Interview: Sony's Tretton Addresses Hackers, Downplays iPhone Threat

[In this interview with Gamasutra, SCEA CEO Jack
Tretton talks candidly about April's PSN security breach and outage, and
how low-priced mobile titles aren't necessarily "training people to pay
$5 for games."]

While Sony would probably argue otherwise, the rest of the world tends
to agree that the company's public handling of April's data intrusion
was a textbook example of PR fumbling. After waiting what many consider
to be too long to address the problem, the company finally apologized,
but the sentiment seemed rehearsed -- and less than sincere to many.

But when Jack Tretton stepped on stage at this year's pre-E3 press conference and addressed the issue for the first time, he did so without a script or teleprompter, choosing instead to speak from the heart.

And by wryly acknowledging the elephant in the room with a dash of humor
and what seemed genuine regret for what users had to go through, he
managed to do what no other company executive before him had: Convince
people to accept the apology and begin to move beyond the incident.

It was an awkward few weeks leading up to that. Tretton, the public face
for PlayStation in the U.S., was forced to remain silent while Sony
corporate handled the fallout of the hacker attack. Gamers wondered why
the guy they knew and trusted wasn't speaking to them -- and Tretton
admits it was a bit frustrating for him as well.

"There's the person and there's the job," he says. "And sometimes the
two aren't completely tied together. You have personal opinions and a
corporate structure you have to work through."

Now that he's off the leash, Tretton was able to more freely discuss the
data intrusion that resulted in the compromising of personal
information from over 100 million accounts, in a conversation with
Gamasutra at E3.

At its press conference, Sony said traffic to the PlayStation Network is
already at 90 percent of the pre-hack levels. And Tretton says he
expects to surpass the numbers in the coming months as more games and
services become available. Some of that will be due to restored consumer
confidence, but ultimately, he says, it's about the games.

"It will be [partially due to] restored faith, but probably equally
affected by having compelling content," he says. "We could have the most
secure network in the world, but if our content isn't compelling, our
login rates would drop -- like a stone."

Though hackers continue to penetrate other divisions of Sony, the
PlayStation unit hasn't seen any troubles since its relaunch. And while
Tretton says the company remains vigilant, it's focusing on future
challenges -- specifically the launch of its upcoming next generation
handheld system, the PlayStation Vita.

Like Nintendo, the company faces a challenge it didn't have to worry
about with its last handheld system: Apple. Nintendo's Satoru Iwata was
quite vocal about his concerns about app store pricing practices at this
year's GDC, so I was curious if Tretton shared those. Specifically, do
99 cent and free games on the iPhone represent a threat to Sony and the
gaming industry at large?

He didn't seem too concerned.

"If I open a movie theater next door [to a theater] and start charging
50 cents per ticket, but I'm showing you things I filmed with my
camcorder, I don't think it's a threat to the theater charging $13 per
ticket," he says. "It's about people having reasonable expectations. I
don't think we're training people to pay $5 for games. ... The cream
always rises to the top."

And while he acknowledges that smart phones and tablets might be winning
over some gamers, he doesn't see those people as lost customers. In
fact, he says, those platforms can potentially make his job easier.

"For every consumer you lose to a tablet or smart phone, there are three
consumers that became interested in gaming in a simple form," he says.
"And those people might be able to be migrated into a sophisticated
gamer. ... We look at that as being the opposite of a threat, but an
opportunity."