Phil Harrison: two versions of Xbox 360 "creates confusion"

Sony's Phil Harrison (pictured, left), in a tone that is a lot more sedated than his recent spat against Nintendo, spoke today at London's Game Developers Conference about their rival's pricing plan – namely (for those who have not caught on), the Xbox 360 and its multiple versions. "This is my personal view, not my corporate view," he says, "but when I look at those formats, I think it just confuses the audience. They don't know which one to buy, developers don't know which one to create for, and retailers don't know which one to stock." This is a good point, as I think many developers are hesitant to utilize the HDD until they see the portion of consumers who have that version of the new Xbox. That's not to say any launch games will be bad - far from it - but if more people buy the cheaper version, we may never see much use for the disk drive aside from playing original Xbox titles.

The bottom line, the chance of seeing two versions of the PlayStation 3 is "unlikely." I think Sony is happy with launching second, as it can find some way to spin their launch as 'better in every way' to the Xbox 360's debut later this year.