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"After first unveiling the system back in February, Sony&amp;#039;s now at the final hurdle of its pre-launch preparations, with the device set to release in Europe tomorrow on Friday, November 29. Both next-gen consoles have seen high demand from consumers, but how is stock for the UK launch? SCEE&amp;#039;s UK managing director Fergal Gara discusses launch units until Christmas and beyond, the new Vita bundle with retailers, and the level of software support we can expect in the first few months of 2014. The PS4 has been out in the US for almost two weeks now. Have you had any feedback from them in terms of how they did their launch, and made any last minute tweaks from its reception? &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s been some tiny tweaks, some small glitches in how individual games play where it has been possible to refine a little bit. So no major changes whatsoever, just some small refinements, which means we can keep going with confidence.&amp;quot;  They&amp;#039;ve had big sales - one million in 24 hours - are you expecting something similar in Europe? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;ll be different numbers, and we&amp;#039;ll obviously announce what they are as quickly as we can, but we&amp;#039;re certainly expecting Europe to remain a very strong PlayStation region, and more specifically, we&amp;#039;re expecting a fantastic start in the UK, which for us as a team is hugely motivating. We&amp;#039;re ambitious guys, and we want to do well here.&amp;quot; How&amp;#039;s PS4 stock looking tomorrow and up to Christmas? &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve got a great volume of stock for launch. However, we&amp;#039;ve got even greater demand. It&amp;#039;s a good problem to have, but it is going to cause some frustration, and to any gamers out there, we apologise in advance that it may be tough to get hold of a PS4. &amp;quot;However, the great news is, even if you haven&amp;#039;t pre-ordered, there is stock landing in the market today for tomorrow, that enables people to come in off the street and purchase a unit. It&amp;#039;ll be a fairly wide supply for non-pre-ordered stock. &amp;quot;Of course, everyone who has pre-ordered and knows when they&amp;#039;re due to get it, which in the vast majority of cases is pre-Christmas, that unit is safe. Our production and our supply looks robust and we are very happy that everybody will get those units.&amp;quot; We&amp;#039;ve seen retailers say if you pre-order now you won&amp;#039;t get one until after Christmas... &amp;quot;Very recently they&amp;#039;ve flipped that message, in the last week or so.&amp;quot;  And into early next year, will that keep the same, or will supply increase? &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;ve got the double whammy at this time of year. It&amp;#039;s the seasonal peak and it&amp;#039;s a new console launch. From supply demand perspective, it&amp;#039;s the highest demand time you could possibly pick. &amp;quot;Supply will catch up with demand, it will be at least several weeks into next year, it might even be a couple of months or so into next year, but one will catch the other as demand will settle down. &amp;quot;It may not still be great, but it won&amp;#039;t be at Christmas peak or launch week peak. Of course, the factory output will continue at a fairly steady state, so they&amp;#039;ll catch each other.&amp;quot; When it comes to PS4 releases, I believe the next big release that&amp;#039;s been dated is Infamous: Second Son in March. Will there be anything else up until then? &amp;quot;We haven&amp;#039;t put a date on DriveClub as yet, but clearly we were disappointed to move it from tomorrow - from being a launch title - but also being very understanding of the fact that we want it to be a great game, and therefore, it&amp;#039;s better to be great and a little later than just good and on time. &amp;quot;We haven&amp;#039;t put a date on that, and I don&amp;#039;t know whether it&amp;#039;ll be before or after Infamous, but it&amp;#039;ll certainly be in the early part of next year. &amp;quot;Then of course we look forward to some stunning third-party titles in particular that are coming that we&amp;#039;re working closely on - Watch Dogs and Destiny are two that I&amp;#039;ll pick out. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve already announced The Order 1886 and we&amp;#039;ve heavily suggested that there&amp;#039;s an Uncharted title in the works as well, so what I&amp;#039;ll say is, we start with the best ever set of titles we&amp;#039;ve had for a launch and there&amp;#039;s loads more on the horizon, so I think gamers can be excited that there&amp;#039;s plenty more to follow and there won&amp;#039;t be some massive drought that kicks in in 2014.&amp;quot;  Previously Sony has said that PSN and indie releases will fill the void. Can we expect a lot of releases leading up to and after Christmas? &amp;quot;We can; there&amp;#039;s a very healthy set of titles launching right now, and plenty more to come. I can&amp;#039;t quite remember the numbers to be honest, but tens of titles imminent or launching very soon. &amp;quot;But it&amp;#039;ll do exactly as you say - filling the gaps between big releases, or just filling the price points, because a lot of the major disc titles can be your epic productions and they&amp;#039;re relatively costly. You can get indie titles at far lower prices, so it gives choice in terms of style of content and price point and timing.&amp;quot; So there&amp;#039;ll be plenty to play leading up to March? &amp;quot;Yeah, absolutely.&amp;quot; This week we&amp;#039;ve seen third-party publisher pricing being adjusted leading up to launch. Did that pricing have any input from Sony, or is completely decided by third-parties? &amp;quot;The PSN Store is a retail operation in its own right, and clearly can set prices to consumers just as any retailer can. Those prices are set by the publisher, in some cases ourselves, and in most cases or many cases, the third-party, and of course your running cost and margin you wish to apply on top of that. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s been some pricing gone live and the store for PlayStation 4 has gone live this week with, in many cases, test pricing that has been adjusted. Things haven&amp;#039;t been final. But as we go forward, yes, the PlayStation Store team have a big say in pricing, but so do the publishers, controlling the big part of it, the input price, if you like. &amp;quot;Again, it&amp;#039;s a new, relatively uncharted territory. What we&amp;#039;d like to see is the digital option to be a very viable option for the consumer. You think about features on the PS4 such as PlayAsYouDownload, that means digital consumption becomes more and more attractive and offers certain benefits versus buying the disc.  &amp;quot;But we do want the disc-based business to continue to exist, we do want retail to continue to exist, so it&amp;#039;s about finding an equilibrium there, and I think a gamers&amp;#039; choice of which format they want and market pressures will determine the relative pricing over time.&amp;quot; Recently a PS4 and Vita bundle was revealed. Can you discuss pricing and release date? &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m pretty sure it&amp;#039;s going to appear as early as tonight, stroke tomorrow. What we have not produced is one box with the two consoles in it. We might do, but we haven&amp;#039;t done that as yet. &amp;quot;What we have done is we&amp;#039;ve worked with retail to put that offer in front of consumers to buy the two together. Different retailers will execute it in different ways. Maybe for example, when you buy a PS4, get a Vita for X, where X is a pretty attractive price. &amp;quot;But in summary, expect a gamer to be able to buy the two devices for under \u00A3500 at various retailers who will be offering that. &amp;quot;When they introduce it, the timing will vary a little bit, and the reasons for that are in some cases they&amp;#039;ve pre-ordered tonnes of stock and they didn&amp;#039;t put this particular offer in front of the gamer and hence they chose what was available at that time, so it&amp;#039;s hard to go back and retrofit another option. It&amp;#039;s quite awkward for the retailer.  &amp;quot;It will be introduced in multiple places and represents, we think, tremendous value at under that \u00A3500 price point, but retailers will add certain things to it as they see fit, to create compelling offers. Our real impetus to do it was, once we got our hands on Remote Play, we could see it was genuinely an exciting, compelling feature.&amp;quot; How important will Vita be in 2014 as both a standalone device and also as part of the PS4? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s important on both levels. It&amp;#039;s not the biggest seller we&amp;#039;ve ever had, but it is still a very much loved and much respected machine. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s now far more keenly priced, it&amp;#039;s becoming more of a digital machine in terms of more and more rich digital content becoming available for the machine, and most importantly, it becomes a very strong companion for PS4. &amp;quot;We believe that feature is very compelling; it doesn&amp;#039;t matter what we think, it matters what gamers think, and as of tonight they get a chance to try it and give us their feedback, and we&amp;#039;re hopeful that feedback will be good and therefore it has a dual life from here on in, both as a standalone, very effective gaming machine and as a brilliant companion to PS4.&amp;quot; Is there any sign that the PS Vita redesign and PS Vita TV will be coming to Europe at any point? &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s no plans to announce just yet, but obviously it&amp;#039;s great to have those innovations in the group, and great to be able to see how they perform in Japan and take any learnings and test the relevance in other markets further down the line.&amp;quot;  Gaikai has been pushed to 2014 - any word on when it will be available in Europe? &amp;quot;In Europe, not specifically. Clearly we look with interest at the US plans which remain on track to launch in 2014. We do expect that this will be an iterative process. This is brand new technology, pretty uncharted territory, but exciting territory. We look with interest at those trials and how they develop, and clearly we&amp;#039;ll be excited to take any new PlayStation innovations to Europe at the right time.&amp;quot; I imagine the staggered approach when it comes to releases - not only with Gaikai but also the PS4 itself, which launched US first, Europe here, Japan later - that gives you the opportunity to address feedback from a particular region to others. &amp;quot;It does, and while the US has the privilege of going first this time, it&amp;#039;s clearly a little more nerve-wracking to go first than it is to go second and third. Great news is, they didn&amp;#039;t have much to be worried about at all, and it went very well, so that gives us great confidence launching here in the UK.&amp;quot; You recently confirmed the entertainment line-up of apps for PS4, such as BBC iPlayer and Netflix. Will there be expansion there or a strategy in 2014 and beyond? &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re delighted to be starting with such a strong line-up. I think it proves that while PS4 is first and foremost a gamer&amp;#039;s machine - we are for the players as we say - it is also a complete entertainment box and that set of services demonstrates that secondary agenda is also very strong. &amp;quot;We continue to talk to lots of partners and make the right decisions as we go. I&amp;#039;m delighted that we&amp;#039;re seeing PS4 pick up where PS3 left off in many senses on that agenda.&amp;quot; PS4 launches in Europe on November 29 and is available now in North America. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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