton replied by saying:
I think they’re very well-positioned. The leader of the prior generation is always in a good position going into the new generation. From what I’ve read about the specs of PlayStation 5, it sounds impressive. Their business model obviously worked well for them the last time around, and it doesn’t look like they’re going to deviate from that,” said Tretton. “They’ll be well-positioned. But I do think they’ll face exponentially more competition than they did the last time around.
Of course, Tretton has extensive knowledge regarding Sony and the PlayStation 5 thanks to his past history at the company. He clearly knows what he’s talking about.
Mark Cerny, the lead architect of PlayStation 4 already has confirmed that the new PlayStation 5 features a custom AMD 8-core CPU. The cores are a 7nm Zen 2 microarchitecture which will offer over 12TF of power. It will also feature a custom SSD that will reduce loading times on next-generation PlayStation, allowing games to load entire levels within seconds.
Despite all of this processing power, Tretton argues that Sony will face an immense competition when facing against competitors like the new Xbox Anaconda and Google Stadia.
“Microsoft should give them a better run for their money, and Stadia is a new wrinkle in the market that didn’t exist in 2013. Nintendo is more relevant this time around. It’s going to be a much more competitive market. There are new players,” said Tretton.
“But they’ve learned some valuable lessons in this generation. It should be great for everyone in the business, whether you’re a developer or a gamer. It’s going to keep everyone on their toes.”
Just quite recently, Sony and Microsoft announced a partnership venture which will allow Sony to take advantage of Microsoft’s “Azure datacenter-based solutions for Sony’s game and content-streaming services.”
It will be interesting to see if Tretton is right or not in the upcoming months. Right now, nothing can be said just what will happen with all these technologies emerging. One thing is for certain though, 2019 is and will be a big year for gaming in general.
