The two defining moments of E3 this year were during the PlayStation press conference and neither had anything to do with a specific game though both would impact the gaming community greatly. For those who attend, they’ll easily remember the explosion of applause when Sony would announce their used game policy which was in polar opposite of what Microsoft had announced earlier that day and one that Gears of War developer Cliff Bleszinski strongly agrees with. Ironically, for the most part, Sony’s strategy was to announce that they would keep things as is so the no news was the big news. This of course meant that gamers could lend their games to friends, be able to sell and trade their old titles, and not need an internet connection to play games, even if they were single player.

The other defying moment? The $399 price tag which meant that the PS4 would cost $100 less than the Xbox One. After the jump, Sony’s Scott Rohde, head of Sony Worldwide Studios Software Product Development reaction.

 As soon as [the Xbox One’s price] was announced there was running up and down the aisles, “woohoo!”. That’s going to make our announcement that much better. 

He went on.

 Absolutely great. It was an amazing feeling. Absolutely. We went nuts. We were just like everybody else because this plan has been in place for years. Developing a new console takes a long time. With a goal that was set in motion about three or four years ago, we saw this at the February event about how we talked to all the different developers. You know, what do you like about the PS3, what would you like to see changed, that’s all real. All that happened. Our goal was to build the most powerful console at a price that was affordable and we set that target at $399. All the great engineers in Japan, Mark Cerny was leading all those teams, everything all came together.

The developers said what they wanted, eight gigs of the fastest ram available, all these things that developers wanted, still managed to do that in a machine that was super slick looking and still did it for $399 and that’s why it’s a moment we’re very proud of. That was accentuated when our competitors announced that theirs was $499. 

Discuss:

Were you surprised by the price difference between the two consoles?

[Via The Verge]