«There are no first and second players»

General Director of Sony Interactive Entertainment Iberia

   One year Liliana Laporte leads the general management of Sony Interactive Entertainment in Spain and Portugal. The executive will attend tonight the gala of the Fun & Serious Game Festival in which the awards will be delivered to the best games of the year and surely will be one of the six awards to which is nominated 'Uncharted 4: the outcome of the thief' . "We support this event because it is very important at a European and global level," he says.

    "They are the Oscars of videogames and something like that is needed, because even though we are the entertainment industry that generates the most value, above film and music, we are still there and events are those that give us visibility", he assures. .

It has been an intense year for Sony. In a couple of months, the company has launched three new devices: a PlayStation 4 Slim, a PlayStation Pro and a virtual reality device, PlayStation VR. Why?

In the end what we have wanted is to give a wider range of possibilities to our public and consumers. It is true that our fans were accustomed to a kind of consoles life cycle, but it is also true that they are fans of technology and that they are used to faster evolutions, so we wanted to put at your disposal new features, but letting the consumer decides what their rhythm is.


So on the one hand, you have a new console with a more affordable price and a very cool design and on the other you have the most powerful console on the market, with twice the graphic capacity and with the possibility of reaching 4K resolutions that will they allow very strong experiences. And in the middle is PlayStation VR.

But do not you think that that can lead to first and second-class players?

That does not exist. Actually what there is is players of all kinds. A 'Rocket League' geek will never be a second-rate player, just like a big competitor in 'Call of Duty'. There are no first or second class players, just people who enjoy.

Despite everything, launching three products is risky. You could almost say that Sony is becoming the competition itself.

It is a challenge and it is true that you have to have the ability to communicate it but in the end we are showing respect and a deep affection for our fans. Simply say: "Here I leave everything I have, you decide how you want to use it."

To what audience would you say that each console is directed?

PlayStation 4 Slim is aimed at a more casual audience that is looking for an opportunity to have a fantastic console in which all the games can be played and which allows you to play online. The player of PlayStation 4 Pro, however, looks for the last thing in terms of technology: it looks for the best graphic quality in a game and the possibility of having 4K resolutions.

The first analysis of the machine has shown that PlayStation 4 Pro is sometimes short to arrive natively at that resolution. Would not it have been better to wait until there was an installed base of larger 4K TVs?

Our engineers have done a spectacular job because in the end what they have achieved with the technology they have developed for the Pro is that when a game does not reach that resolution you do not notice the difference.

Is it worth it for the user who does not have a TV of this type?

It depends on what you are looking for as a player. Even if you do not have a 4K TV, the machine offers a better graphic quality, in the sense that games that did not reach a 1080p resolution before, now do. And on the other hand you can also get more fluid and realistic experiences since in terms of frames per second, games that are worth 30 can go to 60.

It is striking that many of the exclusive titles that Sony had announced for this Christmas campaign have been delayed to 2017. Seeing the effort in the 'hardware' section, would not it have been more convenient to dedicate time to the 'software'?

I understand that it is very frustrating. Without going any further, on December 7 we launched 'The Last Guardian', a title in which we have been working for 10 years, but in the end I wonder what is better: Doing the date and not delivering what the consumer seeks and deserves or delay something to try to achieve excellence? I personally stay with the second option.

What forecasts do you have for Christmas?

I can not talk about it. The only thing I can remember is that on May 22, 2016 we announced that we already had 40 million consoles in the homes and that same day we said that we expected to reach 60 million on March 30, 2017. We are on the right track .

Sony is one of the companies that has driven the most development in our country. What is the goal of initiatives like PS Talents?

In the end we have two big objectives. The first is to give thanks and return all the love that fans feel for us. Actually, we feel obliged to support and develop local talent. And on the other hand we want to find that new 'Uncharted', that new 'Rocket League', which can often be here, by our side. The idea with the PS Talents program is to make new content that we can sell worldwide. Very interesting things are going to come out.