In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Kazuo Hirai, President and group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, made some rather telling comments in response to the questions posed to him.  Most of it reads like Sony patting themselves on the back, of course, because big corporations certainly aren't going to reveal their insecurities.  But GamesIndustry did make sure to address the much anticipated Home, PSN's community-based service.

Having been in development since 2005, Home has drawn its share of skeptics as well as irritated fans who are simply running out of patience.  Three years and many delays later, Hirai assures PlayStation fans to hang tight because Home will be well worth the wait.

In this excerpt of the interview with GamesIndustry, Hirai dismisses the idea that gamers may be tired of the unfullfilled release dates:

Q: What's happening with PlayStation Home? We didn't see much more in the press conference, and some people are asking questions about how it will be received - are you concerned that when the product does come out that it will end up being an anticlimax?

Kaz Hirai: Well I would put it the other way around - because we got so much buzz, had we launched it before we thought it was the right time and the right features and functionality to launch it - with the high anticipation, people would go there in droves the first time around, they would check it out and say, "This isn't fun at all, so I'm not coming back again."

The other scenario, at least if I had a choice, that I'd like to go down - which is the path we're doing - okay, we've been dinged, I've been personally dinged many times, but if I know we're doing it for the right reasons and that once we launch the service this Fall it's going to be something that the consumers once they go there see that it's actually going to be a fun service, that to me is a lot better than doing it the other way around.

I've said this on many occasions, and right now we're aiming for a Fall open beta programme, but no beta should be opened before its time, and it's important enough of an initiative for the platform and for SCE, that we don't want to prematurely launch it and then be dinged for having a bad service.

So if Home winds up having bad service, you can always "ding" Kazuo Hirai again.  It seems that Sony is preparing for the long haul with their ten year (console) life cycle, which they are confident the PlayStation 3 will achieve. 

When asked who he thinks is winning this generation, Hirai replied:

I think that 'winning' and 'won' are two different things. Where I stand, we look at it in the context of a ten year life cycle as we've done with PSOne and PS2, which is certainly on its way.

So it's really a matter of looking back after ten years minimum and asking what you've actually accomplished in terms of the installed base, in terms of the business that you generated for the internal first party studios, in terms of the business you've generated for the third party studios, in terms of the business you've generated for the retailers…

And that's when you actually look back and say, "Yes, this platform was successful, it wasn't successful, it was so-so," - whatever the case may be. So we're still only two years into the PS3, and I think the true test is really like the situation we find ourselves with PS2, where nine years later and 130 million units later we can look back and say, "Yeah - it's been a pretty successful platform."

So I know some people have been talking about who will be number one in this generation, and what have you, but before we get into that question, what about the life cycle management? If we want to compare apples to apples, let's see a ten year life cycle, because I don't see that anywhere else.

If somebody wants to say that they're going to have a larger installed base, we should compare notes after ten years, because otherwise we're not talking about the same thing.

And we certainly don't do the consumer the disservice of basically saying that the consoles have gone by the wayside because we have a new one. Right now, a prime example? PS2 is nine years into it. Where's the Xbox? Where's the GameCube?

It always comes back to the competition, doesn't it?  In nine years, where will the PS3 be, I wonder.