No Atari titles for PS3 until 2007, CEO calls console´s appeal ´selective´

Atari CEO Bruno Bonnell has announced in an interview with Games Industry that its company will not be publishing any PS3 games until 2007. He doesn´t sound pessimistic about the console´s future, but he doesn´t believe in its mass appeal at the launch price. Here´s what he had to say:

I don't think there is a risk there [that the PS3] will fail. I think that by deciding to put the PS3 at this price, Sony has chosen to really differentiate itself from the other consoles, and the fact that you have Blu-ray, and the fact that it's HD compatible - all this is driving me to think that Sony is picking up the high-end of the market, the hardcore, passionate fans.

There will be a time they can reduce the price and access more people, but clearly that's a technical choice that Sony has made to be selective on the field at stage one.

Let´s decipher what he really is saying. He agrees that Wii will outsell PS3 (that´s the upshot of the last sentence), but he genuinely doesn´t seem to think that the PS3 will fail.

At any rate, let´s remember that Atari is not the heavyweight they used to be and their support matters far less than it did five years ago. Bonnell is desperately trying to get the company back on its feet when he says:

Very often people look at the share price, or the financial situation of the company, to reach a conclusion about the quality of the products we're releasing. I think those two are fairly separate.

Well, only fairly. Because selling a license like ´Driver´ and a studio like ´Shiny´ may get you out of financial woes - but obviously does impact upon quality.

EDIT Kotaku reported yesterday that developer SNK Playmore may hold off their first PS3 release until 2009. The studio is famous for the ´SNK versus´ and ´Metal Slug´ series, the last of which is coming to Wii as a launch title. Here´s their reasoning:

My first impression is that it's expensive. The PlayStation 2 is good enough. It's small and cheap. For us, for manufacturers, we have to invest in a new system, and the PlayStation 3 is a risk. There won't be enough consoles at launch. Few consoles mean few software sales. We need to wait three or four years. Maybe 2009-2010 is a good time to release a game for the PS3.

This is, of course, a bigger blow to Sony than Atari holding off their first PS3 title for maybe as little as two months and might curtail the Japanese demand for PS3.

Source: Games Industry
Thanks to: Some Guy, Babble, CaptainN